More pages is good for SEO? Is this true?

[edward-may]

Hi Guys

I have a question, I was told the more pages I have the better for SEO, Is this true?

[LinkWheelOldSchool]

All in all, more pages would definitely increase your website's authority and provide strong signal about it's topic. So yea, it would better for seo, but only if those pages are valuable to the users - coz creating pages just for the sakes of it, would mean spamming.

[ChristinaRadisic]

Hi Justin

I have only found more content to help SEO when that content was of high quality and was what the user needed.

In cases where lots of content has been used without thought of the user, but just going after keywords or locations, then in the long run it has had a negative SEO affect.

[donford]

Good Morning Justin,

The question is rather subjective. In which there is not a clear answer I can give. Carlos is spot on when he says that simply having more pages but without relevant content is a waste.

However, having more quality pages is in fact good.

Let us try to look at 3 cases. Read each one and put in order which sites you would prefer to visit.

Rachel just moved to Worthington which has a very nice well maintained bike path. She is looking for information about the latest bicycles and is considering buying one, but wants to do some research to see if she can bike to work which is 5 miles away from her new home.

• Case 1: A Local bike shop website, worthingtonbycycles.com
  This site has about 10 pages, it shows the biking paths, some hot spots, where drinking fountains are and list some of the models and brands they carry in store.
• Case 2: A national ecommerce site, everthingbikesonline.com
  This site has thousands of pages of products from bicycle tires to customized bicycle seat covers. It talks about different brands and does pricing comparisons. Promises fast shipping and customer service.
• Case 3. A bicycle enthusiast site, welovebiking.com
  This site also has thousands of pages and has real people talking about a specific brand durability, what modifications can be done, how often they ride and how far they go. If further details up coming trends and show cases break through technologies. It does bike comparisons not only for price but also for value.

Now pretend you're Google, you have only these 3 sites to show the Rachel. Based on what you know about Rachel which site would you return in the number 1, 2 and 3 position?

The answer depends on what exactly Rachel types into the search box. For most all searches I can imagine Rachel typing my answer would be 1, 3, 2. Or 3, 1, 2.

So in this study we find that the small local shop is probably going to out rank the national e commerce site for pretty much anything Rachel may search for. it has less pages but has enough quality to warrant showing it to Rachel. We also see the site by enthusiast is ranking very well it has lots of pages but it also has lots of quality content. The national site didn't rank as well because Rachel isn't concerned about seat covers and tire treed she wants to know about her local commute and what bicycles are best for the distance she has to travel.

If we were to take Rachel out of the picture and just compare the big ecommerce site vs the enthusiast site on a national scale then the enthusiast site wins in most cases where people are looking for information. The caveat is if somebody searches for something very specific like velvet bicycle seat covers model X320. In which case the e commerce site would be the top choice.

I hope that helps and makes sense,

Don

[cfguti]

Hi Justin,

If the pages are duplicated ones or don't have relevant content is a waste of google crawl budget.

One of the things I do always when I start an audit is check a crawl of the site with the access in analytics and the logs (access of the bots) to see the useful and useless pages for SEO.

With this data you can take better decisions.

Hope it helps