How to index 8000+ pages?

Hi all,

I'm trying to index a website with 8000+ different HTML pages.
What I did was: make an homepage (index.html) with 8000+ links to the other pages.

After 1 month and massive backlinking 500 pages are ranking really well (site:xxxx on Google) - but can't find a way to index the others.

Anyone experienced a similar problem?

Did you create a sitemap and submit it to Google?

Doing it right now, thank you for the tip, will update soon