Does quantity matter for SEO?

[epicstate]

There's no doubt in the importance of the quality of content in SEO. But what about the quantity? If you increase number of articles on your site but decrease quality of them then what would be the effects in SEO?
For example you write 5 quality articles for a blog and write 50 articles for another blog but its quality is lesser than 5 article blog. What thing will you be familiar to?

 

[EpicGlobalWeb]

Quality mostly effects reader engagement more than SEO even though it's also a plus for SEO.

Quantity, when not duplicated and done properly with the html entities in the right places will help your SEO greater than a few really good articles.

The exception to these rules is, however, the popularity of a given article. Then you get backlinks because people share and enjoy it.

So. Do not make this into an either or competition when both matter.

 

[Hawker]

If you increase number of articles on your site but decrease quality of them then what would be the effects in SEO?

Well your readership would decline if your content quality declines. So your SEO will decline too as far as getting good ranking positions through shares, social signals, mentions, citations, backlinks etc go.

Great content naturally gets linked to a lot, gets a lot of shares etc by the readers.

Poor quality content doesn't.

So even if you increase the articles but are decreasing the quality. All you are doing is peddling the same rubbish articles nobody wants to read.

Where as if you increase the articles you publish to your site and also increase their quality then you are posting quality articles that people want to read and share with their next door neighbour.

Even if you are writing articles for another site that links to your site where you have better quality articles, you still don't want to make those articles crappy low quality articles as otherwise those articles wont get much chance to rank high and nobody will want to read them and visit your site through them anyway.

Therefore, it makes more sense to always post high quality articles, whether its to your own site or on another site.

That way people know your site is a quality site before they've even visited it.

But then when they do, they realize its actually better than they expected because all your content is just super amazing high quality.

It's a no brainer if you ask me.

 

[vishwa]

Quality post is important thing But when you add more posts with quality content it will increase your blog credibility and authority. Hence it will also help you in SEO.

 

[PTTed]

There's no doubt in the importance of the quality of content in SEO. But what about the quantity? If you increase number of articles on your site but decrease quality of them then what would be the effects in SEO?
For example you write 5 quality articles for a blog and write 50 articles for another blog but its quality is lesser than 5 article blog. What thing will you be familiar to?

Based on your description, I assume you mean that you have two separate blogs within one website? One has high quality articles and the other has lower quality articles? And the purpose of the second (lower quality) blog is not to generate incoming traffic and readership, but instead it is just used as a way to increase content on the site and funnel PageRank and anchor text back to the high quality articles?

If that is your situation? Then the answer is - Yes - that method works for improving SEO (or at least it can work). The primary thing you have to watch out for though is the Panda algorithm. If the lower quality articles on the second blog are too low of quality to where they get hit with Panda, then your entire site can get nuked (even the high quality section). I have employed this technique on multiple sites. I have also had sites hit by Panda for doing that. So, you have to keep Panda in mind when producing those "lower quality" articles. It is a balance.

I would not over use this method if I was you. There are better ways to build up and build out websites in my opinion.

 

[expmrb]

Quality posts which actually do add value to your niche will always get ranked better then the low quality posts. No matter how many articles you publish it won't matter if they have nothing new information to offer to the readers.

 

[savidge4]

savidge4

We really want this to be true... it would make life so much easier.. but it honestly is not. @SEOPub has used the example term "Pregnancy" and you look at the top few on page 1, and from the initial look.. there really is no value there.

Dont get me wrong here, there is value.. but its not the content on those pages specifically. The developers of these pages are looking at the big picture and how a search engine really works. more specifically how hummingbird really works.. its not the content that is ranking, but the ability to answer an end users search. People simply do not search for "pregnancy" and find an answer... they really are looking for something else... "Pregnancy depression" or "expense of pregnancy" etc etc. the top few listings for this term link to that type of content.

As I see it, this is SMART SEO. I call this "Context targeting" and once you get the hang of it, its pretty powerful stuff!

 

[expmrb]

expmrb

I agree with you that people does not search for the exact keyword everytime. And hummingbird here understand the contextual meaning of it and shows the results for it.
Now suppose you build content just to target those searchers which is of low quality then you get ranked first for few days but your rank will fall eventually. Its not for a long term basis.

 

[savidge4]

savidge4

Again we really want this to be true, but it simply is not the case. If the idea of Google is to provide answers to questions, and through user behavior it is determined that your page is indeed leading to and ultimately answering the question, would the page drop in rank? I think the answer is no, it would not. When you start looking at what Google CAN see when someone is using their search engine... Click rate is a factor, bounce rate becomes a factor, albeit small, but a factor non the less. Time on page, again small but a factor. they spend 20 minutes away from Google ( this could be tracked by IP or Mac address ) and the end user comes back and searches "baby boy clothes" or the like, Google has to assume the answer to the searchers question was answered. A bunch of really small factors that combine to a pretty good indicator in the overall value of a page.

Value is not in the words on the page, but the pattern or behavior of the end user of that page. The reality is this stuff can easily be tracked and measured... not saying from all over the web, but specifically a search that starts with Google.

 

[Cochel]

Quality is more than important and I could not agree more about it. Google already has something in return for those QUALITY SEO mainly includes the contents.

 

[Lindan01]

Quantity does not matter in SEO. Quality work is more important for any work. If you are doing any work in seo always care of quality link unique content, quality back links, blogs, article, commenting.

 

[MrT]

To answer the question, you first need to identify and define what "quality" means.

Is quality a 2,000 words article?

Is it 1,500?

What is lower quality? 1,000 words? 800?

It depends on how you define it. If I think of a quality post being between 1,500 words and 2,000 words but I think of a lower quality post being 800-1000 words, I think I would choose quantity over quality.

Now if low quality posts become defined as 300-500 word micro posts, then I definitely would prefer quality over quantity.

 

[HCFGrizzly]

There's no doubt in the importance of the quality of content in SEO. But what about the quantity? If you increase number of articles on your site but decrease quality of them then what would be the effects in SEO?
For example you write 5 quality articles for a blog and write 50 articles for another blog but its quality is lesser than 5 article blog. What thing will you be familiar to?

If you decrease the quality of your articles, people will stop coming to your website and this is going to result in a drop of your SEO. When people say "content is king" they don`t refer to writing as much articles as possible but to ignore the quality.
One might argue that thin content talks more about articles of lesser value than of short articles that are to the point.

You should regard content SEO as quantity AND quality, not quantity OR quality. Take your time to write good articles, nobody is asking you to write 10 articles a day.