Does Site Size Influence Rank?
-
The Scenario:
Currently one of my clients has 7-8 products that they sell on their website. For each product they have two different pages one with the product info and one with a video demo. So the pages began to split their authority as they began receiving new links. Since only one of the two pages for each product rank i suggested that we combine the two and redirect the video page to the product page to increases it's authority and rank.The Clients Response:
After explaining my reasoning and next steps the client mentioned that he thought a site's size was a ranking factor. I had never heard of this before so i told them i would do some research to prove my point, after a little digging around i am now even more confused.- http://www.seroundtable.com/google-size-ranking-17044.html
- http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4591155.htm
The Question:
Does a websites size/amount of content indexed in Google actually effect your sites ability to rank?I look forward to everyones feedback, thanks
- Kyle
-
Sounds like a very well reasoned response. Thanks for the follow up!
-
Thanks for the input Cyrus!
If your interested, here is what ended up happening:
It turned out that my colleague, the person who was pressuring me to find the research, had read some hubspot powerpoints that talked about the size of your website and how much inbound traffic you can receive, rather than the size of your website being a ranking factor. So this was my response back:It sounds like we are both trying to answer a slightly different question. I was looking for “Does a site’s size determine its ability to rank in search engines". You were looking for “Does a site’s size effect the amount of traffic it receives”
While they both seem very similar they are quite different. In regards to a site’s size being a ranking factor I would disagree. A site’s ability to rank for a given term is based on its external linking factors, social mentions and on-page targeting. This is why even smaller websites and companies can be competitive for individual keyword terms. However I would completely agree that a site’s size does give you a better opportunity to gain more overall traffic because there is more content to be indexed in search engines and shared across social networks, blogs, directories, etc..
In the end they decided to take the suggestion and combine the product and demo pages to help increase their page's authority and in turn its ranking position.
-
I'm unaware of any study that shows increased website size has a positive effect on rankings. Lot's of spam sites have over 1,000,000 pages, in the vain attempt to rank for anything, but it doesn't seem to help them. That said, there are some secondary consideration that size brings with it.
For example, large sites may have indexation problems if they don't have enough PageRank/Authority for a full crawl.
Conversely, large site will often contain more content, thereby presenting more ranking opportunities.
I can't tell you for certain that redirecting the pages will help you, or hurt you for that matter. In the end you should make the decision based on what's best for user experience. But one thing I'm fairly certain of is that there's little chance that site size is a ranking factor.
-
Thanks for all the feedback guys!
It still just sounds more like a correlation rather than causation. The idea that often larger sites are doing the right activities to get higher ranks (branding, cross channel marketing, RCS, etc.) rather than the fact that they just have a large site.
I really wish that there was some more definitive research out there other than just gut feelings.
- Kyle
-
I believe it probably does (although probably not a significant amount). As the size of a site increases (with unique content), it may be easier to gain trust and authority. However, quality of content/inbounds links still would heavily drive rankings.
-
Yes, to put it simply.
The company I work for has several new clients and over the last few months what I've noticed is that the two biggest ones (with more than 10,000 & 15,000+ products each) have exploded in popularity, attracting over 20,000 visitors in the last month since their sites went live at the start of the year. These clients are finding it an absolute doddle to reach the top 5/10 fairly fast.
This is compared to almost a dozen clients who have less than 150 products each and who are still struggling to reach 10% of the popularity of the newest ones, even after a year or more of being online. These clients seem to take 6 months or more to rank for even simple keywords.Another thing I've noticed is that we have one client who restocks only once a year - as their stock levels go down and product pages are taken offline, progressively so does the traffic go down and their rankings slip.
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
-
Google ranking penalty: Limited to specific pages or complete website?
Hi all, Let's say few pages on the website dropped in the rankings due to poor optimisation of the pages or hit by algo updates. Does Google limits the ranking drop only to these pages or the entire website will have any impact? I mean will this cause ranking drop to the homepage for primary keyword? Will Google pose the penalty to other pages in the website if few pages drop in the rankings. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ranking gone for the original page and a shortened url ranks instead.
Hi Experts!!! Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year In Advance. I am been facing a issue with a few of my SERP results for "Singapore Visa" and related keyword. Until last to last Saturday i.e 16th December, I ranked for Singapore visa keyword with this url https://in.musafir.com/Visa/singapore-visa.aspx !!! But since 18th December I am ranking for "Singapore Visa" keyword with this url and message below it in place of description. Singapore visa - Musafir.com
Algorithm Updates | | sainath
go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa
No information is available for this page.
