30k New URLs to be added (Launching new section - Best practices)

[fashezee]

We've been managing a site with about 100k Urls indexed on Google for the past 6 years. We've finished a site re-vamp; along with an updated design, we have a new section with new options. The new section will generate about 30k new pages.

What would be the best practice is rolling these pages out? All pages are optimized and provide new content.

[Andy Langton]

What sort of pages are these? Many are presumably 'generated' based on categories or similar?

The other big question is how you link to the new pages - e.g. from your navigation.

Difficult to answer without knowing what sort of pages are involved.

[fashezee]

We provide real estate listings, we added more options and more types to our search panel; allowing users to be more specific when looking for property.

The new pages are linked via the main navigation; we foresee high user engagement with these new pages.

[Andy Langton]

So, would these be filtering types of pages? E.g. green widgets with two buttons and a switch, or blue buttons with two switches, etc.?

[fashezee]

Yes - filtering types.
1 bedroom + option 1
1 bedroom + option 1 + option 2
2 bedrooms + option 1 + option 2
2 bedrooms + option 2
etc....
We've optimized and customized all pages; Page Titles, Meta Description, Breadcrumbs, H1, H2 and also have some dynamic content reflecting the options selected.

[tangor]

There comes a point when a site nav can be TOO granular. The cumbersome factor can kill site nav pretty darn quick. Given the parameters above I can't see 30,000 new pages. I can see a location cat, a options selection page, and a database lookup to fill that result. And that result will be the actual listings, not new pages.

MORE is not necessarily better. Just my two cents.

EDIT: second thoughts (as I have worked with a few realtors over the years) An internal search generally gives better customer satisfaction than any reliance on a third party search engine (b, g, y, etc). General (top performing keyword related to location, style, brand name) are the pages that MUST rank in the third party search engines, but your INTERNAL search is what gets the customer to the EXACT page/listing offered.

There is so much churn in the realtor market because listings are 30-90 days and then gone expecting third parties to keep track of that is asking a bit much. Folks need to find YOU/SITE, not an address for sale.

[Andy Langton]

I would certainly be careful with this, as these sorts of pages are amongst the trickiest to get right. A few comments:

- Generated title/description/h1 is not the same as optimised. This is de-duplicating. I'm no fan of generated descriptions, either, unless you get clever with them. Not sure to what degree you've "hand" customised pages, of course!
- Make sure you're not allowing different parameter orders to be indexed. Small green widgets is the same as green small widgets. This can get out of hand quickly if you have a number of possible options
- Don't create filters combinations that lead to tiny numbers of results (0 results is the worst, 1 result is not good)
- Make sure choices make sense. If widgets are always small, don't make a small widgets page (or a large widgets page, for that matter)
- Hand-customise the most important combinations
- If you think you're going to end up with a large amount of not-so-sensible combinations, consider only selectively allowing the not be crawled or indexed

Your biggest risk is that this is regarded as a "hit and hope" attempt to target 30,00 keywords with low quality pages. Unless the pages are regarded as substantially unique, and you've got enough additional content to support the target keywords then I wouldn't be hugely optimistic about ranking potential. Depends on how niche the keywords are.

[fashezee]

We've "hand-customized" quite a bit.
We currently rank well; top 5 for many keywords on Google. However, we never created SEO-Friendly pages for all the possible search criteria; I would say 60-70% was addressed - we simply didn't have the time back then to roll-out every possible combination.

The new pages we created are definitely unique in content and useful to the user. (In addition, our competitors have them)
We're joining the party a little late - in anycase, let's assume the 30k pages are structured well and there are zero issue with them - Can feeding ~30k new pages to Google have a negative impact? Anyone have any recent experience?

[tangor]

let's assume the 30k pages are structured well and there are zero issue with them

If that is the case, then issue them all at the same time so data tracking and stats can accumulate on release.

[Shai]

In my experience, we have always seen a sharp increase in visitors when releasing large number of pages so my prediction is that you will also. HOWEVER, this does not mean it is risk free in the longer term. I would do as much as possible in line with the good advice in this thread.

[dipper]

imho quit worrying about Google. If +30k pages, with better nav, better break-downs and categories etc helps your customers then, jump in!