Every SEO expert in the world will tell you that Google ranks websites based on their quality and freshness. But is it possible to have too much of a good thing? It turns out, yes! In this case study, we examine what happens when companies produce more content than they can handle. We will also discuss Is more content good for ranking or not?
The situation is this
Last year, Sterling Sky dealt with a personal injury lawyer client in Florida who struggled to rank for some of their most important keywords. Before engaging with us, the legal firm had another company build up dozens of boilerplate service area pages targeting social security disability keywords. Every page focuses on a certain city or service region while also providing information about other cities or service areas.
The problem. The following qualities were present on the pages:
1. Content is very similar
In most of the service area pages, the location was significantly different. This is a popular strategy used by firms who want to target several locations in the hopes of attracting searches seeking “keyword + location.” Designed to rank in such cities. Because the material was created only to appear in search results, it did not meet the demands of the searchers.
2. There are no hyperlinks
There were practically no inbound links (or internal connections) on the various service area sites, making it difficult for search engines and searchers to locate them.
3. There is no traffic
Because of the issues above, the services area pages were not assisting the local business site in any way and may have even contributed to cruft.
4. The solution
We decided to eliminate all of the pages and redirect them to the site’s main social security disability pages because they weren’t contributing value to the site, mostly owing to issues three and four stated above.
5. The end outcome
My colleague Carrie Hill observed significant gains in their local pack rankings for “social security disability attorney” within weeks of doing so.
In some sectors and marketplaces, service area pages may be pretty effective. However, before executing a plan, it’s critical to assess the effect of the material you’re adding to your site.
Why should we be concerned?
When you invest time and money into an SEO strategy, it’s critical to have a testing plan in place that iterates and produces the intended results. Every case necessitates a thorough examination of each customer, their market, and the SERP environment to determine whether they want additional material on their site and, if so, what the best sort of content is for the target audience with whom they’re working.
Rather than producing and uploading a boatload of material without a plan or strategy to back it up, make sure you have a plan in place to develop links to the content — including internal links — and check to see if the pages you’ve already published are getting traffic.
The Bottom Line
Content is not the only thing that can make your ranking better. Various other aspects can help in doing so. We hope that you’re now clear about the question that Is more content good for ranking?
