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Debate: Power Pages vs Long-Tail with many pages

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by WhiteSky-, May 3, 2017.

  1. #1
    Hi everyone, so I've been a visitor here for many years, though just managed to sign up and dive in. Will definitely be posting an introduction thread but in the meantime, would love to hear some of your input on a debate my cousin and I have been having on this topic.

    The point is using only several "Power Pages", vs pumping out timely and continual quality content in the form of blog articles, pages, How-To's, etc.

    So my cousin has been working in the SEO field for years, and admittedly I've looked up to him as a sort of guru on many aspects. He's tried always staying at the cutting edge of the field, and is now currently aligned with the whole Power Page idea being pushed by the likes of Brian from Backlinko and others.

    That is to only focus on having a small number of SEO-packed pages on the site, and either Noindex/Nofollow everything else, or just simply -- don't have anything else! He even featured an article highlighting how he got his page ".com/ecommerce-seo" onto #1 Page #1 of Google, while only having a total of less than 10 pages across the whole site.

    I thought my own situation here would illustrate a great example of the debate. So I've been building an ecommerce shop mainly selling web themes, resources and plugins (ala Themeforest), and planned to pump out regular blog content on designer topics since the site is built in Wordpress.

    My cousin on the other hand, pushed that I should consolidate only into a few mega Power Pages and funnel all link juice into them, ala the Backlinko approach.

    I on the other hand, was looking to follow what (relevant to my business) ElegantThemes.com is doing, which pushes out constant content in the form of extremely relevant and keyword laden blog posts: How To's, Top 10's, Reviews, etc, focusing on the web designer sphere.

    To my angle, I noticed that virtually anytime I'd search for how to accomplish or problem solve something in Wordpress, viola -- there was that exact question answered by one of ElegantThemes' blog posts (on Page 1 of Google!), and I ended up clicking through to them all the time.

    Ultimately, for months I've really held back on similarly building out my blog from taking heed to my cousin's advice against "diluting your link juice and cannibalizing the most important pages" (those, being my product pages, a concept which does make sense.. if ideally I want people clicking through to my products, wouldn't everything else just muddy up SEO to cause Google to push those pages down, or be confused on which to serve up?)

    Would really love to hear your opinions!
     
    WhiteSky-, May 3, 2017 IP
  2. qwikad.com

    qwikad.com Illustrious Member Affiliate Manager

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    #2
    Never heard of them before, how do they manage to comply with the rather rigid requirements from the big G? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

    "The best way to get other sites to create high-quality, relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can naturally gain popularity in the Internet community. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it."


     
    qwikad.com, May 3, 2017 IP
  3. WhiteSky-

    WhiteSky- Greenhorn

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    #3
    Fair point, well from my cousin's explanation, imagine your site is selling or promoting a singular topic or product. In the case of the example I gave, Backlinko.com's /ecommerce-seo page was essentially one giant long page of tons of content and keywords - not fluff, but definitely quality content. He stuffed so much into this page (and the article was very informative, comprehensive, and top-to-bottom coverage), that sites started linking to it as the definitive single page guide on the topic. Pretty soon his page ranked #1 for searching "ecommerce seo" or other variations, all while having less than 10 other pages on the entire site.

    It makes sense, but at the same time just seems at odds with traditional approaches - even those as recommended by Google themselves. And yet - it worked, for Backlinko and many similar case studies.

    Perhaps it's a question of, is your site centered around one singular topic or angle that you're trying to target, or is it multi-faceted? In Backlinko's case, his whole site was focused on getting people interested in "ecommerce seo" and then converting them into signing up for a tutorial course, from my understanding. Perhaps a power page would be a good strategy there.. while a site offering many types of products or services wouldn't benefit from such a model. Idk, just throwing out ideas.
     
    WhiteSky-, May 4, 2017 IP
  4. qwikad.com

    qwikad.com Illustrious Member Affiliate Manager

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    #4
    You see, and that's why Google comes up with new updates to nix the sites that use all sorts of gimmicks to get to the top. Sooner or later your cousin's approach (or maybe it's your approach I forget) will stop being effective. With Fred a bunch of sites lost their position even though the webmasters thought the worst was behind them. And it's not going to stop any time soon.
     
    qwikad.com, May 4, 2017 IP