How to Optimize a Website with Millions of Pages

How to Optimize a Website with Millions of Pages

We show you how to optimize a website with millions of pages. With our guide, you can rank better and get more organic traffic. Read on to find out exactly how.

Browse the contents, and if you spot a section you’re interested in, go there right away. Though go through all the major difficulties you’ll want to look at when you optimize a page, it’s worth reading the article in its entirety.

Do on-page optimization efforts still matter?

The importance of off-page elements is eclipsing on-page SEO more and more. The importance of having your on-page SEO flawless is not diminished by this, though. You are laying the groundwork for other operations by getting on-page right.

In truth, would be considering it as a component of the website and pondering all the implications for both on-site and off-site behavior.

In order to determine what the page is about, Google uses the on-page content. Therefore, the substance of your pages affects the keywords for which they rank. Within this,

Google determines the topic of a page using the on-page content. 

Therefore, the substance of your pages affects which keywords they rank for. 

Within this, Google gives various parts on the website varying degrees of relevancy.

How to Optimize a Website with Millions of Pages

Optimizing URLs for SEO

A page’s URL may be an underappreciated asset. It not only gives your terms more meaning, but it also shows up in the search results.

This indicates that your site’s URL genuinely contributes to the ‘ad’ that appears for it in the natural search results.

That directly affects whether people decide to click your link. Please take note that Google shortens lengthier URLs like this one to provide a clean appearance.

The domain and the page, which are the most crucial components for the user, are left after skipping the intermediate area.

Make your URLs read well

Your URL ought to make sense and be readable by humans. 

The stuff you would expect to find on the page should be obvious even if the English isn’t great. 

Checking to determine if your URL matches your page title is a useful test.

Some well-known content management systems (CMS), like WordPress, employ numerical defaults for URLs, which means that when a page is created, it is given a numerical code that forms the URL.

This is not ideal for SEO; you want it to be legible by humans. Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to modify this. Simply use the permalinks feature in your installation to convert the URLs from numbers to words.

Avoid using too many words in the URL of your page. A fair dose of common sense should point you in the right path, while 3 to 4 is a nice amount.

Of course, you can use fewer longer words or more shorter ones. Just make sure it’s understandable, incorporates your page’s primary keywords, and really looks well on the page.

Categories and site structure

The position of the page on the website affects how relevant Google considers the content to be. The site layout achieves this by placing information in categories that are also relevant to the search phrase.

Using keywords in the names of your categories and subcategories will benefit not just those pages but also the pages that are listed within them.

Should I use an underscore or hyphen in my URL?

It’s probably not going to make much of a difference if you actually use hyphens to separate words and underscores to separate phrases.

Best practices are fantastic when making new pages, but we wouldn’t suggest going back and replacing the hyphens and underscores on older pages.

A redirect must be put in place in order to modify the URL, which will cost you more than it would benefit.

Optimizing page titles

The page title is the next important on page SEO component after the URL, and it’s also one of the most frequently misused. The part of the website where it matters the most to balance readability and SEO is the page title.

What page title length will Google display?

You can see that the title’s final portion has been chopped out and is followed by a few dots. This is so that Google may only display a certain number of characters in the results.

This depends on the type of result and the precise characters you employ. This is due to the fact that there is a pixel restriction, meaning the amount of space Google has to work with is measured in pixels (512, if you’re curious). Fewer characters will fit if you use wider letters.

You probably won’t think in pixels unless you’re a web designer; it’s far simpler to think in characters. We consistently set the upper maximum at 69. All except the fattest characters should fit into your 512 characters with room to spare.

How to use keywords in the page title

The most significant on-page component for your keywords is the page title (unless you count the body copy as one element). Make sure your title contains all of your key terms, placing the most crucial ones first.

Making your page title look good in the search results

This is another factor in the significance of a page title. It is a component of the advertisement for your website that is displayed in the search results. Your site’s ranking in the results doesn’t decide whether or not someone clicks on it; it also depends on how appealing the result appears to them.

People search to locate a page that has the information they require. It could be a single product, product information, or anything else. The fact that they are trying to meet that criterion is what matters.

You must distinctly show in the page title that the page’s content satisfies that condition. Simply said, people will find what they need on your website.

