More Articles = More Chances of Ranking for Keywords = More Traffic? SEO

Discussion 2: More Articles = More Chances of Ranking for Keywords = More Traffic? SEO
Candari
Help: I need your opinion. We have too much content on our site. To be specific, we've published 740+ posts since October 2019. Apparently, the former Search Engine Optimization (SEO) manager believed that more content = more chances of ranking for keywords = more traffic.
I started leading our SEO team in September of this year, and since then, I paused new content generation and publication. I'm shifting our focus to indexation [a lot of these 740+ posts are not yet indexed], distribution and hopefully, consolidation = consolidating similar content + consolidating underperforming content with high-performing content.
Do you think I'm going the right direction with consolidation? If you were in my shoes, how will you fix having too much content? Not fishing for specific strategies, just fresh ideas so no need to get into details. Thank you!

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18 πŸ‘πŸ½18 39 πŸ’¬πŸ—¨

Jerome
Declutter. Canonical. Silos.
AtΓΈn
Silo your targets. Make one great one for each primary with secondaries as clusters vs scattered random clusters.
Mubashir
As per my opinion you have chose right path to focus on indexing the current topics.
Now analyse your already published content and make a priority. And select which content is more beneficial for you.
Suppose you chose 10 pieces of articles/content.
Now analyse your competitors one by one for each and compare with your article. Try to performs better than competitors.
On second place try to enrich the internal linking as much good possible with proper anchor.
Also add some content only for the pieces of content which you have priorities and then interlink them.
Marino
I'd look at categorization, internal links, and cannibalization.
Break the pages into cluster and internally-link them.
Run the site thru the Surfer SEO audit to get some quick wins.
Noindex pages with 0 clicks in the last 6 months.

Daisy Β» Marino
I agree! On Internal/external links alone, many times if you scan posts, not even one link can be found. So the first thing to do is to see (and update) if there are any. I also think using Surfer SEO to optimize these posts will be quite worthwhile! Then before updating/republishing the post, make sure they are enticing to the readers, correctly formatted with headings done correctly, run an SEO app like Yoast; review readability, etc.
Marino Β» Daisy
Orphaned pages don't stand a chance.

Sagar
Update the content and make it better, use reverse silo backlinks structure to get more link juice . Start with aggressive outreach campaigns .
Mutahi
Uh oh. Bot you and the former guy are kinda extreme in your actions.
Everyone who understands the value of content wouldn't slow down such a momentum.
Yea. Do an SEO audit + content audit. You can outsource or dedicate this to several people in your team.
I have a feeling that internal linking will solve your indexing problems in the next 3 months-ish.
"Too much content" is unheard of in the world of content!☺️ It's self sabotage.
Sit down with a content marketer and map the way forward. Content distribution structures should run concurrently with the publishing structures. None trades for the other
Daniel
I can't believe an SEO would get so much content produced yet be so careless about it that most of it ends up not even indexed. This to me sounds like someone was doing busy work because it's what the client can see and therefore he was only thinking about his own job security knowing it would take the client long time to realize the SEO users work wasn't doing anything because they were confused the whole time as they saw all these wonderful posts being made. Meanwhile they can't even judge if the posts are done correctly for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Unfortunately our industry is loaded with this kind of thing.
So there is such thing as crawl budget and indeed cannibalizing some of this content may be in your best interest. I got to wonder what the internal anchor strategy looks like on all these pages also. I would imagine the reason why they didn't get indexed is a lot of them are orphaned even. Internal anchor strategy and the link map you create is crucial. It can turn a blog post section into a real relevant traffic generating machine or end up as something you're looking at now. Crap. So it's hard to say without really having my whole arsenal of tools to look at everything but I think you're on the right track.
Kirsten Patricio πŸŽ“
I think the pages that don't get indexed aren't being indexed because Google does not find those pages relevant enough to be indexed. I don't know what niche you are serving, but indexing can vary on niche as well.
I think the focus should not be entirely on articles that aren't performing but more on articles that are performing and seeing if there is something else published within the website that might be hindering its full potential. I probably wouldn't worry as much on pages that aren't indexed. There's most likely a good reason why. However, if you do think there is a page that isn't indexed and you think it needs to be, optimization should definitely occur on that page. Have your team perform an audit on these pages. Tag pages that do not supply any sort of value as noindex/nofollow and create an optimization plan or workflow on pages that have potential.
I'd personally audit these contents/articles and see if they hold some value. You might need to consider not just an internal link structure but also how you would categorize these articles and also keeping in mind if there are pages that might be targeting the same keyword. This might cause cannibalization.
Not all of content might end up being visible on the website's navigation. However, I think it's necessary to have a holistic approach on clickthroughs. A good example, I would suggest, is how Google does their own blog entries.
I do think this might be a massive undertaking. You might need to conceptualize a roadmap for content creation and strategy best fit for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the business need of your client/company.
Candari ✍️
Thanks for providing such valuable insights, guys! I'm sorry if I missed to mention the specifics, but here are just a few areas where I've encountered issues in our blog:
β€’ Sitemap (just fixed)
β€’ Robots.txt (just fixed)
β€’ Thin content (Lots of it!)
β€’ keyword cannibalization
Internal link structure (only recent posts have been silo-ed)
β€’ Tags (we're in the e-learning niche and our blog posts have irrelevant + total nonsense tags like: difficult, long, and see.)
The former SEO managers made one huge mess of our blog that our execs have lost faith in what content can do. But here comes me… I'm determined to turn it into a money maker. So just three weeks of working on getting 20% of the posts indexed and our clicks on Google Search Console (GSC) have gone up by 82%.
Anyway, thanks for validating my idea and for giving me fresh perspectives to work with!

