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Creating New Pages Versus Improving Existing Pages
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What are some things to consider or things to evaluate when deciding whether you should focus resources on creating new pages (to cover more related topics) versus improving existing pages (adding more useful information, etc.)?
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Should I create new pages to cover related topics or improve an existing page?
My first consideration would be specificity of your topic. How many key words or phrases are you trying to focus? How much content do you have to offer?
Let's use cough syrup as an example (as I reach for my bottle). If your company name is Nature's Relief and you offer Nature's Cough Syrup as your product then one well presented page would probably be best.
If you are Robitussin and have 5 different cough syrups and brand yourself on "a different syrup for different coughs" then I would definitely recommend a separate page for each product. The first page might target keywords such as "hacking cough" which the next page might work along the lines of cough and nasal decongestant.
A final thought. If you provide Nature's Cough Syrup and are trying to compete with a competitor like Robitussin, then I would try to be creative and offer separate pages focusing on my competitor's key words. You can offer testimonials or examples where your product relieved a hacking cough, targeting the same key word.
In summary, step back and determine what your goals are for the page. First and foremost, how can you present the page to provide the best user experience. The next thought should be why are you making a change?
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I'd like to offer a hybrid perspective. Quality doesn't actually always win in the end. If you've got a great quality filled page that brings no traffic because it can't compete in it's specific niche, it's sometimes due to the fact that competitors have much more quality content - they're established leaders in a given topic for example. And while more inbound links can sometimes help, or lately social media, sometimes it just requires more content.
Whether it's on-page or additional pages will require evaluation and Magento's suggestion is a good start. But also look at whether the competition is drowning you out for a given page's topic. And if they are doing it with just one page, you could try and go for head to head one-page battling, though you'd most likely be able to leap-frog ahead with a multiple-page approach where the sum-total is more than a competitor's single page. You'd essentially be creating a new "section" devoted to the topic.
Of course that doesn't mean you can scrap the quality issue because Chris's take does have a foundation in truth.
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Run your webpage on the On Page Report Card. http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/new It will grade your webpage. Only do this for the web pages that are ranking in the top 50 (or whatever you determine) and decide which ones to improve. It sounds like some of the webpages you have may have some potential with just a little tweaking.
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Quality over quantity always wins in the end. Make what you have the best you can, then add more quality content on related topics.
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