Google backlinks, robots.txt and sitemap problems - please help!

[jewin]

I have two websites; call them siteA.com and siteB.com. SiteA.com is my production site, siteB.com is my test site. SiteA.com has some broad rankings in a VERY competitive space; it's PR of 4 has primarily come from article submissions and paid links.

I rolled out a new on-site SEO technique on SiteB.com and ran the usual submissions on it, with no paid links. Within 2 weeks, backlinks to all of my new pages were showing in Google Webmaster tools, and improved rankings ensued - beautiful.

The problem is, that after running this on my test site, I ran the same play on SiteA.com, my production site. Out of the 50 new pages I've added; only 2 of them are showing backlinks in Google Webmaster Tools.

Now, I had quite a few 404s showing up in Webmaster Tools. Most of these were from dynamic URLs that I really didn't care too much about being indexed. So, I added them to robots.txt. My 404s are almost cleaned up, but the problem still exists - 49/50 of those new pages are not showing the new free and paid backlinks. Those backlinks, mind you, are the same type that got indexed quickly on the new site.

My Google Sitemap still has many of the old dynamic URLs in it and doesn't have very many of my new URLs at all...

I've had a look at the Google cache on the paid and free links I have setup to SiteA.com's new pages, and Google has clearly indexed the links. What's going on here?!!

Should I resubmit my sitemap to Google? Should I focus on clearing up the rest of my 404s and so forth? I need those backlinks indexed desperately, but Google just isn't playing nice here.

Any shared past experiences or suggestions would be massively helpful. I'm on my knees here.

[LastWarrior]

I don't think it will help to "resubmit" your sitemap. When Google comes back to your site and you have 'bot navigable links, it should find it regardless. I've always thought submitting anything to a search engine is fruitless. Better to have a backlink with anchor text for a spider to find.

I also find Google backlinks to be very unpredictable, often leaving out many backlinks... especially those of lower PR. Better to linkdomain: at Yahoo to see more of what Google missed.

And, oh yea, get off your knees. Have a little dignity. LOL! jk

Best of luck,

LastWarrior

[jewin]

Thanks LastWarrior.

Dignity still intact, thankfully. Knees sore however.

I agree with respect to submissions being rather useless. Just stumped as to why one website would have those backlinks get picked up whereas another hasn't. A couple differences between the sites: 1) SiteA.com has better PR & backlinks and has been indexed longer; SiteA.com and SiteB.com are are in different niches.

I will figure this on out at get those *!@(*%# backlinks indexed.... just not quite sure how ATM.