How many pages should be on landscapers website
-
Hi Guys,
We have a good website strong onsite and offsite seo. A year ago, we had a 15 pages website for all main keywords we needed and we were on top 3 for most of these keywords in google. We were happy but we wanted more..
So we created lots of unique content targeting long tail keywords and created 100 more pages for the website. In next 4-5 months we lost positions for almost all our main keywords but got lots of longtails SERPs. Trafiic grew but the quality and the conversion rate shrinked.
Everybody keep saying that it doesn't matter how many pages you have on the website as long as content is unique and I don't think it is true. I see lots of 3-5 paged websites without any seo in top 3 results in google.
Does it mean that if I delete all these 100 pages that I created I will have more chances to get my main keywords SERP back?
Basically does the seo juice that you have on domain is spreading across all pages and the more pages you have the less juice every page will get?
-
Thank you for the answer.
I have another website with 28000 unique pages that all linked to home page. My home page optimised for one keyword but I can't get it in top even though my competitors are way smaller and they are in top with almost no seo.. On the other hand I have looooots of traffic on internal pages, but internal pages only.
-
No, the main keywords were like seattle landscaping and long tail like retaining walls seattle
-
Hi Vadim,
As a general rule, don't create content for the sake of having it - create content (this includes pages) that are useful to customers or prospective customers. If you need 1,000 pages to convey all of that useful information, then go for it! But odds are you don't. Think of it this way: if you were a prospective customer and came to your website, which pages would you actually want to read?
Another note: the more pages you have, the higher the chances you have of there being mistakes - be it in the content, the code/development/etc. This doesn't mean you should have as few pages as possible, but it does mean that you need to weigh time spent doing maintenance against payout.
One last thought - pages may end up actually competing with one another for the same keyword(s). So sometimes it's better to have a few cleverly put-together pages that rank high than a lot of pages that rank moderately.
If you want an extremely simple answer (and I hope you don't!): I'd say anywhere from 10-30 pages is perfect for a small or medium business that has a specific set of services and well-crafted pages/content.
-
Hi Vadim,
Here is what I consider to be one of the best posts on PageRank and how it works: http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html
Here is a quote about the potential of increasing PageRank by increasing the number of pages on a site:
"
|
Example 5: new pages
Adding new pages to a site is an important way of increasing a site's total PageRank because each new page will add an average of 1 to the total. Once the new pages have been added, their new PageRank can be channeled to the important pages. We'll use the calculator to demonstrate these.
Let's add 3 new pages to Example 3 [<a>view</a>]. Three new pages but they don't do anything for us yet. The small increase in the Total, and the new pages' 0.15, are unrealistic as we shall see. So let's link them into the site.
Link each of the new pages to the important page, page A [<a>view</a>]. Notice that the Total PageRank has doubled, from 3 (without the new pages) to 6. Notice also that page A's PageRank has almost doubled.
There is one thing wrong with this model. The new pages are orphans. They wouldn't get into Google's index, so they wouldn't add any PageRank to the site and they wouldn't pass any PageRank to page A. They each need to be linked to from at least one other page. If page A is the important page, the best page to put the links on is, surprisingly, page A [<a>view</a>]. You can play around with the links but, from page A's point of view, there isn't a better place for them.
It is not a good idea for one page to link to a large number of pages so, if you are adding many new pages, spread the links around. The chances are that there is more than one important page in a site, so it is usually suitable to spread the links to and from the new pages. You can use the calculator to experiment with mini-models of a site to find the best links that produce the best results for its important pages."
So you see, it could be that those additional pages have potential to really help your site, but perhaps they aren't optimized in terms of the internal linking structure. Before deleting a bunch of content you worked hard to create, I would take a look at how those new pages are being linked to and what pages they are linking to. Study the internal architecture and you will most likely find your answer.
Long answer, I know, but I hope it helps!
|
-
How closely related were the long tail pages to the head terms? Was it like
blue widget
vs
blue widget prices
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
-
Delay to rank for authority website versus new website
Hello, I have a website that has been existing for years. How long does it take if I have a good content on a page for it to rank ? I read here and that that it can take 4 to 6 months but it never says if it is for a brand new website or a old website that has an authority and some links. I also read that some people publish content and rank within a week on competitive keywords. So who is right, what is there to read in between the lines ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Can noindexed pages accrue page authority?
