Inviting Googlebot to Crawl Deep & Complete

Is this a responsible & sensible method?

[mrfeelingfine]

I am trying to get 5000 items and their unique associated html page descriptions indexed by google. Each item is uniquely cataloged and described with its own keywords. (IOW, these are 5000 unique items with their own separate content and not an attempt to spam or bomb google.)

I'm trying this:

1] From the index page I created a link to a subdirectory index page where there is an A-Z page.

e.g. www.mysite.com/items/a-z.html

2] As an example, clicking on "A" takes you to the "A" index page within this Level 2 directory where all of the "A" links reside.

e.g. www.mysite.com/items/a-index.html

3] Clicking on any "A" link takes you to the full description and content of each item, again within this Level 2 directory. Each html page from #3 are extremely brief (very tiny file sizes) and in kind link back to the index page or to a master category index page.

e.g. www.mysite.com/items/a-index1001.html

< -------------------------------- >

Is this a logical, clear path for googlebot to follow? Will googlebot hop from 1 - 2 - 3 etc. or is this unrealistic? I wouldn't expect all 5,000 pages to be crawled, but I'm hoping that this is an intelligent interpretation of Insite Cross Linking from Brett's Google_Faq.

Thanks for your input.

[pageoneresults]

Hello mrfeelingfine, welcome to the board!

You know, you've described the exact structure I have in place on a site that I manage. It works very well. There may be other replies offering optional strategies, but the one you've outlined is probably the best solution.

I might suggest this...

> www.mysite.com/items/a-z.html

Change to...

www.mysite.com/a-z.html

> www.mysite.com/items/a-index1001.html

Change to...

www.mysite.com/a-index(or keyword)/1001.html

You'll end up with 26 sub directories but my feeling is they should be as close to the root as possible. No need to bury them one level deeper when you do not absolutely have to. The amount of content will be the determining factor.

Use a common navigation include amongst all pages. That include would contain links back to the main entry areas of the site. I'd probably use the same footer you have on the root level pages and add the sub-directory information.

There is a little more reading between the lines but I think you'll get my general drift. This has worked well in structures that I've set up that are similar. Not only with Google, but with other spider based SE's.

[luma]

Instead of using A-Z, I would try to enforce your theme by grouping the links using (top)categories. Check out Search Engine Theme Pyramids [searchengineworld.com].

Also have a look at thread Best way to do site map for google [webmasterworld.com].