For a new website - that in all probability will not have all its pages indexed quickly, what is the optimum number of webpages to start with? I have considered the folowing but I would like to invite your views and experience: Minimum 30 pages for quick listing on SERPS and index. First page minimum 500-700 words. I know some SEO's recommend 5-6 pages but from my experience SE use the 'whole' of the website to establish the pages theme in addition to other criteria. This will also make it easier for submitting to human edited directories except DMOZ. (Also in order to pass some pagerank internal pages to index page). If you want a listing in DMOZ minimum 100-150 pages. Content should be added +- 1 page a week
Lars I agree the more the better, however, its unlikely that you will see all your pages in the index too quickly. So why put a 1000 if they are not going to be indexed, rather spread the content over more websites. That was what I was getting at.
I find that growing the site's content organically works well for me. They have to be related pages though.
I agree with you projectw3. My past few sites have started with kind of a small number of pages, all with rich content. I planned on these pages being my "high ranking" pages. After that, I added smaller topic related articles on one of my original pages that had very high quality content, and links to the "high rankers". It really helped bring me high in the SERPS very quickly,
i started with around 15-20 pages of good content about a month ago, i have my homepage indexed, but no content pages, i am also adding content on a daily basis now, instead of weekly.
Yes I know it's not the most beautiful site either, it's more of a test. I only have that one in my signature since I don't think I would gain anything to have the rest of them there.
5 - 10 quality pages with slow organic growth of one page per week. The 1000s of pages strategy or (the more the better strategy) is an easy way to leave a big footprint that the major SEs hate (especially Google & Yahoo). Slap up 1000 pages of junk and you'll have a hard time getting all of the pages indexed and you certainly will not rank anywhere near the top (unless you get lucky). I find that 5 - 10 good quality pages with good internal linking built for real human visitors is always rewarded with higher SERPs & higher CPCs from AdSense. On average I make less pages and less sites but make more money than the old 1000 pages strategy. ProjectW3 and Subzero - you are right on the money
I will still think 30 something + 1-2 pages per week growth. Do you make changes to your index page weekly, say tinker it a bit?