... to get a lot of search referrals, you must have lots of ways for your prospects and customers to discover your information. I'm a proponent of a large and dominant index footprint because I have a fundamental belief that to get a lot of search referrals, you must have lots of ways for your prospects and customers to discover your information. This includes large and diverse footprints in all search engines, syndication portals, RSS search engines - anywhere you can be seen or found - the more, the better. Consumer and Search User Behavior I've grown fond of large and dominant index footprints because as a consumer (and avid user of Google), it's abundantly clear to me that I respond favorably to constant brand impressions coming from the same vendor. Atlas Research confirms this with solid and scientifically-gathered evidence. The study identifies the impact of advertising overlap across Web portals, including MSN, AOL, Yahoo! and Google, among others. The report titled, “How Overlap Impacts Reach, Frequency and Conversions”, confirms that advertising overlap on multiple sites has a significant impact on consumer conversions, which is in stark contrast with current industry reporting standards that attribute 100 percent of online conversions to the last impression (or last “click”) seen. Hmmm... this study indicates it's the multitude of impressions that suggest how visitors react to your message. Indeed, each brand or discovery impression accumulates in your mind. I always sensed this was true - I had just never seen a study that confirms it until now. If a prospect is searching in a variety of ways about a product or service, or information you may have in your blogsite, (as we all often do) -- if they see your company name many times, there's no debate; it's more beneficial than if they see you just once or when they conclude their search session and see you just once. There's also a webcast about this study if you want the direct overview. Scenario: One Page vs Fifty Pages My favorite argument that supports the benefit of a bigger index footprint is best described by this scenario. Imagine a company with one page in the Google index and a competitor with no pages. Which company is likely to get more search referrals? Can we also conclude that a company with 50 pages is more likely to get more search recommendations and referral clicks than a company with one page? It seems like a safe assumption, although I have found no independent data that confirms this, but I do have MyST Blogsite® customer data that confirms this. Google Optimization Forum Let's take a look at what a few SEO experts have to say about this subject in a forum thread about more pages in the index: The main advantages of extra pages are: 1. The opportunity to target additional keywords (without compromising existing pages). 2. The opportunity to add quality content/link bait (to attract more incoming links).
The above comment seems to make sense; item #2 certainly increases the likelihood that your domain will have more opportunities to grow in terms of page rank because there are simply more places for other people to link to your information. Few indexed pages would constrain this outcome. More pages [are better] if they all contain useful information. They will generate more traffic and backlinks which overtime will help your whole site to rank well.
A simple but confirming observation. Adding extra pages is fine so long as they contain meaningful content; adding extra pages purely to increase the size of the site is counter productive.
This is also good advice - and why we're always looking at the pages that Blogsites tend to generate automatically to make sure each type is meaningful. The advantage of separate pages is that you have the opportunity to give yourself more internal links with relevant anchor text.
This one I didn't see coming but it certainly makes sense - "internal links with relevant anchor text". Apparently some SEO'ists (perhaps many) believe that the internal linking map influences ranking and recommendations; bigger, more comprehensive navigation relationships produces more for search engines to digest and a deeper and more meaningful experience for visitors. This seems plausible and a simple scenario underscores why: Imagine a site with one main page - it's an FAQ. Each question has an answer on the main page. Imagine each question and answer is also published separately in a page of its own and linked [internally] back to the main page. Is it more valuable than just one page with all questions and answers embedded? Of course it is - the reason is obvious - the site provides discrete questions and answers as separate title topics which allow users to dine on the information a la cart or as a browsable collection. Extend the scenario - what if specific terms included links to glossary pages? The value increases for many reasons, but the point this SEO expert is making has more to do with a comprehensive [internally linked] resource that includes more relevant content about the domain as a whole - clearly a pattern that Google can easily recognize as more useful to visitors. SEOMOZ.org: Search Engine Ranking Factors V2 This site recently published comments from more than three dozen of the worlds foremost authorities on search engine ranking factors. The entire document and comments are well worth the read if you truly care about the nuances of information and presentation architecture and search findability. A few of the ranking factors pertain specifically to the question (and benefits) of greater index penetration. - Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure - this refers to the number and importance of internal links. This item scored a 4 (out of 5 possible) giving it exceptional importance. Comment by Lucas Ng - "
- Quality/Relevance of Links to External Pages - this refers to pages that point to high quality, topically-related pages. The more often this occurs, the better. This item scored a 3.5 designating it as high importance. Comment by Barry Welford - "This relates to the whole concept of authority and hub websites. What's good for people should translate into value for the search engines.
- Rate of New Pages Added to Site - this refers to the amount and frequency of new, spiderable documents added to the domain over time. This ranked a 2.5 (moderate importance). Comment by Scottie Claiborne - "I don't believe the rate of adding pages has anything to do with ranking, but I do believe the more good pages of content you have, the better."
While I've managed to find a wealth of information that suggests index penetration is important, this post must end somewhere, so I'll call attention to another SEO expert and author of SEO Fast Start, Dan Thies who simply states: "The #1 Goal Is To Get More Pages Indexed"
He makes this assertion in many places on his blog, but in this particular context, he's suggesting that constraining internal links with the use of no-follow attribute tags can have a positive impact that actually increases the number of pages that Google will index. This assertion looks interesting and we'll investigate the concept, but at the outset, it's not relevant to this post, and more importantly Dan sums up his index penetration belief with this evidence: "One of my students worked through a major site restructuring last year, and went from a few hundred to over 1000 pages indexed - with significant gains in traffic and sales." - Dan Thies
Lastly, SEO experts everywhere are presently discussing a controversial method known as Third Level Push For Deeper Index Penetration. As mentioned earlier, it uses the no-follow attribute to influence page indexability by Google. If deeper search index penetration were unimportant, it's doubtful that 500,000 pages in Google would be referencing this method and crafting strategies for implementation. The ultimate goal for anyone considering this approach is greater index penetration and it appears lots of SEO'ists are very interested. Does index penetration matter? I think it does, but tell me what you think. | 
