Benefits of a large site?

[laiwa]

I have studied a number of sites that rank high for competative terms like "ringtones". They often have thousands of links but many seems to be internal. It seems that some sites put a page for each song and then they have thousands of pages with very little content, all linking back to the homepage or similar linking structure. You usually cant access these pages if you dont know the url (hidden links for the user?). The thing is that they seem to gain a lot of this, or am I wrong...

[rizla]

hi Laiwa,
from my experience - you are not wrong.
I've SEEN pop-up baclinks (from an e-commerce who had every single product on a pop-up with link to the homepage) help to gain PR and results rankings.

[complainer]

[QUOTE=laiwa] and then they have thousands of pages with very little content[/QUOTE]
Yes,
It is unfortunate, but Google seems to reward quantity. I have seen many tricks people use to increase the size of their site. Of course high-quality content helps, but I also think that hollow, meaningless pages in high quantity get rewarded as well.

[rizla]

[QUOTE=complainer]
Of course high-quality content helps, [/QUOTE]

I don't know what is "high-quality content", IMHO this term is subjective and
what really counts is the ability of the content+lins to rank U higher on targeted key-phrases.

[complainer]

OK,
I agree that could have been better-stated. I would argue, though, that for most people the ultimate goal is not ranking high in Google, it's not even increasing the number of visitors to the site, it's getting people to buy something on the site, or click on a banner that brings advertising revenue, or maybe just getting someone to read your message (as in my case). So, I have no idea what I really mean by high-quality content vs. empty content. Perhaps it's like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography: I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

[seobook]

[QUOTE=rizla]I don't know what is "high-quality content", IMHO this term is subjective and
what really counts is the ability of the content+lins to rank U higher on targeted key-phrases.[/QUOTE]

when people say high quality content what they are really talking about is the linkability of a page or site.

is this something that someone would be interested in linking toward.

[laiwa]

Is it possible to build the theme of a site based mainly on the anchor text on the pages on the site? 5 000 internal pages with good anchor text and a few hundred backlinks would put you on top?
Actually why I ask is because a collegue of mine seems to have done this, he is on top of nearly all ringtone related terms he sets his mind to, 80 million competing for ringtones. He launched his site in January and have now 6000 backlinks and PR8, forget sandbox, it doesnt exist. I am just so astonished on how he did this. I must be totally wrong with my little site of 150 pages.

[seobook]

[QUOTE=laiwa]and a few hundred backlinks[/QUOTE]

most people do not get links from a few hundred different sites. that alone is really a big boost over most sites.

[owlcroft]

It is unfortunate, but Google seems to reward quantity.
Why is it "unfortunate"?

Whether the topic is the music of the hurdy gurdy or vegetable gardening, which site is--all other things equal, or unknown--more likely to be of help to a seeker after information on the subject: a site with 7 pages or a site with 700 pages? Not certain, but more likely.

OK, some sites cheat by padding out with irrelevant pages, or low-content pages. Fine: there are sites that cheat in some way or other on virtually every single aspect of the various things Google is thought to use in determining SERPs. So? Google should perhaps serve up answers at random, on the theory that no matter what criteria they use, some sites will cheat on those criteria?

If you are concerned that you are being beat in the SERPs by sites that have substantially higher page counts, then expand your own page count--only be sure to do it honestly, with page content that is at least plausibly relevant to your site's topic.

That is not hard to do.

<plug>

One simple example is the "Freebie" SEO Site-Augmentation Package (http://seo-toys.com/freebie-seo-package/freebie-package.shtml) (as its name implies, 100% free), which can easily add over 9,000 relevant pages to any site--it simply tacks on to your site an Amazon bookstore that lists only books relevant to your site's theme, which you control by selecting the search phrase used to locate titles on Amazon. A brief one-time install, and away you go, with no further maintenance (and, the pages being dynamic--though they look static to visitors and searchbots--it doesn't even eat up storage space).

</plug>

Adding pages increases a site's cumulative Page Rank (as Casey used to say, you could look it up (http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html#internal_linking) ). Page Rank is too often confused with SERPs (you could look that up (http://seo-toys.com/tips-on-seo/seo-tips-3.shtml) too), but it is, as the posters here say, overall a site augmentation.

[interactive]

Hello,

Quick testimonial...

This weekend my partner in crime downloaded "Freebie". And, with some fantastic help from Eric, we've added +3,000 pages to our site.

Freebie Example (http://www.interactivevoices.com/voice-over-book-store.shtml)

Thanks again owlcroft!

[dazzlindonna]

I'm wondering if something has changed in this regard. A few weeks ago I added the freebie thing to one of my sites to "pump up the volume" so to speak. The site in question had been languishing in the 500 range for its main keyword, and it looked as though the one missing factor when compared to the competitors was site size. So, I thought what the heck, let's try to increase the site size with the freebie package. I waited about 2 weeks for Google to start indexing the new pages. On the same day that the site: command returned some of the new pages (about 700 of them), the rankings for the term suddenly disappeared. Granted, they never ranked well to begin with (in the 500 range), but they had been in that range for about 2 months. Then, perhaps coincidentally, on the same day that google recognized an extra 700 pages, the ranking also vanished completely. So...coincidence? Maybe? Sandbox? Maybe? Google no longer appreciating large sites? Not sure what the answer is, but thought I'd throw it out there for possible discussion.

[laiwa]

Well, its opposite for me. After adding several hundreds of pages (and doing other SEO stuff) I have gone from +300 to #63 for my main keyword "polyphonic ringtones", it has 4,5 millon competeing. I have also added backlinks tried to optimize the page etc. so who knows whats really making this tick. I am sure internal backlinks are important. Look at esato.com with 500 000 pages indexed and a forest of backlinks, it is doing good. But it of course have lots of backlinks 10 000 reported in Google.
All my ringtone collegues are only speaking of links by the thousands now, most of the succesful sites are dynamic with +25 000 pages and preferebly you have a couple of them that you can play around with.
I just added +30 000 pages (dynamic) to two of my sites, it will be interesting to see what happens in the serps the coming days since there has been a deepcrawl now.

[xenon]

Could it be that google sees such a huge expansion so fast as being artificially generated? Therefore some kind of adverse reaction to that?

[laiwa]

How would Google be able to judge that? If you add a lot of new products to your site with unique pages, thats normal website building.
Adding lots of pages can also be used as spamming, but so can links, body text, headings etc.

[xan]

I think that content may well play a much stronger role in the future than it does now. There is a lot of competition and movement amongst search engines at the moment. The most foolproof way to make sure your site is alright is to have meaningful and helpful content on your site. As a customer, I won't buy from sites with tons of pages and stuff with hardly any information on them. It just doesn't look professional, and it doesn't instill trust in me. As for Links and Google, they have always been important, but good quality links, i.e. links from clean sites linking sensible to others which are related to the same topic is the best way to boost page rank and ranking. Things is, it looks like Google might move away from PR.

[Stormin]

I'm wondering if SEO-Guy is reading this thread. If you are out there I would be interested in your opinion of "Freebie" and similar page enhancement ideas. Sounds great but once everyone catches on to it I would think G and the other SE's would disaprove and penalize sites using these techniques. If not I will certainly give it a try. It just doesn't make sense that something so easy could increase anyones site so dramatically.

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