Site size affecting page rank?
-
I've noticed the sites that rank above me for certain phrases are much larger than I am. Here are the results of the 'site:' command for the top 6 results for a phrase I want to rank for (yes, I know that 'site' is not exact):
- 32,600 pages
- 8,760,000 pages (wikipedia)
- 684 pages
- 148 pages (domain name equal to search phrase)
- 1400 pages
- 120 pages (my site)
Now, I appreciate that larger sites have more stuff to link to, and therefore have more juice flowing to them from external links. BUT, is it also true that they are generating lots of internal juice by having so many pages? I've looked at the PageRank algorithm and understand that the max page rank for a site (with no external links) is based on the number of pages of that site and how well linked they are).
My question is: based on all the experts here, is number of pages in the site an important factor (assuming good on-page SEO), or does it really come down to number of external links (from relevant sites with appropriate anchor text, of course)?
Can a small site with tons of external links rank above much larger sites? Has anyone beaten Wikipedia for a phrase they were targeting? How did you do it? Thanks!
-
I just looked up for a few examples, see attached images.
DISCLAMER : I didn't do SEO for any of those websites and those results were returned from google.CA from Quebec, a province where french is commonly spoken in Canada.
May be the fact that fr.wikipedia.org has lower quality content and lower domain authority makes it easier to outrank. Still, websites that outrank it are far from being well optimized.
-
Thanks for the pointer; hadn't seen that. I'm encouraged you've seen small sites outrank wikipedia for generic phrases. If you have an example of that you could post, that would be great. I'd love to look at the small site and see what they've done. Appreciate the help!
-
Hi Mike,
Here's an other question on the same topic with an answer from Rand :
http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-the-size-of-a-website-a-ranking-factorPersonally, I think it can help, as long as it is quality content that will gather links and that you keep a good site architecture.
I also seen small websites (<100 pages) outrank wikipedia on generic single word queries with a small amount of links.
So, of course, there's no magic formula, it's not all about the number of pages, domain authority, page authority, on-page stuff, external links anchor text or something else. It's all about having a little (or a lot) of everything to look authentic.
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Links to sub pages
Hi, if I am building links to pages outside of my home page, is that link still a referring domain. Also, does that link also help the SEO of the keywords targeted on the home page. Most of our links are home page targeted and we need to start ranking on subpages but need to know if these links only help the page they are aimed at
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Links from coupon sites
Hi All, I post coupons on coupon sites a month ago and when I checked backlinks of my website I saw approx 1000 links coming from coupon sites on my Brand Name. IMO it is quite natural please share your views. *All the big brands listed on that coupon sites e.g amazon, dell etc Thanks
Link Building | | Alick3001 -
Removing a link to a 404 page
Hi guys, If I found a low quality or spam link pointing to my site, but the link points to a 404, 500, etc (inaccessible, error page), Should I bother asking him to remove the link? Thanks
Link Building | | WizardOfMoz0 -
Advice On Promoting A Hosting Site
hi, I hope some of you might be able to give me a few pointers here. A friend of mine has started a web hosting company in the UK. Not an affiliate but actually owns a data centre, Now he has a great deal of experience in running hosting in other countries but all his work came from large corporate companies and not from the net. The UK hosting he wants to promote from online sales as well. Now I know his site needs considerable work (http://www.cloudwebsters.co.uk) but I want to be able to give him some advice on the best ways to get started promoting his site. Obviously content is a key to success, but not sure how he can incorporate lots of content into the site as it is effectively e-commerce. Looking at sites such as UK2.net they have a lot of pages on the site but they are all minimal content. such as http://www.uk2.net/glossary/moreuk2/ which only has a couple of sentences on them. Is this really the way to go for the site, my feeling is no as it does not offer any real quality but your opinions are appreciated. Thanks Jenson
Link Building | | jensonseo0 -
Links not showing up in Site Explorer?
Why aren't some backlinks showing up in Site Explorer? I have links to my home page (www.mortgagesbymark.com) from Trulia at http://www.trulia.com/blog/mortgagesbymark/ but they're not showing up in Site Explorer. Thanks for your help!
Link Building | | MortgagesByMark0 -
Rankings unchanged
I have been working away on my site for almost a month now, following all the advice I have gotten here and things seem to be going great. I have built a pretty large 400+ number of backlinks from blog posts, press releases, forum posts etc. Everything is very nice and white hat, really almost nothing spammy at all, maybe a couple of blog comments that I shouldn't have made but nothing in the big scheme of things. The problem is that my position in SERP has not changed at all. Its strange my on page SEO got me to the first page of all my keywords but from there I have not moved a bit. I am local service site and I am still waiting for my pin from google places (third try) and I know that will have a huge effect on my main city. I also have landing pages in 3 other small local cities though and those haven't budged a bit either. I just wanted to see what people here had to say, possibly I am just not patient enough? it has been probably 1.5 weeks since my links really started to index and show up in webmaster tools.
Link Building | | ayetti1 -
What to do with a new good looking site?
With a new site comes new challenges. We have recently finished one of our clients websites in the Retirement (financial) field. www.retirementireland.ie In my opinion the site is looking good, fast loading(very little js, optimized images) and good SEO structuring. As being a new site i feel like the decisions taken now are crucial. If SEO is done properly could save a lot of time. If not would take us a while until we get 1-5 positions for retirement, retirement options, retirement planning, retirement ireland. Any thoughts on existing design / structure / content. Any extra suggestions are welcome.
Link Building | | mosaicpro0 -
Hey guys wondering which is more important getting links from authority sites or relevant sites?
basically a site that has really high authority but not that relevant or medium authority pages but relevant. an example an authority site with a mozrank of 80 or a relevant site of 20.
Link Building | | shrikey0