PR Dilution and Number of Pages Indexed

[Travis-W]

Hi Mozzers,

My client is really pushing for me to get thousands, if not millions of pages indexed through the use of long-tail keywords.

I know that I can probably get quite a few of them into Google, but will this dilute the PR on my site?

These pages would be worthwhile in that if anyone actually visits them, there is a solid chance they will convert to a lead do to the nature of the long-tail keywords.

My suggestion is to run all the keywords for these thousands of pages through adwords to check the number of queries and only create pages for the ones which actually receive searches.

What do you guys think?

I know that the content needs to have value and can't be scraped/low-quality and pulling these pages out of my butt won't end well, but I need solid evidence to make a case either for or against it to my clients.

[Doc_Sheldon]

Hi, Travis-

I wouldn't be concerned with "diluting" any pagerank that you already have, if that's your question. You may be setting up new pages in competition with existing pages, if they're going after the same terms, though. The longer the existing pages have been out there, unmodified, the easier a new page may outrank it, all other things being equal.

Unfortunately, without seeing the site, it's impossible to even render a guestimate. For instance, how's your crawl budget? if it's limited, QDF could possibly allow newer pages to push older pages into the shadows. You might check out this post: http://www.algohunters.com/building-solid-index-presence-optimizing-crawl-budget/

[DougRoberts]

OK, I get what he's thinking, but there's another problem in addition to diluting or canibalising your money keywords/head-terms, or running into crawl problems etc..

These pages also need to do more than sit there getting traffic for long-tale keywords. They also need to support the goals of your business/website and get people to engage with your website and writing content (thousands of pages) that'll do this is a tough ask!

It's not just about the volume of the traffic - but the relevance and intent of that traffic and what ultimately that traffic is worth to you or your client.

If visitors click through to your content and bounce straight back to the search results then you're just wasting your time and your time/money. ( http://moz.com/blog/solving-the-pogo-stick-problem-whiteboard-friday )

Take a look at he engagement metrics for your current long-tale keywords. What's the bounce rate / page depth for these visitors. Do any of them actually likely to convert?

Don't know if that'll help persuade your client.... good luck!

[Travis-W]

Thanks, Doug.

I know that these pages will have a solid conversion rate.  The long tail keywords are for product pages on an e-commerce site.

After posting, I took a look at the competitors' sites in the industry, and most of them have 150k - 300k of these similar product pages indexed.  This client only has about 40k, so I think we will go ahead and try to beef it up.

[DougRoberts]

Ah, e-commerce product pages - that makes more sense!