A webmaster in John’s 09/24/2021 hangout was concerned about creating separate content or separate keywords surrounding their topic. They wondered if they should combine all of their keywords for one intent and optimize their content accordingly?
John explained that either way is fine.
He did say that when you have fewer pages, those pages have to be strong. If you have more pages, then that value is spread out over a lot more pages.
The webmaster explained that he was going to create fewer, stronger pages and was curious about how to make them a priority.
John explained that even though you can’t give a specific priority for the pages, internal linking can help you create somewhat of a priority for these pages.
You can use internal linking to highlight the pages you want to be more prioritized.
This discussion happens at approximately the 16:54 mark in the video:
John Mueller 09/24/2021 Hangout Transcript
Hi, I have a question about an e-commerce website. Again, we can create contents based on the keyword suggestions or autocomplete by Google to include more content around the one main topic. For example, the main topic or transactional intent is smartphones. And we’re going to create tech-related contents around the smartphone, like blog posts. Should we really need to create separate contents or separate keywords around one topic, or is it just combining all the different keywords in one intent and optimize our content around this intent?
John 17:28
You can do either way. It’s more of a strategic decision. I think, in general, what you’re balancing is making pages that are specific for individual topics and making pages that are more general. But when you have fewer pages, you’re kind of balancing many pages versus fewer pages. And if you have fewer pages, generally, those few pages tend to be a little bit stronger. Whereas if you have a lot of pages, then it’s like the value is spread out a little bit more. So if there are specific topics where the competition is stronger than you want to have very strong pages, so maybe fewer pages. If you are targeting areas where the competition is not so strong, then maybe having more pages is fine. So that’s kind of the balance that you would try to take there. Where, if you’re starting out, probably having fewer pages is a good idea so that you can be as strong as possible in that area. And then over time, as you see, like, we’re very good here. You can split off individual pages for more niche topics.
Webmaster 4 18:40
Okay, in that case, a, I’m going to create a few stronger pages on one a on intent. And what should I do to make Google preferred the best content for others to the main thread? For example, I want Google prefer Samsung smartphone transactional intent to my stronger blockbuster, hike, how can I handle it.
John 19:04
You can’t give any priority for them. But you can help with internal linking. So within your website, you can really highlight the pages that you want to have highlighted more, and make sure that they’re really well linked internally and maybe the pages you don’t find that important, make sure that they’re a little bit less well linked internally.
Webmaster 4 19:28
I have to give some call-to-action buttons to my smartphone, for example, categorization.
John 19:35
Right? Yeah, I mean, it’s something, usually with internal linking, you can think of it as the important pages you would have linked from your homepage. And the less important pages are linked from like a category or subcategory page, something like that. So when we look at your site, we see Oh, the homepage is very important. And the homepage points at these five pages. So these five pages are almost as important as the homepage, and then from there, the value is spread out. And that’s kind of the way that you can help us to figure out which pages you think are important. It doesn’t mean we will always follow that. But it’s a good way to give that kind of information.
Webmaster 4 20:18
Should I give links on all these different keyword-related blog posts? I mean, I’ve been giving link to the smartphone page, for example, product page from that blog post, all of them are important. Should I use a canonical URL to these blog posts? Or is it important?
John 20:45
The canonical URL is important if you have multiple URLs that show the same content. So if you have tracking URLs, for example, within your blog or something like that, then with the canonical link element, you can tell us what is the primary page there. But for a normal website, or you just linking to different things, usually you wouldn’t critically need it. It’s a good best practice to have. But you’re not going to get any SEO bonus out of it.
Webmaster 4 21:16
Okay, thank you.
