Does SEO scale?

[AaronSchinke]

Well, does it?

[BlinkWeb]

Thats pretty broad. In what respect?

[AlanBleiweiss]

Ambiguity aside, SEO scales when implemented properly.  I have clients with hundreds of thousands of pages and clients with millions of pages.  Many aspects of SEO can be automated.  Of course, someone still needs to provide unique content, but they'd have to do that even without SEO.

Some important factors though include:

• Well structured data architecture (get those table relationships figured out for scalability from day 1)
• Content organization rules (category,sub-category and deeper relationship rules)
• Site navigation & related UX rules
• Standard Operating Procedure for social engagement and link building

Then we can even get into the debate about how to automate at least some of that social / link building effort as well.

Essentially though, with a proper plan and the right resources, maintaining the SEO of a million page site should not be any more difficult than a 500 page site.

[AaronSchinke]

No specific regard. Just in general. How well does quality SEO scale in the broadest of terms.

[BlinkWeb]

Sure it does. I would argue that onsite optimization becomes even more important on a large scale. Just given the fact that there is so much internal linking a good onsite strategy can be crucial to success.

Good SEO should also help usability of your visitors too. The reason it is rewarded is because thats what users want to see and Google wants to give it's users what they are looking for the first time.

Good SEO = A Good Site!

[Webdannmark]

It does and it doesn't (great answer I know!). Let me expand a bit on that

Onpage optimization is definitely scalable. Site architecture really only becomes important as content scales. The more content, the more structure is needed. BUT as we all know onpage is only one part of SEO - and a fairly small one at that if you look at technical onpage optimization. Perhaps 20-25%.

The other 75-80% is content generation and offpage activites (link generation, social engagement etc.) and I think these are much much harder to scale unless you have a wicked unique product that just drives insane amounts of diverse links and mentions to not just a home page but to individual content pages deep within the site structure. I have only seen a handful or so sites ever achieving this.