How many pages is too many to add to a site at one time?
-
I have quite a bit of excellent content articles at my disposal and we would like to increase the number of pages on our site. I could, theoretically add 100's of pages at a time. Does anyone have a good sense of how much content added to a sight in mass looks bad to Google?
My plan is to add approximately 50 pages a week to our site, which already has 4000 pages of content. This is relevant content, since we are a custom writing service and all topics are covered. Our content is what gives us great organic hits and orders. However, I would like to add more than 50 a week...how many is too many?
Thanks and I appreciate thoughts and feedback!
Karen
-
Here's an updated video (April 2011) from Matt Cutts that addresses adding a lot of pages all at once: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=XpJacspWz4Y#t=130s
-
Yes, I am jealous too. I normally spend several days on a single page of content - so seeing someone with hundreds of pages makes me green with envy.
-
Obviously much depends on the architecture of the site.
Another problem with posting lots of content is creating relevant cross-linking in the content. Unless of course you're relying on tags/related article type widgets to handle this for you and not worry about inline links.
I'm just jealous - my problem is normally struggling to get any content at all!
-
How will visitors to your site react to such an avalanche of content.
Visitors will not see the avalanche.... Instead they will see a fantastic library of content that is wonderfully organized.
My worry would be that if you publish too much the individual articles can get lost and don't get the eye-balls they deserve.
As for "giving it the eyeballs it deserves"... you can promote it slowly... but it will immediately start pulling traffic from the organic SERPs.
Another thoughtI have is if you're publishing 1000's of articles - are you revising/pruning old articles too?
Sure, we do that all of the time... and publishing new ones tomorrow.
-
How will visitors to your site react to such an avalanche of content. My worry would be that if you publish too much the individual articles can get lost and don't get the eye-balls they deserve.
If you list new content on the home and/or section pages - how much can they promote?
Another thought I have is if you're publishing 1000's of articles - are you revising/pruning old articles too?
-
It was funny, Ryan. I agree Matt Cutts videos would be the last thing you need swimming in your head...
-
From the point of view in the second paragraph, I agree as well. If it was all new content that could drive new customers or drive current customers to buy additionally, I would put it all up as well.
Certainly when it comes to a small component of the algorithm versus money today...show me the money.
Thx
-
My head is swimming with Matt Cutts videos which is not healthy. If someone asks "is it better to have keywords in the path or page name" my instant thoughts are "Alex Black"..."Green polo shirt"...not bald.
If you don't get the joke, don't worry. You are probably better off for it!
-
I knew there was a Matt Cutts video on this...just couldn't find it!!!
-
If all the content is dissimilar and each page focuses on some different writing item: sports-football, baseball, basketball, etc. and medicine, etc. and you have no content showing that, I would put it all up as well.
yes, I agree completely... this is the best situation possible.
I challenge anyone to prove putting up 1000 pages of content overnight, with no further description of it, will increase site performance appreciably.
When I put up new content it starts making money the next day. It makes money from pulling visitors from search, makes money from visitors from other destination, and makes money from people who landed on my site from other pages. That is guaranteed money. Holding the content back because dripping it out over time might produce a freshness boost is a gamble.
-
I think the issue is what is the site about and knowing how the content helps. Not just putting quality content up in a vacuum. So, if the site is about custom writing, and there are 4000 pages of examples, I don't think adding an additional 1000 today will help in any appreciable way. If all the content is dissimilar and each page focuses on some different writing item: sports-football, baseball, basketball, etc. and medicine, etc. and you have no content showing that, I would put it all up as well.
I believe if the content is similar to what is on the site, adding it over time (not five years, but one) could have an interesting impact. Not sure if there is a measure currently.
So, issuing the same type challenge, I challenge anyone to prove putting up 1000 pages of content overnight, with no further description of it, will increase site performance appreciably.
Is an interesting question though.
-
Adding hundreds of pages at a time is not a concern. There is not any reason to throttle the release of the pages.
The bigger concern is the quality of the content. The highest quality content often takes multiple days of a full-time person performing research, locating images, etc.
A helpful video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JByPymBtXFY
-
Wow! In my opinion, not publishing valuable content immediately is like owning a machine that vacuums up money and refusing to use it.
If somebody gave me 1000 articles written by the Pope I would be breaking a leg to get them on my site. I would actually pay my webmaster overtime to get them on the site as fast as possible... I would be working with him to get it done fast.
I am salivating just thinking about all of that content! OMG!
I challenge anybody to present proof that holding back content is a better strategy that blasting it out right away!
-
eworld,
You state that you have "quite a bit of excellent content articles at my disposal," which does beg a question regarding duplicate content. Are these articles anywhere else on the web? If not, and you are asking from the point of view of is there a penalty for adding lots of content, I am not aware of any.
At the same time if it is content that can be added over time and will help with QDF (query deserves freshness), Cyrus Shepard has an excellent post on SEOmoz blog. To quote a portion of it,** Websites that add new pages at a higher rate may earn a higher freshness score** than sites that add content less frequently.
