39 replies to this topic

[theseokit]

Hey there, Now this is just my opinion and I have no solid proof that it works but it seems to for me. Having alot of info for any search engine to read is good with it banging back and forth between other pages in your site. The key is what those pages contain, for instance if your going to market for "mustard jars" then each page needs to contain correct data about mustard jars and why yours are better then others. That along with anchor text and relevancy between the head section and page content you can climb to the top easyily. This is how ebay and auctionforless do it.

[daniel]

One thing to consider is that if you have a large site with 1,000s of pages you'll need to ensure that the site structure is as flat as possible. If you have good content buried 4 or 5 clicks from the homepage, then you're doing a good job of effectively hiding it away from the search engines.

As for the concept of 'long-tail' searches, it's definitely very relevant for some sites. I'm working on a car site that advertises new and used car for sale, and also new cars on contract hire/lease. That's over 40 manufacturers, with all the models and derivatives for each make, being sold through the different sections. That's a lot of different cars, and a lot of different searches you want to be found for.

We find that about 80% of our search engine traffic comes through search phrases that are unique phrases - i.e. only one person has ever come to the site using that particular search term. Of course, we are optmising the site so that the more generic searches such as 'used cars' brings in traffic, but it's the long tail searches that brings in the good traffic for us. This is the stuff that has a higher conversion rate, as usually the visitor knows what they're looking for. Without a large site with thousands of pages, we wouldn't be able to pull in all these potential customers. It does provide other headaches though and it's certainly a challenge!

[Randy]

Right-O Daniel.

If I had to guess, the advice was probably meant more those those who are only optimizing for 5-10 main phrases and that's it. So many fall into that trap it seems. You simply can't work hundreds and hundreds of phrases into a three page web site. So of course takes more pages.

In that sense it's not bad advice, even though technically it's wrong to say Google prefers larger sites.

[Deverill]

If you pick 30 pages at random that each get 10 visitors per day for a variety of untargeted queries, think about the value of having all 30 of those pages on one domain versus having them on 30 domains. Your domain gets 300 visitors per day.

Sorry if I'm being thick but I don't get this. If I had 10 visitors over 30 pages on 10 domains I have 300 potential paying customers. If I have 10 visitors over 30 pages on 1 domain I have 300 potential paying customers. How is this any different? As I understand it, Google is not going to change my placement because widgets is on the same domain as dongles. The 10 widget visitors aren't going to say "Oh my, look, this domain has dongles too!" unless I link it and then what difference does it make the domain it's on?

I just don't see how this is a winning (or losing) situation. What am I missing?

[qwerty]

The 10 widget visitors aren't going to say "Oh my, look, this domain has dongles too!" unless I link it and then what difference does it make the domain it's on?

From the user's perspective, I think it makes a difference. If widget customers are also dongle customers, I expect they'd appreciate finding a source for both.

Then again, if widget customers are strict widget aficionados, they may appreciate a site that carries widgets and only widgets.

Sticking something on another domain does send a message, I think. Leaving out whether it's good or bad for ranking, I'd say that you'd need to have a really good reason to tell the user that certain content belongs elsewhere.

[Deverill]

Playing Devil's Advocate, Bob, wouldn't them finding a site that does both be more a function of the advertising done on-page? "If you like our widgets you'll love our dongles!" I've been on many sites bouncing around on links to things that interest me and occasionally I'll look up and say "Hmm, I'm on a different site." I may be unique, I like to think so, but I doubt it... my guess is that folks follow links and bookmarks and SERPS to find their stuff and most wouldn't notice that one page is on a different domain.

As a contrived example, I went to Fandango, clicked on "Codename: The Cleaner" and then Trailers. If I hadn't been trying to find an example I'd never have realized that the trailer shows in an ifilm window because it's branded with Fandango logos everywhere. I know, it's not a great example but MOST places have a master domain name for all their stuff. I'm just not sure it matters at all to the "casual surfer" or potential customers.

Now, if you want to talk ease of maintenance then I'm right there with one-domain!

[Michael Martinez]

One thing to consider is that if you have a large site with 1,000s of pages you'll need to ensure that the site structure is as flat as possible. If you have good content buried 4 or 5 clicks from the homepage, then you're doing a good job of effectively hiding it away from the search engines.

Not necessarily. I have pages that deep which are well indexed and rank well in competitive expressions. External linkage can help promote deep content just as well as internal linkage.

[daniel]

One thing to consider is that if you have a large site with 1,000s of pages you'll need to ensure that the site structure is as flat as possible. If you have good content buried 4 or 5 clicks from the homepage, then you're doing a good job of effectively hiding it away from the search engines.

Not necessarily. I have pages that deep which are well indexed and rank well in competitive expressions. External linkage can help promote deep content just as well as internal linkage.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but if you put 10,000 pages of your site 5 clicks away from your homepage, you're going to have to work harder to get those spidered regularly and ranking well for more competitive searches - especially if you're trying to rank well for a wide range of searches.

Of course deep links do help, considerably - and this is where I've actually seen a benefit from links with a decent PageRank (I know that will upset some). But it also makes sense to ensure your site has a flatter structure - particularly if you are still working on building the links you need.

[AaronM]

Having and easily crawlable site navigation and a human site map is a good way to make sure all of your pages get crawled regardless of how "deep" the navigation goes.

[Jill]

Having and easily crawlable site navigation and a human site map is a good way to make sure all of your pages get crawled regardless of how "deep" the navigation goes.

Umm...

Isn't how "deep" the navigation goes a function of how easily crawlable your navigation and site map is?

[Michael Martinez]

I'm not saying it's impossible, but if you put 10,000 pages of your site 5 clicks away from your homepage, you're going to have to work harder to get those spidered regularly and ranking well for more competitive searches - especially if you're trying to rank well for a wide range of searches.

I would say the degree of difficulty is relevant to the number of resources you have at your disposal. I don't usually have a problem with getting deep content crawled when I think about it.

Of course deep links do help, considerably - and this is where I've actually seen a benefit from links with a decent PageRank (I know that will upset some)....

No one should be upset with you for referring to something as useless as Toolbar PR. But I will roll my eyes, since I can work with content of any Toolbar PR value.

All that said, the more frequently your inbound links are crawled, the more they help. And Internal PageRank does indeed -- supposedly -- drive that.

But it also makes sense to ensure your site has a flatter structure - particularly if you are still working on building the links you need.

I agree that flat is good, but when you have 1,000 pages of content, some sort of tiered structure is almost mandatory.

[qwerty]

The flatter your navigation structure, the more you send the message that every page is equally important. Except in the case of a very small site, I'd say that's probably not a great idea. Look at your own hard drive. Unless you rely on your OS' search function, you probably structure things from general to specific, e.g. Documents > Business > Clients > Client Name > Invoices > Paid Invoices.

I think it makes sense to structure a site in a similar way, and while that doesn't mean that it's always best to structure the site's navigation that way, I'd say the general idea is a sound one. If you sell clothing, is it really necessary for every page on the site to link to the page about 25cm flat white shoelaces? Is that page as important, relative to the entire site, as the main footwear page?

[torka]

I guess that would depend on how badly people need those white shoelaces...

--Torka

[Akuta]

Number of pages on the site, number of inbound links, Toolbar PR, phase of the moon, and who likes you really don't have any impact on actual rankings.

Number of inbound links doesn't have any impact on actual ranking, huh?

[qwerty]

No, not really. The raw number of links is just a small piece of it. It depends on where those links are, what other links are there, the anchor text of the links, etc. Think of it this way: if you've got 600 links to your page, but they're all sitting on just one page, how much do you think those 600 links are going to help you?