Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How many pages for a new site for Google to sink it's teeth into
-
Hello,
I've got a high traffic site I'm building. Is 20 articles enough to start or should I start with 40 or 60 to not flop? I've got good internal linking. I've got:
3 10X articles
17 cornerstonesso far.
Worked hard so far. Do I launch? or wait for 40? 60? I know thousands is best. Competitors have much more.
Thank you,
Bob
-
@BobGW said in How many pages for a new site for Google to sink it's teeth into:
Hello,
I've got a high traffic site I'm building. Is 20 articles enough to start or should I start with 40 or 60 to not flop? I've got good internal linking. I've got:
3 10X articles
17 cornerstones
so far.
Worked hard so far. Do I launch? or wait for 40? 60? I know thousands is best. Competitors have much more.
Thank you,You’re in a great position to launch with the 20 articles you have, especially with 3 10X articles and 17 cornerstone pieces. Quality matters more than quantity, and your focus on strong internal linking and content depth is key. While competitors may have thousands of articles, your strategy should be to launch now and continue adding high-quality content consistently. Don’t wait for 40 or 60 articles—start now, monitor performance, and grow from there. Quality content combined with a consistent content plan will help you succeed over time. I fyou still confuse learn more
-
Thank you for your replies. Is there anything else besides internal linking, 50 first links, and on-site SEO that I need to keep in mind that's out of the normal ballpark?
Thank you.
-
"I’d recommend focusing on building quality content first. For example, my soccer online games website, which started with just a few detailed articles on online soccer games, soon grew to include game reviews, player stats, and strategy guides. This variety attracted more traffic and helped us rank higher. It's not just about quantity, but relevance and regular updates. Once you have a solid base, gradually increase your content, just like we did, and consider adding backlinks to boost authority over time."
-
@BobGW said in How many pages for a new site for Google to sink it's teeth into:
Hello,
I've got a high traffic site I'm building. Is 20 articles enough to start or should I start with 40 or 60 to not flop? I've got good internal linking. I've got:
3 10X articles
17 cornerstones
so far.
Worked hard so far. Do I launch? or wait for 40? 60? I know thousands is best. Competitors have much more."I’d recommend focusing on building quality content first. For example, my soccer online games website, which started with just a few detailed articles on online soccer games, soon grew to include game reviews, player stats, and strategy guides. This variety attracted more traffic and helped us rank higher. It's not just about quantity, but relevance and regular updates. Once you have a solid base, gradually increase your content, just like we did, and consider adding backlinks to boost authority over time."
-
For a new website, it's ideal to have at least 10-20 well-optimized pages to help Google crawl and index effectively. Consistent content updates and quality pages improve visibility in search results over time.
-
20 well-optimised articles with good internal linking and a mix of 10X and cornerstone content is a solid start! Quality trumps quantity, especially for a new site. If your articles are highly valuable and target relevant keywords, Google can begin indexing and ranking your site effectively.
I think you don’t need to wait for 40 or 60 articles. Focus on publishing consistently post-launch while promoting your existing content to build authority. Competitors may have more, but even a smaller site can compete with exceptional content and strong SEO practices.
-
@BobGW said in How many pages for a new site for Google to sink it's teeth into:
Hello,
I've got a high traffic site I'm building. Is 20 articles enough to start or should I start with 40 or 60 to not flop? I've got good internal linking. I've got:
3 10X articles
17 cornerstones
so far.
Worked hard so far. Do I launch? or wait for 40? 60? I know thousands is best. Competitors have much more.
Thank you,
BobHi Bob,
20 articles with good internal linking is a solid start, especially with 10X and cornerstone content. You can launch now and continue adding more articles over time. Focus on quality and consistency, and you’ll build up traffic as you grow. Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Chat GPT
I want to get your thoughts on Chat GPT for creating articles on my site to drive SEO. Does Google approve of this type of content or not? I seems quite good quality - I suppose a key question also is: is it duplicate content? I have used on Propress website and also on blog sites so need to understand if this will reduce my rankings. Thanks
Content Development | | Katie231
Matthew1 -
Should I split long form content?
I have quite a long content on my site. By length I mean around 8000-9000 words. I optimized it to cover almost all searches related to a topic. But this length makes me uneasy for some reason. I do not think that users will find what they are looking for in such a long content. However, I don't want to neglect the SEO aspect of the content. I can talk about something like this without sharing the keywords completely: Title + for girls Title + for boys Title + for kids Title + for girlfriend Title + for boyfriend Title + for students As I said, in the current situation, these are all sub-headings (H2) of 8000-9000-word content. When I make a separate content for each of them, I can bring them all closer to 1500-2000 words. However, I am undecided whether this is the right step in terms of SEO and content optimization. What are your views?
SEO Tactics | | mozasea0 -
Does content revealed by a 'show more' button get crawled by Google?
I have a div on my website with around 500 words of unique content in, automatically when the page is first visited the div has a fixed height of 100px, showing a couple of hundred words and fading out to white, with a show more button, which when clicked, increases the height to show the full content. My question is, does Google crawl the content in that div when it renders the page? Or disregard it? Its all in the source code. Or worse, do they consider this cloaking or hidden content? It is only there to make the site more useable for customers, so i don't want to get penalised for it. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOhmygod0 -
Why is my client's site not ranking anymore? Like big time!
