Search engine friendly sitemap for 20,000+ page site and growing

advice needed

[mayday88]

Hello:

I have a classified ads website with approx 20,000 ads at present. I have submitted sitemaps to Google, etc, and only about 30% of my pages have been indexed. I have read an archived post on this website that stated the following: "There are a number of products available to enable this that can produce the static HTML pages off your database quite easily.. This would benefit the user and the search engines in indexing your site."

Basically, I am hoping to find a solution that would allow me to generate a sitemap to enable the major search engines index all of my ads. Also, new ads are added daily.

Does anyone have any advice for me?

Thanks-
Stephen

[goodroi]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

All of your pages will probably never be indexed. Often with extremely large sites you will not achieve 100% indexing.

Here are some ways to help increase the percentage of your site that the search engines will index:
-Submit a sitemap (submitting doesn't guarantee indexing)
-Interlink your pages
-Make sure there is significant unique text
-Develop external links deep into your content

good luck!

[tadden]

I am having the same issue with my jobs site. Thanks for the advice

[ogletree]

Site maps do not get pages indexed. It is just a way for you to give url's to google to add to its list to check. The best way for you to get all your pages indexed is to properly link your internal pages. Do not have more than 100 links on one page. If all your pages have a template and a tiny amount of unique material you will not get all your pages indexed. Reduce the footprint of your template and do something so that there is more unique text on each page. Your linking structure should look like a pyramid. Interlink your internal pages like wikipedia does as well.

[mayday88]

Thanks to all for the great advice so far.

[mayday88]

RE: If all your pages have a template and a tiny amount of unique material you will not get all your pages indexed. Reduce the footprint of your template and do something so that there is more unique text on each page.
>> The footprint is relatively small on the individual ad pages. The unique text would be the details of the item for sale.

RE: Your linking structure should look like a pyramid.
>> Not sure how to go about accomplishing this on a classified ads website. Content reflects pages that are unique to one another.

RE: Interlink your internal pages like wikipedia does as well.
>> Seems like a big task, and again, most of the site's content reflects pages that are unique to one another.

[ogletree]

In your case Craigslist is a good linking strategy.

[mayday88]

I'm not quite sure what you mean...