In a hangout, one SEO professional asked John Mueller about indexed page count.
Their question was about indexed pages. So: the number of the indexed pages of their site has increased significantly, more than 30 percent.
But the traffic has only increased by 2 percent.
Since there are millions of pages on their site, and these pages are indexed, they assume that means the page quality is okay. However, these indexed pages don’t bring the same level of traffic to the site, in their opinion.
And they think the traffic driving ability of this page is not so good. Therefore, how can they increase the traffic? Are there any tips to improve this?
John explained that there isn’t really any one simple trick to just getting more traffic. He believes, especially with e-commerce sites, that it’s probably normal that you have this growth of indexed pages first.
Then, at some later stage, there could be more traffic because more people are looking for more specific items across your site.
But it can also be the case that they just index a lot more pages initially. And then, over time Google realizes, Well, perhaps these pages really aren’t bringing that much usefulness to the search results.
Perhaps Google will then have to drop some of these again, and focus on a different part of the website.
But John doesn’t see this as a problem: having 30 percent more pages, but only 2 percent more traffic.
Sometimes, this is really just normal.
This happens at approximately the 20:20 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 6 20:15
Yeah, yeah. So the second question is about indexed pages. So the number of indexed pages of our site has increased, increased, like significantly, like more than 30%. So but the traffic only has increased by 2%.
So and since there are millions of pages in our site, and these indexed pages, the pages are indexed, so it means the page quality is, is okay. But these indexed pages don’t didn’t bring the same level of traffic to the site, in our, in our opinion.
So we think the traffic driving ability of this page is not so good. So in this way, how can we increase the traffic, and any tips to improve this?
John 21:11
Increase the traffic…I, I don’t think there’s one simple trick to kind of just getting more traffic. I think with, especially with an e-commerce site, it’s probably normal that you have this growth of indexed pages first.
And then at some later stage, maybe more traffic, because more people are looking for more specific items across your website. But it can also be the case that we just index a lot more pages. And then over time, we realize, well, actually, these pages are not bringing that much usefulness to the search results.
Maybe we’ll have to drop some of those, again, and focus on a different part of the website. But I wouldn’t see it as a problem per se, in that you have 30% more pages, but only 2% more traffic. Sometimes that’s just normal, because you have products that are important and useful.
But they just don’t get a lot of traffic. And those are just as useful, even if they just get a few visitors, I don’t know, every day or whenever.
