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I have one competitor who's pages are extremely small, under 10kb, with little content and only one backlink which gives him a PR5, and he's coming up on page one for an extremely competitive term. Plus, his site is only 6 pages, and they are all tiny in size.
Has anyone else noticed small sites with small pages getting good results? I'm wondering if google gives pages more support if their keywords are listed within them with little amounts of verbage on the rest of the page.
As for PR, there is at least one forum here that discusses this subject exhaustively, and probably more than that, because it is such a major issue to most webmasters.
To me, a tiny website of six pages of minimal content translates as a business which doesn't necessarily want to conduct business through the net but DOES want a net presence to ensure they are not left in the dust. Are you concerned their website is better than yours or presented better or that its minimalistic format is more advantageous in some way? Personally, content is king, so I've heard. A six page website isn't going to have enough content to convince me to come back, especially in this day and age when most surfers would like to conduct their business through the website and not have to go offline to contact the business by phone or snail mail. So if you have more content, which means both larger pages and more pages, and you have a clean, easy to navigate, visually appealing, and browser compatible website, especially with interactive content, then I'd give your site the edge on your competitor, even if their graphics and appearance is better than yours.
Of course, that's just my own opinion. I've been a webmistress since 1996 and manage two sites but haven't gone commercial yet.
The actual statistic is that the majority of people on the Net are on dial up. Likely to stay that way to. Makes sense. The extra cost of high speed isn't worth it to those who don't spend much time on the Net. The sort of people who frequent WebmasterWorld are a poor sample of the Net as a whole.
As for small pages doing well, it is much easier to reasonably come up with high keyword density on a small page than a large one. One a large one, the text could look ridiculous with 8% KWD. If you are a commercial site, I'd recommend some small, keyword dense pages to score high on Google, and link those to the moneymaking pages.
I would not be so sure about that, I live in a rural area, but there have been aggressive moves made by Qwest and local ISP's to make at least DSL 256 up and down affordable to the mainstream public.
I find when I design pages for more expensive products, I allow myself a bit more room size wise. My rationale is that if a person has the money to afford the product in question, they probably can afford the faster connection. I limit the size of product pages that might appeal to someone who is paying $15/month for a dial up.
I know that sounds horrible and caste like, but I find it is true.
J
As for the dial-up topic. Does anyone feel that the majority of web sales,traffic and use come from those using the higher speed connections. I have many friends with dial-up, but they never do anything more than simple research, print directions, check email etc.
All of the people that I know with cable/T1 speeds are buying merchandise, tickets, banking online etc. Having said this, maybe the page size for related things should have a higher limit.
My traffic from dial-ups increase on the weekends, but sales does not.
The next Monday, sales go up, but from different IP's.
My working theory is that people are searching and marking pages, to then purchase when the get to their work which has a broadband connection.
J
Given that people who are more affluent may be more likely to be on dial up, this wouldn't surprise me. However, remember when we are talking about the Net as a whole, the vast majority of it, and the users of it, are non-commercial. Also, for anyone thinking about some e-commerce flash trash site, consider that if it is so bloated that it causes problems for 20% of your users on low speed connections, losing 20% of the potential customers can be the difference between being unprofitable, and being quite profitable. Plus, consider that there are people out there with lots of money who can't get high speed period. I know a news admin at one the largest independent Usenet providers who because of where he lives can't find anyone to take his money to run a DSL line out his way. Access to high speed is limited by factors other than the ability to afford it.
Which if true means that unless your site is dial up friendly, many people may do cyberspace window shopping only at sites that work well on high speed. Letting the competition get the eyeballs of potential customers can be a Bad Thing.
That's my $0.02
By the time they get to work, and click buy; it would have been to late for me to be a factor if I was pushing large pages.
J
Also, for media usage in general, broadband users spent 27% of their media usage on the Internet to 36%TV and 31% Radio.
