PR and number of pages

New pages and implications for your existing page rank

[herbie]

I'm new to SEO, hope someone can point me in the right direction!

I've heard that if you have lots of pages indexed it tends to drive down the average PR of your pages. I was wondering if this is the case (as doesn't Google like to have lots of content to search across?).

So, for a large site is it best to focus on getting a smaller number of pages indexed and well ranked (the ones where I most want usage) or go for the lot? Or does it not matter?

Thanks.

[DerekH]

That's an interesting question you ask.
Generally accepted opinion (by which I mean that everyone will now disagree with me!) is that a large site will do favourably in Google, not because size is everything but because you'll have the ability to move Page Rank around more freely.
What do I mean by that?
It's possible to elevate certain pages in your site at the expense of others - lots of links to a contents page will mean the contents page does well in Google. The more pages you have at your disposal, the more you can link pages together so that there are pages that are natural focuses (and which do well), and pages that stay in the background.

Regard extra pages as giving you more leverage to distribute the page rank you have in a more varied way...

And, of course, a richly embodied, properly constructed, well-maintained and informative site is much more likely to keep your visitors - something as important as getting them in the first place.

Regards
DerekH

[herbie]

thanks DerekH - sounds like its worth taking a fresh look at some internal links.

[julinho]

I've heard that if you have lots of pages indexed it tends to drive down the average PR of your pages.

And why are you interested in the *average* PR of your site?

Suppose your site is only one homepage, with, say, PR6.
Now, link this PR6 homepage to anotherpage.html, then put a link back from anotherpage.html to the homepage.

What would you have then? Your homepage PR increased (you gained another internal link), and you have anotherpage.html with, at least, a PR5; this situation is better than the starting one. However, your *average* PR possibly decreased (depends on how much PR is passed on by the link).

Of course, in real life things are more complicated; you wold have to see how many links existed in the original homepage, how many links you will put in anotherpage.html, *how many external links this new page will get*, etc.

To me it's evident that putting another page online (which links back to your own pages) and having it indexed is always a good thing.

[herbie]

thanks julinho - I see your point about 'average' PR, time to explain myself better!

I have a site with several thousands of pages, some of which generate revenue, some more profitably than others.

It was suggested to me that I should focus on optimising only a proportion of my pages. The rationale being that if Google picks up several thousand pages it would figure they can't all be saying something important and somehow 'drop' the average PR for pages with mydomain.com/...

Having read the replies to my post it seems this advice was sending me down the wrong tracks?

[steveb]

"sending me down the wrong tracks"

Yes.

[Larryhat]

Hello all: Simple (I hope) question:

I have just one personal site with about 100 pages
of well researched materials and images.

Most pages have 6 or 8 links to other closely related
pages on the same site. All link back to my main
(index.html) page.

Given I maintain the same quality content, and other
things being equal, will adding a few more pages
tend to improve my ratings and placement on Google
searches? I now rank about 20th in a field of
4 million, for a well known single search word.

Any help much appreciated. - Larry

[t2dman]

Hi Herbie

With several thousand pages, it would be better to focus PR on pages that:
1) Got you more revenue
2) You had a higher chance of getting better rankings on.

If you had an index page of a high PR5, linking to 25 sitemaps with 80 links on each. If each page of your site had those 25 links on them, then each of the sitemaps should have a PR5, and the 2000 pages should have at least a PR3, hopefully a PR4. You would in addition, gain the value of the "text" in the "Text link" from those site map pages. Using this method will get you generally well indexed by Google and well ranked.

Depending on how high a PR5 etc you have, the PR goes to PR-2 (PR less 2) at around 80-100 links on a page

But if you have some high money pages, and you have text links on a number of your pages to those money pages, both the value of the text of the "text links", and the extra PR transfer should be able to increase their ranking in the serps above that obtainable via just use of the site maps. This makes sense from a visitor usability sense as well. You want links positioned in such a way that you can convert visitors on popular pages to $ on highly profitable pages.

General strat - see how high you can get by just using the site maps, then add extra power to the pages that don't get to the top, by adding extra text links through the site.

All the best.

[t2dman]

Larryhat

Given I maintain the same quality content, and other
things being equal, will adding a few more pages
tend to improve my ratings and placement on Google
searches?

Adding more pages is unlikely to improve the ranks of existing pages much - apart from the value of text links and PR transfer back to those important pages. More pages also means more visitors if those pages have been seo'ed, and therefore more potential for links requests. Or certainly more chance that someone will say yes, when asked for a link.

[Larryhat]

Thanks t2dman:

I was thinking of small improvements to ranking for
my main index.html entry page. All other pages,
including possible new ones, point to that.

Best - Larry