How Many Pages Should A Website Have?

Recently, I've been thinking about page count when planning a website.

The cost of a site used to have a direct relation to how many pages were being built. Today I think this is less the case with CSS automating format and CMS systems that auto-generate pages, the time spent per standard page is reduced. What will impact the budget with more pages is if you are paying a writer to create content for each page, but I digress.

The topic is search engine optimization (SEO), and so my suggestion is the more pages the better.

More (web pages) is better for a couple of reasons. With several components now effecting results, a web developer’s focus should turn toward how to best organize and optimize each page to actual search terms. This technique is referred to as Silo Information Architecture. Top-tier navigation and second- and third-tier navigation should be a logical flow top to bottom per topic or keyword. Your website’s organization can reflect your corporate structure or for improved optimization create a silo structure.

When we think website and rankings, what often gets lost in the sauce is the need to recognize each and every page as a potential landing page for search results. Spiders and robots read pages. Your home page, of course, being the most critical but it should not be the only page where you invest focus, time and effort.

If you serve multiple communities – geographic and demographic, then organizing around these categories and having a page for each would be a good move. This becomes a challenge in creating content for each page – and so thinking about hiring a professional writer might be a good idea.

Google, Yahoo, and Bing like websites with a lot of pages, another reason to consider more pages rather than less. The search engines look upon these sites with favor, equating a lot of pages with a higher chance of relevant content. How much weight the page count is given is unknown, but it weighs in nonetheless. The caveat however is relevant and quality page content.

As you think about developing and organizing your website, think about how you serve your community – better yet, think about how your community seeks your service. One of the rants you will hear should you attend one of my sessions is to take out the I, Me, My, We, Our and rethink and recreate around You and Your!

People get online and ask who, what, when, where, how or why – Be the answer to their question! No matter how many pages it takes.