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This may satisfy you: Content-Length Is No Longer a Matter!
Discussion 1: More Articles = More Chances of Ranking for Keywords = More Traffic? SEO
Candari
Help: I need your opinion. We have too much content on our site. To be specific, we've published 740+ posts since October 2019. Apparently, the former Search Engine Optimization (SEO) manager believed that more content = more chances of ranking for keywords = more traffic.
I started leading our SEO team in September of this year, and since then, I paused new content generation and publication. I'm shifting our focus to indexation [a lot of these 740+ posts are not yet indexed], distribution and hopefully, consolidation = consolidating similar content + consolidating underperforming content with high-performing content.
Do you think I'm going the right direction with consolidation? If you were in my shoes, how will you fix having too much content? Not fishing for specific strategies, just fresh ideas so no need to get into details. Thank you!

πŸ“°πŸ‘ˆ

6 πŸ‘πŸ½6 27 πŸ’¬πŸ—¨

Thies
Clearly you understand the complexity of this question, Charmagne
I use a two question filter with clients with selling websites:
1. Does this content need to be on my site to help my customers get what they want?
2. If this content was on a different site, would I consider putting my advertising on it?
Everything else is noise.
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Buth
That's great point!

Buth
I think Thies made a very good point. An ex-SEO and you, both focused on methods/methodolodgy instead of focusing on idea/idealogy. The ideology is a "platinum rule". "Treat others as they wish to be treated." That's all about your customers and visitors. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not playing game with search engines or Google's recommendations. What do your customers need?
Of course, there are some "technical" factors. You should also look at a website informational architecture. Sometimes changes in internal linking can hurt your SEO. Sometimes, it can improve the "quality" of a site. But tthink about your customers and their needs/pains in the first place.
Ammon Johns πŸ‘‘
The situation of "too much content" is certainly a valid concern, and has increasingly been one of the first fixes many sites need after a decade of lousy SEO advice to just make more content, or that every site should be blogging every week. I have literally seen sites with 10,000 total URLs of content that only has the authority and importance levels to deserve to have around 100 pages at most regularly crawled and indexed…
Crawl Priority is a very real thing. Google focuses the finite resource of crawling time and processing on where it counts. Sites and topics with high demand are prioritized over sites and topics with less demand.
In the most basic, easy to understand and practical terms, this means that when any site without a lot of authority is getting started, it needs to create content that earns extra authority and crawl priority. Content that gets links and shares. Only creating further 'extra' content as the demand and priority for that content rises.
Because if you get to just a 300 page site where Google only sees a priority to index 100 pages, it is down to a robot to pick which 2/3rds of your content is not indexed, and that might be all your money pages.
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Richard Hearne πŸ‘‘
The first question I have is why long-established content is not indexed:
"a lot of these 740+ posts are not yet indexed"
I think you need to confirm that there is an indexing issue, and then try to confirm why. This might give you some very good pointers as to the correct strategy to apply to this legacy content, and potentially what future strategy to apply with regards content.
IMO something is wrong with your site and/or content if your above statement is accurate.
Christopher Β» Ammon Johns
