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I’ve been asked on many occasions how to link static versions of search results page.

Usually what happens is the first page of these results gets indexed but none of the others do.

I’ve found a way to ensure that the remaining pages get indexed and I’m going to share it with you.

By now your saying “How can search engines index search results pages – they can’t execute a query?” And you’d be right.

So the first step is to help them along by creating a static sitemap they can follow to get to these search results pages.

For example, lets say you are an e-commerce site that has multiple categories of products and multiple products within those categories.

Normally, your users could use your site search to find a product matching their query.  The problem is, unless you provide an alternate path to those product pages they won’t get indexed in search engines (hence the term “invisible web”).

So by creating a series of static paths to these pages you are in effect opening up your product catalog to the crawlers to be indexed and ranked.

Now some will dispute whether you need static or dynamic URLs, but I can tell you from experience a static URL almost always outranks a dynamic one.  In other words if you have 2 nearly identical pages but one is static and one is dynamic, the static one will outrank the dynamic.

So let’s say you’ve decided to use static URLs.  The first thing is to create a directory structure.  For cues look at how DMOZ is organized.  They start with broad categories and refine until you get to the level you need.

Similarly, your directory structure should start broad and work down to fine until, ultimately, you have a list of results that would have been generated had a person performed a search.

And as I said above, this is usually where the problem begins.  Because usually, the search engine crawler gets to this page and perhaps the products listed here but doesn’t go beyond the first page.

The technique is quite simple, really, and it’s worked well for many clients I have.

Normally, when you get to this point, either through a browse or search, you are presented with only a couple other choices to see more products:  “Next” or “Previous.”

Because of this, crawlers have only one direction to go – forwards or backwards.  And we already know that crawlers don’t like working in a linear fashion (have you ever seen a crawler that starts at the home page and then follows the most logical path?  If your not sure what I’m referring to, why not look at your log files to see what a crawler does on your site).

So the crawler has come to a results page, likely found multiple ways to get here and is presented with 10 or 20 different products.

Of course it will index these products, after all that’s what it came here to do.  But a spider likes food – so the more pages you feed it the better.

But if you only give it one path to find those pages, you are severely limiting its movements.

To put it to you another way, would you like to go to an all-you-can-eat buffet but be told you can only have one item?  No, of course not.

So what you need to do is take a page out of the search engine’s book.

That’s right – look at how Google and Yahoo! MNS and the others display multiple pages of results.  They give you a list of pages to view.

Not only that – each page is linked to every other page.  Talk about an ideal interlinking strategy.

Essentially what you do when creating such a navigation structure is breaking the site into 2 parts – the first part is the directory style navigation, allowing spiders to get to your product pages, and the second part is the interlinked pages browse style – allowing crawlers to browse from any product page to any other product page at their whim.

Throw in a little breadcrumb navigation across the top and you now have a site that has no more than 3 or 4 clicks from any page to any other page.

Now before anyone tells you that you could be penalized for such heavy interlinking let me tell you that that’s malarkey.  Why would an engine penalize you for trying to make it easier for their crawlers (and more importantly your users) to navigate your site?

Remember – the golden rule of SEO is “if it’s good for your users, it’s good for the engines.”

I can tell you from experience that such a tactic works wonders.  I have clients that have up to 75 pages of such results and every single last one has been indexed.

Granted they don’t get a lot of spider traffic initially, but they are indexed and in some cases even ranking quite highly. And as time goes on the spiders begin to visit these pages more and more often.

And when you consider that site size is of increasing importance in sites like Google you can see why its important to ensure you squeeze every last page into the Google index that you can.

Also remember that you are increasing your link popularity by doing this.  Not a lot, I know, but remember that every link is a good link.

So if you’ve wondered how to get tons of product pages indexed, consider a little creative directory creation and you will soon see all your product pages in the SERPs.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com