One of the biggest reasons some websites fail to grab any rankings after launch is not having enough content. Regardless of how well optimized each page is, a website is unlikely to appear as an authority on a topic with just a few indexed pages, for instance.
Especially if those pages are short.
The most SEO-successful website launches I’ve ever been a part of always had one thing in common: a significant but organized amount of body pages and/or blog content. Those pages may not all be ones shown in the primary navigation, but they’re present and indexable.
One semi trucking company in particular I worked with had pages for all the different engines, truck models, and parts store etc. That, paired with some supporting pages and a series of blog posts reinforcing those same trucks and services, made for a serious splash when the site went live. Right away we saw a traffic increase and solid movement in keyword rankings based on what was probably 25-30 indexed pages.
Moving into a monthly SEO campaign after that was seamless since the site launch alone had created sufficient momentum. Building on that was powerful.
Contrast that with other sites I’ve seen that pretty much have a main page, one service/menu page, and then contact/about pages. Totaling maybe 5. Very little site launch impact and a lot of uphill SEO work thereafter to create rankings.
The pages the site launched with were fairly well optimized, but it didn’t matter.
Keyword Reinforcement and Authority
As we discussed in our previous article in the series, establishing your website as an authority on the topics you want to rank for is crucial.
When search engines explore your site, it needs to give the impression that you’re extremely knowledgeable and willing to be helpful to your readers.
Just think about this site: it wouldn’t look like we knew much about SEO if we only had 1-2 places on the whole site where we talked about it.
This is the trouble with simple websites without much content; they lack what’s needed to organically appear as an authority. Advertising campaigns can help drive traffic instead, but the site is unlikely to be an organic contender.
It’s also the challenge with blogs that talk about too many topics. Maybe you’re interested in a broad array of things, but it will make creating impact with any one of them tougher.
(It’s no surprise in this industry as an example that the most popular SEO blogs tend to mostly just be about SEO.)
While keyword stuffing and other oldschool SEO tactics have died out, it’s still true in a general sense that the more times certain keyword topics appear throughout your site the better you’ll rank for it. That comes with a lot of caveats we’ll discuss in other articles.
This effect is successful especially when you’ve created a strong interlinking structure, called Link Silos. <— Read this.
You’ll be able to determine which pages are seen as most definitive for certain topics. Also, every quality indexed page is a net out there in the web world that can attract backlinks and shares. The more nets you have, the greater the odds you’ll catch readers.
In conclusion…
All things being otherwise equal between two sites, the one with more indexed pages full of good material will rank better than the other with very little.
When you’re redesigning a site or making a new one it’s super important to have a strategy for creating a good amount of reinforcing content — and what that will look like. Industry leaders are not 5 or less page websites.
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