How do I index these parameter generated pages?

[CodyWheeler]

Hey guys,

I've got an issue with a site I'm working on. A big chunk of the content (roughly 500 pages) is delivered using parameters on a dynamically generated page. For example:

www.domain.com/specs/product?=example - where "example' is the product name

Currently there is no way to get to these pages unless you enter the product name into the search box and access it from there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless we find some other way to link to these pages they're basically invisible to search engines, right?

What I'm struggling with is a method to get them indexed without doing something like creating a directory map type page of all of the links on it, which I guess wouldn't be a terrible idea as long as it was done well.

I've not encountered a situation like this before. Does anyone have any recommendations?

[john4math]

It sounds to me like you need a sitemap?  If you want to create one dynamically, here's a thread with some info.

You should also set it up in Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools and set them explicitly to not ignore those product parameters in the URL.

[CodyWheeler]

Yea, that's on the list to do. The site is about halfway finished so there is still a lot of errands to take care of such as that. Sitemapping is something I haven't done a lot of in the past so I'm not fully aware of all of it's benefits.

So to be clear using that method I can generate a sitemap that will create every possible page that can be generated from those parameters, then they'll be crawled?

Is there anything additional I can do to ensure they are crawled? I suppose I could do a writeup of each product over time in our blog and link to them that way.