When websites are indexed by search engines, they are essentially ranked by authority for any given subject. There are many, many factors that search engines take into account to determine website authority. One factor that can make a huge contribution to that determination is size.
Size of a website can make all the difference when ranking one site versus another. The reason is simple, really. The larger the site, the more information that is typically available on it. When a website that has 150 pages is ranked against a similar website with only 20 pages of similar content but in the same geographic locale and industry, the larger website will always outrank the smaller if the content is well written and appropriate for the industry and its keywords. A small 12-page law firm website will always be outranked by a large 200-page law firm website in the same city, for instance, so long as the quality of the content on both sites is comparable.
Comparing sites by size is a simple metric that helps determine authority just because it works. Sites that are twice the size of competitors offer more information and can often be relied upon for more granular level of content, resources and answers to customer/client questions than others with few pages.
It’s similar to the comparison of a brochure on a topic versus a pamphlet versus a text book. Which of the three would be more readily relied upon to give you detailed information on that topic, detailed enough to based buying decisions upon? It’s obvious, so long as the content is all well written across competitor sites, the larger the site, the more authoritative it is.
Of course, there are many other factors that will weight in one’s favor, but all things being equal, a site’s size will weigh heavily in determining its comparative authority.
Does that mean businesses should pump out content day after day to mindlessly add page after page to their blog to grow the size of their website? Well, in a word, no. The fact is Google evaluates all of the factors that make a site a valuable resource. And if the pages are all repetitive, and the content is thin (lacking substance and length), the site could suffer a penalty for spam.
So how do your grow your site to attain that authority so many businesses seek online. Not by tricks or manipulation, but by organic content development borne out of the effort to provide a great user-experience. Build your site with helpful assets like F.A.Q. pages, resource pages and blog posts that focus on the needs of your audience. Answer common questions, give advice on the use of your product or service, show the website visitor (and Google) that you have a compendium of resources that are meant to support your customer’s search efforts.
Do that and your website’s authority will grow by leaps and by bounds. And, yes, adding more and more pages of this kind of content will go a very long way toward trouncing the competition on search index pages.
If you would like to work with Proctor Digital strategists to help develop a powerful SEO strategy to build targeted website traffic for your site and grow your brand, call us at 773.664.5819. We’d love to help!