One SEO professional asked John during the submitted Question and Answer segment about indexed page ratios.
Their main question was: is there a good ratio on Google’s side when it comes to the amount of pages?
In other words: are positions of high-traffic ranking pages hurt by many – let’s say 50 percent of total pages on our domain – not being indexed? Or even pages being indexed, but not receiving any actual traffic?
John said, in response: so he thinks the question is more about – the SEO pro has some set of pages that are very popular and a lot of pages that are not very popular. And this describes the average website. When you have a variety of content, some of it could be very popular, and other content is not that popular.
From Google’s point of view: that’s perfectly fine. Also – John explained that the bulk number of pages, he believes, is a misleading metric, because it’s easy to have a lot of pages that are not seen as very important.
Then they don’t appear a lot in search. And this can be perfectly aligned.
For example: say you have five pages like this. Or 100 pages. Or 1,000 pages. If they are not showing up in search, they are not causing any problems either. So from that point of view, it’s sometimes tricky just to look at the bulk number of pages vs. the pages that are actually being shown in the search results.
The other thing he explained to keep in mind with this type of question is – perhaps sometimes it does make sense to concentrate more on fewer pages just to get that strategic advantage of having fewer pages that are stronger, rather than having a lot of pages where you’re basically diluting their value.
If you have these 1,000 pages, and they each provide a small tidbit of the bigger picture, then those 1,000 pages are probably going to have a hard time in search.
Whereas, if you can combine a lot of tha information, perhaps 10 pages, then those 10 pages will have a lot of information on them, and maybe a lot of value in relation to the rest of your site.
And perhaps this will make those pages easier to rank for broader search terms around that topic.
This happens at approximately the 31:26 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
Is there a good ratio or consideration on Google’s side when it comes to the amount of pages? In other words, are positions of high-traffic-ranking pages hurt by many- let’s say 50 percent of total pages on our domain not being indexed or being indexed, but not receiving traffic?
John (Answer) 31:47
So I guess, the question is more around, like, I have some set of pages that are very popular and a lot of pages that are not very popular. And that kind of describes the average website where you have a variety of content, and some of it is very popular, and some of it just isn’t that popular. So from our point of view, that’s, that’s kind of perfectly fine.
Also, just the bulk number of pages, I think, is a misleading metric, because it’s easy to have a lot of pages that are not being seen as very important. And then they don’t appear a lot in search. And that can be perfectly aligned. Like if you have five pages like that, or 100 pages, or 1000 pages. If they’re not showing up in search, they’re not causing any problems either.
So from that point of view, it’s sometimes tricky just to look at the bulk number of pages versus the pages that are actually being shown in the search results. The other thing maybe also to keep in mind with a question like this is, sometimes it does make sense to concentrate more on fewer pages just to kind of get that strategic advantage of having fewer pages that are stronger, rather than having a lot of pages where you’re essentially diluting the value.
Like if you have these 1000 pages, and they each provide a small tidbit of the bigger picture, then those 1000 pages are probably going to have a hard time in search. Whereas if you can combine a lot of that into, I don’t know, maybe 10 pages, then those 10 pages will have a lot of information on them, and maybe a lot of value kind of relative to the rest of your site, and maybe have it easier to rank for kind of broader search terms around that topic.
