Does more product pages mean better rankings?

[onwardsandupwards]

We've recently been told that one of reasons why our site doesnt rank as well as a particular competitors because they have much more product pages than us.  We can see that they have better quality links, which we are working on improving, which we sort of understand can be helping them beat us, but we didn't think that they would be ranked higher just because of more products.  They also do not have much interesting blog / content on site. So should our limited resources be focused on getting better links, better content, or increasing our depth of product range?  Thanks all.

[TommyTan]

Hi,

Having more product pages doesn't mean better ranking.  However, having more pages just simply mean that they have more pages for Google to crawl but doesn't help with ranking.  In the end it comes down to backlinks, on page SEO (product description, title tag, url...), social mentions and etc.

I believe your competitor has better quality links as you've mentioned and probably performing better on other on site and off site activities.

[KarlBantleman]

Whoever gave you that advice is an idiot and is clearly inexperienced in the internet marketing field. However, EGOL is right that, to find out why they outrank you, we'd need to know a lot more about the industry you are in, what your website/your competitors websites are like.

[EGOL]

we didn't think that they would be ranked higher just because of more products

    Glad you have your BS meter running.

So should our limited resources be focused on getting better links, better content, or increasing our depth of product range?

A good and reliable answer to that question would require considerable study of your website, of your competitors, of your business niche and of the characteristics and financial health of your business.

It is not a good idea to take action on advice based upon shallow information.