Large number of new web pages to launch in bulk or to stretch over longer time?

[JonathanFashbaugh]

I think it could depend upon your long-term plan for these pages. If it's all original, useful content as you say, then I can't see any negative effects of launching it all at once. The problem could come more in how you plan on promoting these pages and how many of these pages are going to be important pages within your website. If there are key pages, depending upon the team and resources that you have to promote these pages, you might consider releasing them over time so you don't have a glut of content sitting there without promotion in social media/PR/link building efforts because you don't have enough people-power, time, or money to get the word out about it all.

On the other hand, if your plan is just passive, receiving long-tail search traffic as the search engines work their way through all of that content, then why delay?

[TommyTan]

Hi,

I think it depends on what kind of pages are you launching.  Product description pages? Blog articles?  If it is product descriptions or similar pages, I would launch all of them at once so that your pages will get crawled earlier and indexed earlier.  If it is blog articles, I would strectch them over a period of time since Google loves fresh contents and by stretching the period, you will have 2-3 fresh article posted everyday.  SWEET!

[lcourse]

Jonatahan, Tommy thanks for the comments.

To clarify. Pages are destination pages for travel related ecommerce site.

Faceted navigation type sub pages for existing destinations, but with lots of unique content for each facet.

My concern was that I did not want to raise any kind of alarms with google where triplication of number of webpages under one domain  from one day to another may raise flags for appearing unnatural or manipulative.

[allenrocks]

The New Yorker has a famous cartoon with two dogs on a computer that said 'no one knows your a dog on the internet', unfortunately Google would rather everyone knew. What I mean by that is a carefully concocted strategy may not be rewarded with large SEO value initially, as Google prefers the slow and steady approach. That's not to say that you may be contributing unique content that your industry is badly in need of. But ranking Amazon in Google's eyes would be a time consuming effort in the public domain, not one that launches completed and ready, unless of course you are a big brand. But if the content is meant to be interpreted as a complete set then I don't see any harm in launching all at once, a website launch, or campaign would be a good example.

[EGOL]

In a span of three months you are going to go from 30,000 pages to 1/4 million pages.   If these pages really are unique, genuine content with minimal duplication - not cookie cutter pages - then you have a chance that they will be indexed and stay in the index  --  if and only if your website has enough linkjuice.

To get these pages indexed you will need many powerful links connecting deep into the mass of new pages to send spiders in and force them to chew their way out through the unindexed pages.   These links must be permanent.  If they are not then google will not spider these pages very often and they will be forgotten and drop from the index.

For 1/4 million pages you will need at least a couple hundred links from PR4 or better pages (each without a lot of outbound links) to supply enough spider action to get the new pages indexed, hold them in the index and make them competitive.  So, be sure that your plan to enlarge this site will have that.

[lcourse]

EGOL, thanks a lot. Again excellent advice.

Do you think new pages could harm ranking/indexing of my existing destination pages?

Would you launch the first 60.000 pages on one day or rather stretch time period?

New pages are mostly just 2 clicks from my index page. 
Also have to clarify that we have have about 30 language versions in same domain, so under 10.000 pages finally per language.
Domain authority is 58 with 358 linking root domains (without any link building).

Frankly I doubt we will get in a natural way  lots of deeplinks as in the past 95% of our links were going to our index page, but will now consider to plan some active link building after launch.

[EGOL]

New pages are mostly just 2 clicks from my index page.

Here is the way I view 1/4 million pages.

If you have 25 links on your PR6 homepage - each hitting one of 25 category pages, then each category page linking into 100 subcategory pages and each of those linking into 100 individual pages.  That's what it takes to get 1/4 million pages on a site with each being three clicks down.

If your homepage is a very strong PR6 then you might have a chance with such a content structure.  If it is a weak PR6 then I think that you will need more links into the category pages or deeper.

If all of these links are from internal pages of your own site you might see a bit or rankings decline on your site's historic pages.

Do you think new pages could harm ranking/indexing of my existing destination pages?

YES.   If these pages are thin content or have heavy page-to-page duplication it can trigger a Panda problem for your website.  This can result in a site-wide ranking reduction.

I know people who have lots of pages built from commonly used geographic databases such as GNIS and their sites have been hit.  Probably because they have a common template with different fields of data inserted.  Their page get indexed, rank for a while and then they see a huge rankings and traffic drop.  Historic pages suffer along with the new pages.

[lcourse]

Excellent. We have lots of proprietary content,

I am getting a bit side-tracked now, but if you have a minute I would really like to hear your opinion, as your comment touches my principal doubt, which I posted here a week ago, but did not get any good response.

Shall I provide facets of  category pages for as many facets as I can provide unique content and benefit for visitor?

I plan to launch about 30 facets for each destination page. All unique content. All useful for visitor, but I am not sure if I should limit to less facets. Is 30 facets OK as long as they are unique and provide value? If I should cut out facets based on low search volume, where to make the cut?

To give an example, for a good ranking hotel site, should I create (among 30 other facets) facets like "hotels boston table tennis", "hotels new york table tennis", if I have unique proprietary content for these pages, despite relatively low search volume?

[EGOL]

"hotels new york table tennis"

"hotels boston table tennis"

Just being honest.   These sound like spam to me.

If you have 1/4 million pages of this stuff my money is on your site getting toasted.

[lcourse]

Have chosen on purpose a lower search volume example.

I have  destination pages with  facets of different leisure activities possible at the destination:

golf hotels USA

tennis hotels spain

while the above certainly have search volume, where to draw the line if you have detailled content on facilities of leisure activities at the hotel.

[EGOL]

You might surprise me and have high quality content for these pages... but for the volume of pages that you are talking about I think that it would be really hard and really expensive to have content that will survive.

That's about all I can say.

[lcourse]

thanks.

understand your doubts.

indeed it was expensive to create and especially to update great part of the content every year.

[EGOL]

If you have done this you might make a lot of money.