Hello There is a site I am going to do some SEO for. It is a new site. I have a pretty good idea what needs to be done, but one thing I am not sure about is the amount of pages. All other sites I've worked for have had many pages, this doesn't. It is a site for a company that do some DIY, so it is more of an advert for the company than say an online shop if you get what i mean. It has the following pages: HOME ABOUT US SERVICE / PRODUCTS CONTACT US Would you say it needs more? I know more can bring in more traffic, and i have to get on the first page of google (which i belive i will be able to do), but it would look a bit weird from a customer view if it has pages of articles. What are your thoughts on it?
I have good luck regardless of size of site. Each page I try to optomize with good title, description and keyword tags, writing headings and copy to enhance keyword phrase for which I am targeting. Shannon
I think you should make as many pages as the site needs to keep each page on topic and high quality. Whether that amount is 5 pages or 500 shouldn't make a huge difference. Many times people make pages just for the purpose of making them, but this degrades the overall quality of the site. Smyrl summed it up perfectly.
Allrite thanks Thats good. I was hoping the reply would be something like that. It was just cos most top search engine results have many pages so could of been a trend or something Cheers
Because large number of pages result in large number of internal links and these internal pages themselves get links from other sites. All these links pass on their votes to the home page in some way or the other, thereby helping the site gain top position.
It does not mean that small sites can not makeit to top SERPs though. Some internet marketers use 'mini sites' to promote a particular brand and these mini sites rank well in SERPs too. Key is to focus on a niche.
For a brochure site, something that has worked well for me is to create a seperate page for each locality, zip code, city, town, or even neighborhood that is served by the business. Have some boilerplate content about the business on each page, i.e. "DIYCo serves residential and commercial customers in Smallburb and the rest of the Bigcity Metro Area." If appropriate and available, add testimonials from customers in that area. "I called DIYCo to fix my sink and they came right over and fixed me up! B.Bertha, Smallburg." Mention "Smallburb" in your page title and <h1> tag along with whatever keyword you're focusing on, throw in a link or two to the city government's website or other high ranking page, and then add a link to your index page with appropriate anchor text. RFM
Hi deadmoon, Have you thought about coming up with more keyword rich page titles? You'll have a hard time rating well for 'home', 'about us' etc. With so few pages I think its even more important that each individual page is super-optimised. 'diy' certainly gets lots of searches in the uk. 'The DIY Store' or similar might be a better page title and linkname for the homepage. Also there's clearly a market for diy advice, tips and guides. If you could get actual diy related articles to fit into these categories you might be in business. I'd imagine the people from the diy shop would have lots of little tips and advice that could be written up... I know its not entirely related to your question but hope that helps! Thomas OVERTURE UK * diy 4,765.6 /day * diy store 272.0 /day * diy tool 138.4 /day * diy shop 67.7 /day * diy tip 55.3 /day * diy guide 50.7 /day * home diy 17.0 /day * diy advice 16.3 /day * diy product 10.7 /day * diy store online 8.4 /day
deadmoon, Most of the sites I work on are pretty small. The biggest is ~ 50 pages, the smallest is just 1. You can do well with these smaller sites if you keep them tightly focused to the KWs you target. Try to get too broad and it just doesn't work. Big sites have a few advantages over small sites. 1. They have more internal links, bossting the link-pop of the other internal pages (as mentioned above). 2. They have more content so they are eligible for more KWs. 3. They can target both broad and narrow catagories. For example [DIY] could be the topic page with a sub-page of [DIY Home] which has sub-pages of [DIY kitchens, DIY bathrooms, DIY landscaping] which could break down to [DIY sinks, DIY painting, DIY tile], etc. You get the idea. This makes the site look like an authority to the SEs and often gives it a second (indented) listing on Google. Like the 3rd/4th result here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=DIY+kitchen+repair&btnG=Search So to wrap it up, you can do well with a small site but all sites should be striving for that authority status IMHO. The way to make that happen is with adding content on a regular basis. Even one article/page per week is 52 by the end of the year. And like I said, most of my sites are small and static like you described. But the biggest one was only 6 pages when I started just over a year ago. The newest was 2 pages when launched a couple months ago and now has nearly 30 pages. It definately helps with the SEs.
It depends on how well focused it is and hopefully your other pages support your entire site. SE's rank your pages on a per page basis so technically even a 1 page site can rank well in any given search engine. Brad
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is regionalized search terms. e.g. DIY Craters of the Moon (it really exists, people.) Try that first: target your client's local niche, if it's big enough, and then go from there.
YES. Yahoo wants to see 5 pages for proper rankings and I imagine G has a similiar figure. 5 more SEO'ed pages to that site could really improve your traffic.
Deadmoon - you can see the overture keywords by using the digital point keyword tool. On the third page I selected UK for overture. Its a good idea to compare against the wordtracker results too (though I don't think these are so related to uk searches). Or you can use the Overture Keyword Tool directly. Good luck and if you want any more suggestions come back to me... thomas
Well I would say bigger is better (in this case). I would try to ensure you split up the products and services into seperate pages (much more advanced targetting allowed) rather than one big page. Then say one product is "Purple Widgets" -- You can really target those keywords on that one page.
Ultimately you need to the site to grab the visitors attention and keep them there. You wont do that with diluted pages and pages that are off topic. Remember, seo only gets them there, after that you have to get what you want from them.
It's a brochure site, not a community. Community sites, blogs, forums, dynamic content and so forth can be appropriate for certain types of businesses but you have to put the time and passion into them to make it worthwhile. There's nothing worse than a forum with three posts dated from 2003. If a brochure site will do the job to get some attention for your business, then I say go for it.
Perhaps add more information into the content of your brochure? I would suggest creating at least 5 content rich pages with each directed at a specific keyword phrase.
Well ... my friend... try to get as many pages as you can ... all keywords related to your website category. talk about diferents subjects, do not use the same keywords everywhere, talk about related keywords. Like if it's a a site about "Travel Canada" also include write about geography, canada history, USA history , Europe, Rome, Vatican , got me?!