More content or more regular content

[rob3786]

What is better a site with 50,000 indexed pages or a site with 5,000 that updates the site twice a day every day all year round?

[kwblue]

The amount of pages really doesn't matter as much as some people think I have a new site which outranks ALL older sites that are HUGE for a specific niche, it is 4 months old and updates once a day (at the most).

Updating content with new fresh data is key, IMO.

I have older sites with 5k pages or more that get nearly 0 traffic even with unique content because I don't update them as often.

[Fortune Palace]

There are a few points here:

1. Not many 50,000 page sites will have ALL their pages in the full index. A proportion will be in the Supplemental Index and will therefore never show up for competitive searches.

2. There are many high ranking sites that have NO fresh content. Unless your site depends on being topical, it doesn't need constantly changing content. A news site has to have fresh content daily or even hourly, but a reference site (like eg Britannica) by definition won't have that much fresh content. Yet it will still rank very well.

3. Since indexing is directly related to incoming links (and since Google is now reportedly changing to reduce the value of internal linking) it's vital that you get links to internal pages to get them properly indexed. If you're adding new content pages faster than you can acquire links, most of your work will be for nothing.


As it's easier to add content than get incoming links, my current thinking is that I'd rather consolidate my site around the 150-200 page mark and then work on getting well-distributed links to as many of those pages as possible, before addding any more content.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

Great question. I've also come to a point where I have to decide whether to add more pages or update the content on existing pages. What I've been trying to do is to keep the content relevant and accurate. Every time I make a new page, I write an article about the page and submit it to the article distribution centers. It's a pain, but I'm trying to avoid my pages not being indexed.

I used to have a newsfeed on a few of the pages that updated daily. I honestly didn't see any difference in the ranking of those pages with "fresh" content.

[rob3786]

It seems hard to know what to do these days I always thought if you built a big unique site you would do well. I only update once a week or once every couple of weeks but when I do I update it with around 30 pages. Is that the wrong thing to do?

[Fortune Palace]

Depends what kind of content you're adding. If it's current, topical information then the likelihood is that it'll be stale by the time it's indexed. If you're getting news stories etc from somewhere else then your visitors can probably do the same.

In my honest opinion, your best bet is to add unique content and then only because it adds value for your visitors.

[aksana]

Rob, try to submit some of your new pages to social bookmarks like Digg, and your pages will be indexed very quickly, but don't submit all your pages because your account will be blocked.

[james01]

Digg is an excellent tool and if you get to the top rankings - make sure your servers are ready! IMO unique quality content is better.

[masontech]

Regular updates that are relevant work for me!

Lets take one example, the 2008 World Snooker Championship. I blogged quite a few posts about the championships as I attended and followed quite closely the results.

I ranked really well for all searches about the snooker championships and picked up a load of inbounds which converted due to some targeted ads.

I really believe in a steady pressure of content, but it has to be good content and relevant to what is going on.

I am in this for the long haul!

[Nandakishore]

I think continuous updating is more important than having a huge site not regularly updated. My experience is that to get returning visitors you must be up to date.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

I think continuous updating is more important than having a huge site not regularly updated. My experience is that to get returning visitors you must be up to date.

I'm at the point now where I have to work on the quality of the content to make it "sticky" so the players will come back. I think I get original traffic now, but I honestly don't see why someone would come back to my site. That's certainly the direction I am going to start working on.

[Fintan]

I've found that a site with updated content works better than a static site. However, when updating content I have found that if I update every day, I have to keep updating every day.

If I update every week I have to keep updating every week etc etc

So pick your content update frequency carefully and stick to it

Cheers

Fintan

[Nandakishore]

However, when updating content I have found that if I update every day, I have to keep updating every day.
If I update every week I have to keep updating every week etc etc

This is very true. I have even found that if I update something on a certain day, say Monday, I must always update it on a Monday.