What’s this about?
I’m not surprised John Mueller from Google has weighed in on the page bloat issue with a comment that “often few strong pages > many weak ones”.
Google would love to have fewer pages to find, crawl, index and rank. It would make Google’s life so much more…. efficient.
We may be about to have another round of page bloat vs content bloat. Don’t forget he said “often”.
Read this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 10th November 2017.
#SEO #SEONews #ContentStrategy #InformationArchitecture
Google Says Fewer Strong Pages Often Better Than Many Weak Ones
Key Issues Summary:
- John Mueller said on Twitter than “often few strong pages > many weak ones“.
- This is consistent with Google’s almost constant messaging for the last few years.
- Notice that John says “often”…
Key Actions To Take:
- If you’re still building 1001 pages for every keyword combination, stop it.
- You *should* be building a page for each distinct topic, but equally you shouldn’t be building one mega-page covering every aspect of a big topic.
- If building really big pages, you need to make sure your intra-page navigation is top-notch – clear signposts to help users navigate their way through the page.
- Remember, that if you have excess content, that Google Says Pruning Content Doesn’t Work For Panda.
- Click here to contact me to discuss how to create content which is useful for users and for Google.
Insights & Discussion:
Ever so slightly, Google has been talking out of the side of its mouth on this issue. There was a big issue a number of years back, with thousands of sites having millions of pages of content around every single feasible keyword combination.
This caused indexing bloat, meaning Google had to find a way to get webmasters to stop spraying content pages into the webosphere. Hence, Panda. Low quality, thin pages were wiped out in this update and continue to struggle to rank.
The one unintended consequence of this is page bloat. Instead of concise, relevant pages of useful content about a topic, instead we have monolithic pages which weigh in at around 1500 – 2500 words on a simple topic. This is a content battle of Mutually Assured Destruction, as Google now has to interpret much longer content pages and present heaps of waffle to its users.
NB – Google would probably say that strong content does not equal long content, and it is probably right. Unfortunately webmasters in their continuing battle to rank number 1 don’t see it that way, and the content-length wars continue to rage.
More Information:
The State of SEO Mid-2017 Released
TL;DR
- Fewer strong pages better than many weak?
- How about many strong?
- This may trigger another round of long content vs short content fights, oh goodie.
- Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
- Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
- Finally, get your content ranking well on Google by starting to understand Find Crawl Index.
Thanks for reading. If you would like to discuss what these changes mean for your web property, or would like to know how to implement them, please feel free to contact me.
