On September 15, 2011, Google announced a new way to handle “pagination” issues for articles and product pages which “spreads” content throughout several pages. A fundamental issue that many webmasters have with any series of pages that contain related and highly similar data is how to alert the search engines to their preferred indexing priorities.

With the new rel=”next” and rel=”prev” link tag elements, webmasters are now able to indicate to the search engines that an interrelated series of products or articles should be indexed and assigned link value as a series:

 

 

Implementation is relatively simple; the rel=”next” tag would be placed in the section of “Page 1″ of the series, both rel=”prev” and rel=”next” would be placed on the second page, same again for the third, and rel=”prev would be placed on the last page.

Much like the rel=”canonical” link, which lets you alert the spiders to the “preferred” version of a page, this recent innovation is more of a suggestion than a directive and Google will take the rel=”prev” and rel=”next” directives into account, in addition to other factors, when determining a page’s relevance. 

We have all probably viewed site links within Google’s organic search results before.  The site links that you have most commonly seen, until recently, have probably looked something like this:

The purpose of site links is to help searchers navigate your website more easily.  They are essentially shortcuts to help funnel searchers to the specific page they are in need of as quickly as possible. However, earlier this week when searching, I noticed something very different about how Google was showing site links. Instead of site links looking similar to the image above, they now are appearing more prominently on the search engine results page. Below is an example of how these site links are now being displayed:

These enhanced site links appear most frequently when a brand name or specific website name is searched.  As you will see, there are quite a few more links displayed (up to twelve) in the newer version of site links, versus eight in the older version. In addition, the URL and one line of text are displayed, making them stand out even more.

At this time, these site links are automated; marketers can’t specify which links they want to appear. These site links can also change from query to query leading to better results for the searcher, and hopefully for the marketer, too.  These changes are now reflected in Google Webmaster Tools where you can manage your site links. Although marketers can’t select specific site links to show, they can demote site links (removal is not guaranteed).

So how do you get site links like this to show for your organic listings?  The best tactic is to make sure that the search engines can easily crawl all of the pages on your website and that you have a proper website structure. If your site does not have an optimal structure, these site links may not appear.  In addition, optimizing your meta data for every page should help, as a portion of title tag appears within the site links.

Check to see if site links are displaying for your website.  If not, search engine optimization may be in order.

 

Google released a way to submit new and updated URLs for indexing within Google Webmaster Tools. Using the Fetch as Googlebot feature, the search engine will be promoted to crawl the URL that is submitted. Google doesn’t guarantee that every page they crawl will be indexed, but this new feature seems to speed up the evaluation process.

The new solution can help in several situations:

1. New site/page launch: If you’ve just launched a new site, and/or added new pages, you can ask Google to find and crawl it them immediately.
2. URL Reconsideration: If you have recently updated key pages on the site and would like Google to index the latest version, you can submit the updated pages for reconsideration.
3. Accidental Indexing: If you find that Google has indexed a page you did not want to show, you can submit your site to update the cached version after you’ve removed the page from your site.

That said, XML Sitemaps are still the best way to provide a complete list of your website’s URLs to Google and encourage The GoogleBot to crawl and index those pages. However, this new feature is ideal for times when you add new pages to your site or have a major update.

How to submit a URL
First, use Diagnostics > Fetch As Googlebot to fetch the URL you want to submit to Google. If the submission is successful, you will see a new “Submit to index” link appear next to the fetched URL.

Once you click “Submit to index” a dialog box will be displayed and allow you the option to choose whether you want to submit only the one URL, or that URL along with all the pages linked to it.

You can submit up to 50 URLs a week via Fetch as a GoogleBot within the Google Webmaster Tools platform. Though, Google does limit URL submissions that link all of the pages listed within that URL to 10 per month.
This new feature is not the “end all” solution to getting your pages indexed, but it shows how Google is continuing to make strides toward interacting site owners.