My company's site has a large set of pages (tens of thousands) that have very thin or no content. They typically target a single low-competition keyword (and typically rank very well), but the pages have a very high bounce rate and are definitely hurting our domain's overall rankings via Panda (quality ranking). I'm planning on recommending we noindexed these pages temporarily, and reindex each page as resources are able to fill in content. My question is whether an individual page will be able to accrue any page authority for that target term while noindexed. We DO want to rank for all those terms, just not until we have the content to back it up. However, we're in a pretty competitive space up against domains that have been around a lot longer and have higher domain authorities. Like I said, these pages rank well right now, even with thin content. The worry is if we noindex them while we slowly build out content, will our competitors get the edge on those terms (with their subpar but continually available content)? Do you think Google will give us any credit for having had the page all along, just not always indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | THandorf0 -
Ranking slipped to page 6 from page 1 over the weekend?
My site has been on page one for 2 phrases consistently from May onwards this year. The site has fewer than 100 backlinks and the link profile looks fairly even. On Friday we were on page 1, we even had a position 1, however now we are on page 6. Do you think this is Penguin or some strange Google blip? We have no webmaster tools messages at all. Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinechester0 -
Redirecting thin content city pages to the state page, 404s or 301s?
I have a large number of thin content city-level pages (possibly 20,000+) that I recently removed from a site. Currently, I have it set up to send a 404 header when any of these removed city-level pages are accessed. But I'm not sending the visitor (or search engine) to a site-wide 404 page. Instead, I'm using PHP to redirect the visitor to the corresponding state-level page for that removed city-level page. Something like: if (this city page should be removed) { header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rriot
header("Location:http://example.com/state-level-page")
exit();
} Is it problematic to send a 404 header and still redirect to a category-level page like this? By doing this, I'm sending any visitors to removed pages to the next most relevant page. Does it make more sense to 301 all the removed city-level pages to the state-level page? Also, these removed city-level pages collectively have very little to none inbound links from other sites. I suspect that any inbound links to these removed pages are from low quality scraper-type sites anyway. Thanks in advance!2 -
How many links would you need to rank up in page rank?
White hat **** Can 20 website with page rank of 3 make your site rank higher?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spidersite0 -
On Page vs Off Page - Which Has a Greater Effect on Rankings?
Hi Mozzers, My site will be migrating to a new domain soon, and I am not sure how to spend my time. Should I be optimizing our content for keywords, improving internal linking, and writing new content - or should I be doing link building for our current domain (or the new one)? Is there a certain ratio that determines rankings which can help me prioritize these to-dos?, such as 70:30 in favor of link-building? Thanks for any help you can offer!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
I am working SEO on a website that has 2 pages for different variations of a keyword.
I have run into a situation where a website has 2 pages for different variations of a keyword. I personally like to use 1 page and make it powerful for a variety of variations of that keyword. Unfortunately for the site I’m working on, using only one page is not an option. Here is an example: They have a page for “Alex Miley Cameras” and then they have a page for “Alex Miley Cell Phones”. On the first one they want to rank for Alex Miley & Alex Miley Cameras. For the 2<sup>nd</sup> they want to rank for “Alex Miley Cell Phones”. My concern is will Google be indecisive on which page to rank for the keyword “Alex Miley” since they both contain this word. Also, will it affect any of the other words and spread the juice making each page weaker. I would appreciate advice on how to rank these pages each separately for their keywords and not have to worry about any confusion from Google. I can’t change the structure of the site. I only have access to the Meta info and page content. Thank you for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOPresident0 -
How do I fix the error duplicate page content and duplicate page title?
On my site www.millsheating.co.uk I have the error message as per the question title. The conflict is coming from these two pages which are effectively the same page: www.millsheating.co.uk www.millsheating.co.uk/index I have added a htaccess file to the root folder as I thought (hoped) it would fix the problem but I doesn't appear to have done so. this is the content of the htaccess file: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^millsheating.co.uk RewriteRule (.*) http://www.millsheating.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.millsheating.co.uk/ [R=301,L] AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonHegarty0