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How many pages
should a website have? Five? Ten? More?
When you build a website how
many pages do you need? That seems like a simple question, so
lets give a simple answer,
As many as possible?
You can never have enough
pages on a website, more is always better.
If you want to build natural
or organic search engine traffic the key is by having more pages.
If you think the key to more
search traffic is:
SEO Professionals
Pay a website design
company big money
Better looking page
design
More social networking
Sell Cheaper products
Buy traffic from traffic brokers
Then you would be completely
wrong. None of those things will have a significant impact on
actual search engine traffic. Although proper SEO will be
important, you should be able to do that yourself with a few
basic tips.
But most people start with the
common 5 page website and
slowly build on it. Unfortunately for most people when I say slow
they think like a turtle. maybe adding a page every year.
That is just not going to do
the job. Without content websites are useless in the search
engines, the get no traffic and the business owner gets no value.
People often come to us and
ask for our help, but what can we do?
Without a paid advertising
campaign there is noting we can do other than creating content
for a website. The process of us creating content involves us
researching topics, creating an outline and then writing an
article into a page. It might take us 4 hours to create one page,
and we are going to have to charge half a days work for that
article. Then it might be 6 months or longer before any real
traffic comes to the page and even then it will only be a trickle.
The money would be much better
spent in an advertising campaign that would bring immediate
traffic and revenue.
If we charged $250 to write
one article the same $250 could buy 200 - 1000 or more visitors
using google or bing advertising.
In the short term that
is a better use of your money, but that is not natural or organic
traffic and even with advertising, if people can't find your
website naturally in the long run the site will never be
profitable.
So building content is very
important.
You will find hundreds of
helpful articles here on pageBuzz.com. That is not an accident,
it is part of our organic traffic program. We create content to
keep us strong in the search engines and enable users to find our
services for many different reasons.
Having 5 pages of photos is
never going to do anything for your business and we always tell
people a 5 page website is only worth about 5 cents.
But a 5 page website is a good
start. You have a design, a plan and an address online. The
search engines will check back to see if you add more and when
you do, they will add those pages into the listings. The more
pages, the more you have listed.
The most important thing to
remember about having a website is that it is like a savings
account. You get back what you put in.
If you save $1 a week, you get
back $52 at the end of the year, plus or minus interest and fees.
If you saved $10 a week you get back $520 and if you saved $100 a
week you get back $5200.00.
It is just basic math, no
magic buttons to push, no get rich quick scams, no shortcuts. You
get out what you put in.
When it comes to your website,
it is almost exactly the same.
I you add 1 page a week, you
have 52 pages at the end of the year, if you add one page a day
you have 365 pages at the end of the year.
What is true in both cases,
the savings account and the website, is that over time they both
grow, if you add to them. As they grow they add value.
If you have a 20 page
website and each page gets 3 visitors each month you get 60
people looking at the website in a 30 day period. If you have 300
pages and each page gets 3 visitors you have 900 visitors in 30
days.
It is all just basic math. The
more you have the more you get.
With more content you give
people more reasons to find you.
For example: People
will search google, bing or yahoo and find this page when
they search for "How many pages should
a website have?". They might not be
looking for website hosting, or having a website built, but
when they get to our website, the see our brand and it may
become an option. It is just basic advertising though organic
traffic.
But even more importantly you
need to understand that google, yahoo and bing have hundreds of
billions of pages to choose from. They tend to avoid 5 page
website because they have nothing to offer. So having less pages
is a handicap.
When you see
two people, one drives up in a suit with a Rolls Royce and
one is a homeless person on a bicycle, which person do you
try to sell to? If you have a 5 pages website, google looks
at you like you are the homeless person compared to your
competitor who has 100 pages of great content.
Now that we have
established that you need to continually add content to your
website lets talk about what you can add.
Lets say you have an ecommerce
website, you might be ahead of the game because you have hundreds
of product pages that are in the search engines. But you always
need more, don't ever sit on what you have, any traffic you have
will not last.
What to add to your website:
How to or information
articles
Reviews of products or
services
A blog about your
company and what you do
General babble
Information about your
industry
FAQ related to your
market
Galleries with photos
and descriptions
Multimedia
How to or Information
Articles
Lets face it, the Internet is
the Information Super Highway, the term INFORMATION is really the
key. If you have information that people are looking for, you own
the market. If you simply try to sell your service on a 5 page
website, you have nothing.
Users need information, so
create how to type articles, create information that is relevant
to your market. Write articles about topics that would be
important to people that might become customers.
