Why Google Indexes Only 26 Pages Of Your Blogger Sitemap? (1)

This post marks part of our new series on "Blogger SEO PACK 2012". Due to integration of Yahoo's algorithm at Bing webmaster t...

This post marks part of our new series on "Blogger SEO PACK 2012". Due to integration of Yahoo's algorithm at Bing webmaster tools, sitemap submission has become much easy and valuable now. Previously we only need to submit links to Yahoo site explorer and would need to just Ping MSN search engine, and you had no advance webmaster settings page where you could monitor your progress report but now things have pretty much changed. Just like Google webmaster account where you submit your blog or website sitemaps, you will follow an exact similar approach at Bing and yahoo. This part would discuss the reasons on why only the latest 26 pages of your blog are indexed upon sitemap submission at Google but not your entire post pages. We will also offer a solution to this. Lets kick start Part-1 of Blogger SEO PACK for 2012.

UPDATE: Please read the updated series: Why Google Indexes only 150 Links of Blogger Sitemap?

 

BLOGGER SEO PACK 2012 SERIES

Part1: Blogger Multiple Sitemap Generation and Submission   Don't Forget to use our PHP TOOL For this!

Part2: Submit Sitemap to Bing and Yahoo without Errors and Ping them

Part3: Reduce Crawl Errors- 
           i.  Optimize Links in Blogger like Comments Archives and Labels
           ii. Correct VS Wrong SEO Techniques For Blogger Blogs

Note: Our series on Pro blogging will continue parallel to this new series.

Purpose of This Series:

This series is the only thing you will need while starting new blogs. It will include every single SEO detail required to set your blogs go viral. From sitemap submission to crawling errors, you will find solution for all your problems. I personally apply this technique for my blog and blogs of my clients. I will share how to add noindex and nofollow link elements to categories and archives correctly because a lot of miss-information is hovering in blogosphere related to these terms. I am sure this series will play an important role in making SEO no less than a fun.

Why Does Google Indexes Limited Pages?

When you submit your sitemap at Google webmaster account, you might have observed that only 26 URLs are shown to be indexed and not the remaining URLs on your blog. If you have more than 26 posts on your blog then Google wont be able to index the older posts correctly. Though Google crawlers are becoming efficient day by day with auto detection of webpages but still your posts can go neglected due to growing numbers of pages uploaded daily.

This problem is related to blogspot blogs alone. Blogger though free but is highly un-optimized platform in comparison to wordpress. Google uses Atom feed in xml formats to store a backup of your posts instead of the rich RSS feed format. The sitemap is generated automatically whenever you create a new blog at blogger and displays a list of only first 26 pages of your blog. This can effect your crawl rate and traffic because not all your pages are indexed. Therefore to let Google access every single page of your blog we will need to submit multiple sitemaps. The procedure is really simple as discussed below:

Multiple Sitemap Generation For blogger

We will break the entire blog posts into small segments comprising of 500 posts each. Its better to submit 500 posts per sitemap for better indexing. To generate sitemaps for your blog follow these steps:

1. Go and check your blogger dashboard to see how many posts have you written so far.

     2.    Count total number posts. The count is visible just below your blog title on your dashboard.

      3.   If your total post count is less than 500 then you must submit the following sitemap:

For Blogs with posts less than 500

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

             If your post count is more than 500 but less than 1000 then submit the following two sitemaps instead:

For Blogs with posts less than 1000

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500

 

For Blogs with posts less than 1500

Similarly if your post count is greater than 1000 but less than 1500 then you will submit the following sitemaps and so on...

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1001&max-results=500

You have now successfully generated or created the sitemaps. Lets know submit them to Google.

Submit Sitemaps You Just Generated

1. Go To Google Webmasters
2. You will see list of all blogs that you created at blogger. Choose your main blog
3. You are now on the Dashboard page where you can see reports related to crawl errors, search queries and sitemaps.
4. Click the More » Link just under the sitemaps report.
5. Towards top right side, click the ADD/TEST SITEMAP button
6. In the empty blank paste your first sitemap and then click "Submit Sitemap". Repeat this step for remaining sitemaps until you have finished submitting all the sitemaps that you generated.

 

      7.   Now Google will take at most three days to crawl and index every single page of your blog. After 1-3 days you will find that all URLS that you submitted are successfully indexed. Following is the report for MBT.

 

 

 

As you can see in the screenshot above that I have submitted three sitemaps instead of two. The last one which contains 26 URLs is an optional one because we already contained our first 26 URLs under the 500 limit. Since the total number of my posts plus pages are 614 therefore I submitted the following two sitemaps accordingly

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500

Need help?

You have now learned how to generate multiple sitemaps and submit them correctly. Our coming parts will be even more specific. If you are encountering any problem just let me know so that I could help. Stay tuned for upcoming parts. Peace and blessings pals! :)