Learn why The go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa redirects to https://in.musafir.com/Visa/singapore-visa.aspx with some UTM parameters. The URL go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa is a shortened URL which was used for SMS marketing and all of a sudden Google has picked it in SERP instead of Singapore VIsa Landing Page. The Singapore visa Main page is not blocked by Robots.txt file. Please help me to resolve this.1 -
Duplicate website got indexed: Caused rank drop?
Hi all, We have replica of our website with exact pages and content. That website got indexed by mistake and allowed for bots for more than 10 days. Our ranking dropped now and we moved from 2nd page to 5th page. But previously we had this happened and didn't hurt much. We got punished now? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
What do you think of SearchMetrics' claim that there are no longer universal ranking factors?
I agree that Google's machine learning/AI means that Google is using a more dynamic set of factors to match searcher intent to content, but this claim feels like an overstatement: Let’s be quite clear: Except for important technical standards, there are no longer any specifc factors
Algorithm Updates | | AdamThompson
or benchmark values that are universally valid for all online marketers and SEOs. Instead, there
are different ranking factors for every single industry, or even every single search query. And these
now change continuously. Keyword-relevant content, backlinks, etc. still seem to be ranking factors across pretty much all queries/industries. For example, I can't think of a single industry where it would be a good idea to try to rank for [keyword] without including [keyword] in the visible text of the page. Also, websites that rank without any backlinks are incredibly rare (unheard of for competitive terms). Doubtless some factors change (eg Google may favor webpages with images for a query like "best hairstyle for men" but not for another query), but other factors still seem to apply to all queries (or at least 95%+). Thoughts?0 -
Flux in Bing/Yahoo search rankings?
Has anyone else noticed any flux in Bing/Yahoo desktop search rankings in the start of March? Our weekly MSN search traffic was steady and then starting dropping off around March 3 or 4. Weekly desktop traffic now down about 20% Anyone see anything similar or have any resources for learning more about this?
Algorithm Updates | | ted-zarceczny0 -
Simon Covell Divorce messed up my rankings, please advice?
Hi there, I was getting good ranking on some of the 'Divorce' related keywords but after Simon Covell name involved with divorce, I've just noticed that I am pushed back to page 4 today. Page 1 is one full of magazine and newspaper websites, i don't think i can compete with them. Shall I wait and hope that this news will be old and hopefully they won't rank or is there anything I can do bring back my rankings? It was one of our good converting keyword 😞 Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Rubix0 -
Ranking under a non-geobased, one word phrase
We have a local client who would like to score under the words "locksmith" and "locksmiths". What is the best way to get him to rank organically and not just in Google Plus Local for those keywords?
Algorithm Updates | | GregWalt0 -
Client's site dropped completely from Google - AGAIN! Please help...
ok guys - hoping someone out there can help... (kinda long, but wanted to be sure all the details were out there) Already had this happen once - even posted in here about it - http://www.seomoz.org/q/client-s-site-dropped-completely-for-all-keywords-but-not-brand-name-not-manual-penalty-help Guy was a brand new client, all we did was tweak title tags and add a bit of content to his site since most was generic boilerplate text... started on our KW research and competitor research... in just a week, from title tag and content tweaks alone, he went from ranking on page 4-5 to ranking on page 3-4... then as we sat down to really optimize his site... POOF - he was gone from the Googs... He only showed up in "site:" searches and for exact matches of his business name - everything else was gone. Posted in here and on WMT - had several people check it out, both local guys and people from here (thanks to John Doherty for trying!) - but no one could figure out any reason why it would have happened. We submitted a reconsideration request, explaining that we knew we hadn't violated any quality guidelines, that he had less than 10 backlinks so it couldn't be bad linking, and that we had hardly touched the site. They sent back a canned response a week later that said there was no manual penalty and that we should "check our content" - mysteriously, the site started to show back up in the SERPs that morning (we got the canned response in the afternoon) There WAS an issue with NAP mismatch on some citations, but we fixed that, and that shouldn't have contributed to complete disappearance anyway. SO - the site was back, and back at its page 3 or 4 position... we decided to leave it alone for a few days just to be sure we didn't do anything... and then just 6 days later, when we were sitting down to fully optimize the site - POOF - completely gone again. We do SEO for a lot of different car dealers all over the country, and i know our strategies work. Looking at the competition in his market, he should easily be ranked page 2 or 3 with the very minimal tweaking we did... AND, since we didn't change anything since he came back, it makes even less sense that he was visible for a week and then gone again. So, mozzers... Anybody got any ideas? I'm really at a loss here - it makes zero sense that he's completely gone, except for his biz name... if nothing else, he should be ranking for "used cars canton"... Definitely appreciate any help anyone can offer -
Algorithm Updates | | Greg_Gifford0