I’ve heard this question 4 times this week, and it’s only Tuesday.
“How many pages do I need to make my website effective to the search engines?”
I’m pushing 7 years in this industry, so I wasn’t there for the beginning. I’m not too sure where this came from, but I can only imagine that it’s some sort of idea we had when we began to find ways to optimize and promote websites. Whatever the origin, this question can sometimes lead to false expectations and wasted work.
Before I give you the secret answer, I want you to know 3 things.
Too Few Pages Will Hurt You
If you don’t have enough pages to define and promote your website’s focus, then you will be held back. You need somewhere to place the content of your site. You need your products page, information, FAQs or whatever else it is you are trying to share. You need pages to do that, and having too few will prevent you from placing that content somewhere.
You have to get your content out there for all to read. It’s doing no good to your site if it isn’t even there.
Too Many Pages Will Hurt You
On the other hand, if you have too many pages that discuss the exact same product or topic, then you are competing against yourself. By spreading your idea too thinly across multiple pages, the search engines will have a difficult time determining which page to rank. Humans will also add to that hurt by linking to different pages, further confusing the search engines.
We Write for the Visitors, Not the Search Engines
At the end of the day, the visitor is priority one. Driving traffic to a site is easy. Keeping traffic on a site is a bit more difficult. Turning the traffic to your site into a conversion is the key. So, we write for the visitor, not the search engines. The sooner a budding SEO realizes that, the sooner they see much higher successes in their online marketing campaigns.
The Secret Answer
So we know that too many or too few pages can hinder your online performance, and we know that we need to write with human visitors in mind. What then is the best number of pages for a website to contain in order to perform the best online?
As many pages as you need.
How many pages do you need to share, show and detail your products? How many pages do you need in order to promote your idea? How many pages do you need to properly convey the meaning of your site? Well then, that’s how many pages you need.
There aren’t any magic numbers in this game. No concrete standards that can guarantee the optimal performance. Sure, there are a ton of details that go into this answer (like deciding when to break ideas into separate sub-pages and when to consolidate ideas into fewer pages) but that’s really the answer. Your site should contain exactly what is needed in order to properly identify and convey its message.