If you sell bedding, write
articles about new products, new technology and compare the
values. Show the readers that you know what you are doing so they
come into your store. Give your customers the information they
need to make informed decisions.
If you don't, your competitors
will. And don't just link to beddingtoday.com and tell people to
go there, that kind of laziness will not be helpful. Create
content that is informative and helpful.
Reviews of Products or
Services
Give reviews of what you sell
or the product you provide. Explain why what you have is better
and what you do is better, Explain how they get more value from
your product even though they may pay a little more for it.
This is not brain surgery, you
know what you do, tell other people about it.
If you can't tell people why
they should buy from you, then you should not be in business.
A blog about your
company and what you do
Blogs are great content
builders and it gives you a wide open platform to create content
in many areas. It is a simple way to create loads of content with
very little effort.
You might add a blog post
about a company picnic, or how an employees child was given an
award or was part of a winning team. You can write how you
encountered something you had never seen before and explain how
you resolved it. You can just talk about new products that are
hitting the market and what to look for in your industry.
Blogs are great for organizing
varied content and keeping the man website free of all the
general babble.
General Babble
When we talk about general
babble, we mean just that. A bunch of mumbo jumbo articles ad
content that have nothing to do with the website itself.
You might e upset that the US
government spend $600 million dollars on a website that does not
work or that they created a new law that might make it impossible
for you to hire new employees.
Even though it has nothing to
do with your business, it can still be useful content on the
website. Blogs are good places for babble and it gives your
customers an idea of what you believe in, what you stand for and
who you are.
Just be careful to avoid
controversial topics like religion, abortion or politics because
people may not like you if you don't agree with them.
Information about your
industry
Write articles about how your
industry is changing, how companies are handling technology ad
how that affects your business and the people you service. Will
prices go up? Down? Will the product change to save the
environment?
Anything on any topic closely
related to your business will be helpful in building content.
FAQ related to your
market
Frequently asked questions are
on of the best way to generate traffic. People are always looking
for the answers to their questions, if you have those answers,
you will get traffic.
For us, all of these articles
answer some type of question and generate the appropriate traffic.
And I am not talking about an
FAQ page, although having 100 questions on a FAQ page with links
to 100 articles is almost exactly what our article index is here
on pageBuzz.com. When you build content, look at the long term
architecture.
Building one FAQ page is not
as good as having 100, so when you start the page, create the
content on more than just one page. That allows you to expand
over time, add more questions and answers.
Even if you build the most
extensive FAQ section, remember to update it over time. New
topics come up daily and people are looking for answers to new
questions about new products, regulations and techniques.
Galleries with photos
and descriptions
The biggest mistake almost all
business owner make is just uploading a bunch of photos. The
photos in most cases have no value in the searches and little
intent to customers.
But if you write descriptions,
add information and details to each photo then they become valued
content. Each image becomes its own page of content.
Since the search engines don't
read images, you need to add text so if people are looking for a
photo of a Nimbus 2000 they find your picture of one. But only if
you have a description of the item in the photo.
This is a Nimbus 2000
super computer, with the latest vacuum tube technology.
Nimbus can calculate number as high as 2000 digits and can do
it in less than 5 minutes. This space age super computer is
the top of the line and the flagship of the Nimbus computer
manufacturing company.
Adding this type of content
takes a useless static image and turns it into real positive
search engine rich content.
Multimedia
Multimedia never hurts either.
Having video, PDF documents and such all are content that get
listed in the search engines. If you have a video showing someone
how to wire up a light switch, take a photo with a DSLR, bake a
cake or ride a bike. No matter what you do of what your website
is about there is something that you can add.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are
countless topics, ideas and media types that can be added to
websites.
If every website was just
selling a product or service nobody would be online. People would
have better things to do.
You would never buy a magazine
with nothing buy ads, or read a book that was only ads.
So don't make your website a
bunch of ads for your business. Add more, and more until the
server is full and then get a second website.
If you think the first
5 pages is enough, save your money and don't even bother. You
need to add as much as you can. Just a little as you go and your
website will slowly grow into a huge traffic generator that will
bring you loads of business.
This page is a great example
of search engine strong content. At over 2000 words with good
diverse keywords and on topic discussion of website building.
This one page can generate many new customers for pageBuzz each
year. So even though it took some time to create and did not
generate a new customer 15 minutes after it was posted, the long
term effect on our business will be positive.
As you build content, always
look at the long term goal just like the savings account. Build
over time and everything will grow. If you don't start building
website content today, then a year from now, you will wish you
did.
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