Ok, I'm reaching out to all of you Moz'rs for some help with this one. My client's site has dropped off the face of google in a real short period of time. It went from page 1 (avg rank 3 to page 6 (avg rank 50) and below in the matter of 2 weeks. Here's some facts: 1. DA is a 22 and homepage PA is a 31. It outranks all other sites in its competitive set. 2. The homepage used to be the page that displays for keyword searches, now its the FAQ page, which has a lower PA of 23. Why has the home page seemingly vaporized? And, why is the FAQ showing as the first result? What should I start checking. I feel paralyzed, not sure where to start. More info: a. There are no alerts present in Webmaster Tools. b. For some reason the homepage (domain.com) was 301'd to domain.com/home.html. Domain.com is indexed by Google, however, domain.com/home.html is not. If this is the issue, what is the best way to handle it? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhoadesjohn1 -
After reading of Google's so called "over-optimization" penalty, is there a penalty for changing title tags too frequently?
In other words, does title tag change frequency hurt SEO ? After changing my title tags, I have noticed a steep decline in impressions, but an increase in CTR and rankings. I'd like to once again change the title tags to try and regain impressions. Is there any penalty for changing title tags too often? From SEO forums online, there seems to be a bit of confusion on this subject...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Felix_LLC0 -
Merging Sites: Will redirecting the old homepage to an internal page on the new site cause issues?
I've ended up with two sites which have similar content (but not duplicate) and target similar keywords, rather than trying to maintain two sites I would like to merge the sites together. The old site is more of a traditional niche site and targets a particular set of keywords on its homepage, the new site is more of an authority site with a magazine type homepage and targets the same set of keywords from an internal page. My question is: Should I redirect the old site's homepage to the relevant internal page on the new website...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lara_dar
...or should I redirect the old site's homepage to the new site's homepage? (the old site's homepage backlinks are a mixture of partial match keyword anchor text, naked URLs and branded anchor text) I am in two minds (a & b!) (a) Redirecting to the internal page would be great for ranking as there are some decent backlinks and the content is similar (b) But usually when you do a 301 redirect the homepage usually directs to the new homepage and some of the old site's links are related to the domain rather than the keyword (e.g. http://www.site.com) and some people will be looking for the site's homepage. What do you think? Your help is much appreciated (and hope this makes sense...!)0 -
Two Pages with the Same Name Different URL's
I was hoping someone could give me some insight into a perplexing issue that I am having with my website. I run an 20K product ecommerce website and I am finding it necessary to have two pages for my content: 1 for content category pages about wigets one for shop pages for wigets 1st page would be .com/shop/wiget/ 2nd page would be .com/content/wiget/ The 1st page would be a catalogue of all the products with filters for the customer to narrow down wigets. So ultimately the URL for the shop page could look like this when the customer filters down... .com/shop/wiget/color/shape/ The second page would be content all about the Wigets. This would be types of wigets colors of wigets, how wigets are used, links to articles about wigets etc. Here are my questions. 1. Is it bad to have two pages about wigets on the site, one for shopping and one for information. The issue here is when I combine my content wiget with my shop wiget page, no one buys anything. But I want to be able to provide Google the best experience for rankings. What is the best approach for Google and the customer? 2. Should I rel canonical all of my .com/shop/wiget/ + .com/wiget/color/ etc. pages to the .com/content/wiget/ page? Or, Should I be canonicalizing all of my .com/shop/wiget/color/etc pages to .com/shop/wiget/ page? 3. Ranking issues. As it is right now, I rank #1 for wiget color. This page on my site would be .com/shop/wiget/color/ . If I rel canonicalize all of my pages to .com/content/wiget/ I am going to loose my rankings because all of my shop/wiget/xxx/xxx/ pages will then point to .com/content/wiget/ page. I am just finding with these massive ecommerce sites that there is WAY to much potential for duplicate content, not enough room to allow Google the ability to rank long tail phrases all the while making it completely complicated to offer people pages that promote buying. As I said before, when I combine my content + shop pages together into one page, my sales hit the floor (like 0 - 15 dollars a day), when i just make a shop page my sales are like (1k+ a day). But I have noticed that ever since Penguin and Panda my rankings have fallen from #1 across the board to #15 and lower for a lot of my phrase with the exception of the one mentioned above. This is why I want to make an information page about wigets and a shop page for people to buy wigets. Please advise if you would. Thanks so much for any insight you can give me!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SKP0 -
Best approach to launch a new site with new urls - same domain
www.sierratradingpost.com We have a high volume e-commerce website with over 15K items, an average of 150K visits per day and 12.6 pages per visit. We are launching a new website this spring which is currently on a beta sub domain and we are looking for the best strategy that preserves our current search rankings while throttling traffic (possibly 25% per week) to measure results. The new site will be soft launched as we plan to slowly migrate traffic to it via a load balancer. This way we can monitor performance of the new site while still having the old site as a backup. Only when we are fully comfortable with the new site will we submit the 301 redirects and migrate everyone over to the new site. We will have a month or so of running both sites. Except for the homepage the URL structure for the new site is different than the old site. What is our best strategy so we don’t lose ranking on the old site and start earning ranking on the new site, while avoiding duplicate content and cloaking issues? Here is what we got back from a Google post which may highlight our concerns better: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=62d0a16c4702a17d&hl=en&fid=62d0a16c4702a17d00049b67b51500a6 Thank You, sincerely, Stephan Woo Cude SEO Specialist scude@sierratradingpost.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | STPseo0