Only home page indexed on Google

How can I get Google to index all the pages on my site

[shambeb]

I have recently created a new site with about 42 pages and have so far only had the home page indexed by Google. Is there any thing I should be doing to get Google to index all the other pages? I have included a robot.txt and all web-site pages can be accessed (not all directly) from the home page. MSN has so far indexed 6 pages (I have no idea why it's chosen these 6!). Any help much appreciated.

[edited by: mack at 3:04 am (utc) on Mar. 25, 2005]
[edit reason] No URL's please [/edit]

[specter]

I have included a robot.txt and all web-site pages can be accessed (not all directly) from the home page

Make sure that ALL your pages can be accessed DIRECTLY from the home,and back again with TEXTUAL links that are more easily recognized by the spiders.

[mack]

I woulden't go so far as to make all pages accesable from the home page. 42 links on a homepage may be a little OTT.

What I would do is concentrate on making sure the importaint pages are easy to reach.

Mack.

[whoisgregg]

Make sure that ALL your pages can be accessed DIRECTLY from the home,and back again

In my experience this is a bad idea. It's a bit overkill for 42 pages, but a good read is Brett's Search Engine Theme Pyramids [searchengineworld.com] which better describes link navigation from the front page to a subpage and how to make that navigation meaningful.

Linking all your pages to the front page and back makes your site into a Theme Explosion. :)

[specter]

>>Linking all your pages to the front page and back makes your site into a Theme Explosion. :) <<

What do you mean?

[petra]

Ideally you should have a site map with links to alll your pages. If you link to the site map from your front page, all you pages will be indexed.

[MHes]

Try arranging an on theme link from another site to a deeper page. This could kick start a deeper crawl. Also make sure you have a high pr site linking to you, preferably pr5+

It will happen eventually.

[whoisgregg]

Theme Explosion. :) <<

What do you mean?

The search engines pick up meaning about an internal page based on how it is linked to in your site. Speaking from experience, a site with a site map on the home page (and every other page for that matter) dilutes the meaning of the sub pages. Ideally, your "real" content pages should be a couple clicks from your front page with a "category" page in between. It makes sense from an organizational point of view with users and has SE benefit as well.