I'd say there isn't something like too much content but too many articles. Because if it's real content, it will be digested by search engines and visitors alike.
So it's a matter of defining content in the first place. To me the 10th article that doesn't provide any new information about X isn't needed content in my eyes, for example.
Added:
I look at it like the web is a huge shopping mall and websites are like stores in there selling various products (articles). If the articles are diverse enough they're good and the store will prosper. If there are some products that are available in other stores, it may not be as good but could be fine if they're different enough. If they're the exact same the store won't work. So, if the store is nice but has crappy products, won't work. If the store is crap but has good products it might work. If the store is good and has good products it will work.

Ammon Johns πŸ‘‘ Β» Christopher
Yeah I think we're coming at the same conclusion from slightly different angles. Ultimately the issue is that the value within the content is too little, or more precisely, too diffuse. Concentrating the value into a smaller volume of pages and words is appropriate therefore.

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Michael Martinez πŸ‘‘
There's no way for people to know if you're making the right decision. You know the site better than us.
If you're confident that this is the best way for you to manage the content, then keep going. You can always add better content later.
Micha
Sounds like you are on the right track. "Thin" content is "bad". Be sure to set redirects of old urls to condensed content. Improving the quality of your content is always good as is indexing, backlinks, optimizing content with h1, h2, schema and microformat, etc. *In general there is no such thing as "too much content". You can have to much junk content and that sounds like what you are addressing.
Adi
Hey πŸ™‚
when you say they are not indexed yet r u talking about all the posts pages? (All the 700+ since they was published?)
if so, what is the notice you r getting from the Coverage Report in SC about these pages? Could it be maybe "crawled but not indexed?"
if that's the case its just Google way telling you:
Hey we crawled ur website pages, and decided based on our info about the market and ur site – Not to indexed it.
Last I've heard …
Google official response to it that its not the new punishment. Because its not that a website is abusing on purpose (fishing, cloaking etc..)
its just that the content there is not that relevant to the searchers.
So if i was you i would start there.
By checking why Google decided not to index my pages.
My experience showed me that there is always a valid reason.
Hoped it helps
Drake
If the content is of high quality, id make sure there is an appropriate keyword/sitemap and internal linking strategy. If it's filler content, maybe try to customize it? Otherwise, consolidating is good.
Candari ✍️
Thanks for providing such valuable insights, guys! I'm sorry if I missed to mention the specifics, but here are just a few areas where I've encountered issues in our blog:
β€’ Sitemap (just fixed)
β€’ Robots.txt (just fixed)
β€’ Thin content (Lots of it!)
β€’ keyword cannibalization
Internal link structure (only recent posts have been silo-ed)
β€’ Tags (we're in the e-learning niche and our blog posts have irrelevant + total nonsense tags like: difficult, long, and see.)
The former SEO managers made one huge mess of our blog that our execs have lost faith in what content can do. But here comes me… I'm determined to turn it into a money maker. So just three weeks of working on getting 20% of the posts indexed and our clicks on Google Search Console (GSC) have gone up by 82%.
Anyway, thanks for validating my idea and for giving me fresh perspectives to work with!

Richard Hearne πŸ‘‘ Β» Candari
Which of those issues caused "a lot of these 740+ posts are not yet indexed" please?

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