Search engine ranking is perhaps the most important element that determines a websites success. The key to getting your website to appear in the search engine results starts with getting your websites pages indexed. By indexed, I mean allowing the Google robot to visit and scan each page on your website to determine its relevance. However, many search engines have a difficult time finding pages that are buried deep in your sites navigation structure. Below I will discuss some techniques that will help the search engines find those hidden pages, as well as assist human visitors to navigate your website. I will be focusing exclusively on Google because, although there are many search engines, most websites get 50x more traffic from Google than Yahoo & MSN combined.
Depth of the Index
The frequency which Google visits your site to index pages is largely determined by the frequency of website updates. If your website is updated daily, Google is likely to visit everyday. The depth of Googles indexing refers to the tiers of your websites navigation tree that will get indexed. For example, your homepage would be the first tier and any pages linked from the homepage,...