Think of every page on your website as an open doorway inviting search engine web traffic to your site. The more pages you have, the more keywords your website can feature. Keywords are how the search engines find your site. More pages = more keywords = more people likely to find you. It's through the magic the search engines like Google and Bing that all those extra pages and their extra keywords will bring more web searchers to your doors.
That being said, the number of open doors you need on your site depends on a number of factors: your goals/industry, your competition, your time, and your budget.
Pages to Meet Your Goals
This article is part of the Business Blogging 101 series.
There are a few pages, though, that nearly every small business website should have: Home, About, Services/Products, Contact, and Value Proposition (aka, Why You Should Choose Us.) We won't dwell on these today, but watch for a new blog post on this topic next week.
Going further with your goals, if you want to be "The Authority" in an industry that has a deep well of knowledge, you'll need a lot of pages. For example, a plant nursery probably needs a lot of pages because there is a great depth of knowledge they can share online. Providing this information gives them the look of an authority in their industry. From from pages detailing specific plants and vertical mulching through to insect and weed control, a nursery website could end up with a lot of pages. And that's a lot of open doors for visitors to get into their page.
But if your industry is narrow and specific, you probably don't need nearly as many pages. If your business grows and sells lavender plants and lavendar-based soaps, you are targeting a smaller audience and they are likely to be looking for one big door labeled "Lavendar" or one of several smaller doors that all also include "Lavendar" on their label.
Pages to Beat Your Competition
Don't go nuts trying to have more pages than the competition.
The number of pages defined by your competition will be similar to those required by your business goals and industry. However, if you are in a very competitive but still narrow industry, you will want to bump up the number of pages you have. Again, the idea is to open doors with pages.
Where I live there are few lavendar growers and many pecan growers. To get their websites to show pu ahead of the competition, the pecan growers need to create additional pages to open up their websites to visitors.
Google your competition and browse their website. You don't necessarily need more pages than they have, but if all your website is paltry compared to the sites of your competitors, you might want to start creating new pages so you can throw your doors open wide.
Pages In Your Time
The online marketing experts Hubspot say that websites with over 50 pages get 48% more traffic than their less wordy counterparts. Based on those statistics, I've heard people state that no one should launch a website with fewer than 50 pages. But who has that kind of time? Not me. I have launched every website with just a handful of pages and then I added more as I went along.
Take the time to create a few pages -- see next week's post for a basic starting set -- and then add more as you go along. Blogging is one of my favorite ways to add more pages (aka, more keywords) to my websites. It's easy and not all that time consuming. Plus, if you dedicate yourself to regularly scheduled blogging, your website will grow into a content-rich warehouse with open doors everywhere.
Pages Without Going Over Budget
Many people tell me that they are simply not writers and, therefore, cannot create the pages necessary for their websites. Content writers are everywhere and they can be hired to flesh out your website. But remember that these writers will cost money.
Businesses like Elance and Guru.com can provide you with the writing skills you need at a reasonable price. But local talent can also be picked up without breaking your business piggy bank. Contact college or even high school journalism departments to find students, maybe even teachers, who are inexpesive word smiths. You also might be surprised how many ghostwriters you have living in your town.
The Quick Takeaway
There's no magic number of pages that makes your website "perfect." Start with what you have and build as you go. Done is better than perfect. If you get caught up in having the perfect website that is launched when it's done, you'll find yourself with a bad case of Analysis Paralisys and you'll never get your online doors thrown open.