Can You Get Better Ranking/Conversion by Reducing the Number of Pages?

[justin-brock]

I am seriously considering reducing the number of pages in a section of our website. We currently have 39 webpages. I'm considering reducing it to 6.

The site architecture would make more sense giving recent design changes. And we could focus more attention on improving conversions from these 6 new pages. But I'm considering doing this mainly because I think it'll help us do a better job of communicating to and converting our audience.

The new pages would be longish. The existing 39 pages are by no means stubs, but these new pages would be longer.

Anyway, what I want to put out for discussion is the SEO impact.

• What are the good SEO reasons for reducing the number of pages?
• Can 6 well-done pages out perform 39 pretty-well-done pages?
• How many queries can one page rank for well?
• Is this SEO suicide?

Honestly, there's a part of me that cannot believe I'm saying this, but I think my heart is in the right place.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Justin

Ask yourself:

• Do all of these 39 pages individually provide value?

• Can you condense these pages into 6?

• Have you considered a content audit?

• Have you checked your rankings for these 39 pages? Check Google & Bing Webmaster Tools / SEMRush

• Your organic traffic? Check analytics

• Do these pages have good backlinks? Check Majestic / Open Site Explorer

• Longer content has correlations with better rankings based on some studies

• Backlinko ranking study

• Searchmetrics ranking study

This is a big decision and a big undertaking. You need to assess the value of these pieces - you said so yourself they are pretty well done. But, if they can be condensed into these six pieces and you have a plan in place to do so, then good luck! But, if you find in your assessment that there is user / search value to these pages, then you need to take a comb through everything and really make sure this is the route you want to take. There are definitely risks.

Hope this helps! Good luck!