Cyrus further adds that one needs to be careful not to ignore content on older pages.
I do not think by this he means that putting up 1000 new pages in a week will rocket you to stardom on the Internet, but I do think if your content is fresh and not currently on the web, you could have a real opportunity with this portion of the algorithm.
Best
-
There is probably no magic number of how much content you can add or how fast. Quality is key - if you're adding high quality, unique content, I would not expect you to see any problems, no matter how much or how fast you added content.
Without having further details, your plan to add 50 pages/week to a 4,000 page site seems reasonable to me.
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
-
Lonely lonely pages
On my site I have tons of blog posts that have never been visited. (Falls on floor in tears). I of course know why. The content is mediocre in most cases and when it was average to good I didn't market it more. My question is should I go and just scrub the non visited pages or spend the time making these pages better and work on making the content above average? My competition above me do not have as many pages and their ranking is purely (I have researched this to death) from links from sites they have developed - with good authority.
Content Development | | GrangeWeb1 -
How many categories should you have within a blog / Wordpress Site for SEO?
Hi Guys I am just wondering whether or not for SEO purposes it is better to have a small number of categories for your blog posts to fit into as opposed to numerous ones. The reason I ask is that I have one site which is fairly new to the search engines - 8 months old which has 7 general categories within the blog for instance "rail contractors", "railway construction" "airport construction" etc I have another site which is 10 years old which has built up 25 different types of categories for instance brand design, brand development, brand management (i guess you could put all these under 1 category "branding"? We've been writing lots of press for both sites... yet the younger site is getting more coverage on Google page 1. Would this be because the blogs / press are more concentrated under a specific category as opposed to being spread thinly throughout the site? Any help would be appreciated. Debs 🙂
Content Development | | lethalmarketing0 -
Page Content?
So I have review pages for websites on my site, each website has a review around 400-500 words. Recently I had my writers write 2 additional articles on each site but about something they have there. My thinking was interlinking them allowing them to rank individually etc. However now after looking around etc.. I see that content that is upwards of 1000 words or more might be more powerful and the way this is all written etc.. I could easily put it all on one page.... So my question is do I go with 3 pages or 1 page. I can see strength in both
Content Development | | dueces0 -
Correction Duplicate Page Title Problems for a Blog
EDITED: To just focus on the issue at hand. I am trying to figure out the SEO rules instead of just working on the content. Please bear with me. I am adept technically. I just do not know the rules of the SEO process or even some of the termology. So I’m trying to attack problems one at time. Today’s problem – **Duplicate Page Titles ** We evidently have thousands of Duplicate Page Titles. We are using Joomla 2.5 & Easyblog. Our sitemap is automated from XML Sitemap Easyblog takes the title of the sites and uses it for a name of the summary pages. We post 5 blog items per page and all the names are the same. http://www.OursiteName.com/?start=5 Page Title = Site Name http://www.OursiteName.com/?start=10 Page Title = Site Name A similar thing happens on the sorting by Author or Category etc etc. Basically non-duplicate pages are looking like duplicates. What is the best practice / approach? Using the Robot.txt or XML Sitemap to tell Google not to crawl these pages? Writing a script or edit the Easyblog code to edit the 2000 duplicate Page Titles? Other thoughts?
Content Development | | Romana0 -
Publishing on sites with greater domain authority
Hello, I had an idea, probably not original: While my website is still gaining domain authority, I was thinking about publishing articles in a website with great domain authority that allows articles from third parties. This way the article's relevance + domain authority of the site would result in a better position on Google for the article I write and with proper links, I can attract people to my website. This would be a temporary strategy until my website's domain authority increases. Any suggestions on how to do this? Where can I publish articles to attract people to my website (except blogs)? Thanks a lot.
Content Development | | Tev0 -
Is the Page Authority/Rank of my corporate site affected by my blog's PA/PR and vice versa?
If I host my blog on my corporate site (it is a wordpress blog) will the page authority and page rank of my site translate to the blog? And does this also go the other way around? My gut says this would make sense, and I think I have seen it in action with other corporate sites that host their wordpress blogs, but I want to be completely sure. Even better, if someone can explain to me how this works, that would be super helpful!
Content Development | | Kendi0 -
Google Site Search
Hi, I was just wondering if anyone had used Google Site Search before and what they thought of it? http://www.google.com/sitesearch/ It seems quite expensive for just returning your own pages but would be interested to find out more. Thanks
Content Development | | ASOS0 -
Word Press site traffic plumit
Hi, I have a client who has a word press site that we put together for him. We have noticed that over approximately the last 2 months his sites traffic has plumitied - its gone from a health 200+ per day and sharply decresaed and is not practically zero. Has anyone got any ideas of why this might be? Here is the link to the site - http://wheelworldreviews.co.uk/ Thanks
Content Development | | Tinderbox0