How to optimize page descriptions for a better Click Through Rate

We are confident in saying that very few people nowadays still believe that page descriptions have an impact on rankings. They don’t, and this has long been known.

Whether a secondary effect results from Click Through Rates’ influence is still up for debate. That wasn’t a factor either as of the previous year (or at least not one Google wants to admit to).

Given that proxies and offshore development teams offered easy and affordable ways to generate phoney clicks, it’s likely that adding Click Through Rate as a ranking criterion caused Google too much trouble.

CTR hence has no impact on rankings. It does, however, significantly affect how much traffic is directed to the page. To get the largest potential share of those clicks, you should make sure your search results ad is as optimized as it can be.

Optimizing page headings for SEO

Page headings are used for both style and SEO purposes. They remain pertinent and are still used as a ranking criteria. However, their significance has waned.

Again, it’s not something advise going to huge pains to improve, but if you’re starting from fresh with content, it’s absolutely worth considering.

The heading tag is a code element that can be applied to a page to identify a section of text as a heading. These frequently have a larger font than the typical body material since styling is then automatically applied in accordance with the heading type.

A heading tag was utilised in the code. This particular HTML code encircles the content. A heading tag is opened with the character h1 and closed with the character h1.

Although 3 to 6 heading styles are the most typical, you are free to have as many as you like. The h2> tag would be used to display a secondary heading, or h2, and h3> for a h3, etc.

Google is aware that headings serve as brief titles for each component of the text and serve as summaries of the sections that follow. Therefore, it makes sense that Google would give those headings’ phrases more importance.

Those used in headings have been given more thought than words used elsewhere on the page and so have more meaning.

How to optimize your content to rank better

The content is by far the biggest and most important aspect on the website. It’s important to write high-quality content that people will want to read, share, and link to in addition to using the appropriate keywords. If you can get through this, you’ll be almost there.

Keywords within the content

Key words are crucial. They serve as the link between what people are searching for and the information that is ranked for such searches on search engines.

It serves as a link between the searcher’s intention and the information displayed on the website. Make sure the first 100 words of the text contain the keywords you want to rank for.

Make sure your body copy includes and emphasizes the primary and secondary keywords. 

Avoid, however, the pitfall of sacrificing the quality of the writing in order to contain your keywords. 

Additionally, you obviously have the improper keywords for the material if you find yourself attempting to cram your keywords into the page. 

My following point will go over how Google evaluates the page’s overall significance. 

Including keywords that don’t actually fit won’t help you much.

Keyword variance

Google evaluates keywords based on where they appear as well as how they relate to one another. Previously, the frequency of a keyword’s repetition mattered. The reader eventually had a bad experience because of the poor quality of the content.

Since then, Google has gotten a little smarter and has moved away from this. Instead of just counting how many times a word is used, it now breaks down the content and examines the relationships between the words. Therefore, it examines how those words fit into the overall information on the page.

You should discover that you naturally produce content where the keywords have a strong relationship if you keep your material on subject and concentrated around a single topic every page.

This gives Google a clear indication of what the page is about and, as a result, what keywords it should rank for.

Content length

Although it would be ideal to have at least 500 words of targeted content on each page, this is not always feasible, especially when design or CRO factors are involved.

The ranking in the search engines is merely one of the numerous functions that a single page must fulfil. Consider the page’s intended audience and how crucial it is that it rank for long-tail or non-brand searches.

The more you focus on the content, the more crucial it is that the page ranks for a wide variety of phrases.

This is generally less significant if it’s the homepage because you’re usually concentrating on your most crucial general keywords. 

When a page is informative, like this one is, the content becomes quite crucial.

Optimizing images for SEO

Make sure to include keywords in the image alt tag that relate to the content on the page. Google attempts to identify an image’s purpose by analyzing the text that surrounds it. Make sure that everything is related to and focused on the same subject.

Outbound links

Where you link to is just as essential as who connects to you. Both relevancy and trust may be impacted by this. It’s a good sign that your material is pertinent to the search terms in issue if you link to on-topic websites from it.

Linking to low-quality websites in undesirable areas gives Google the wrong impression. It’s possible for rankings to be harmed even by no-follow links to questionable websites.

Flash and SEO Work

Flash does not appeal to Google. In actuality, hardly many do. This is mostly due to the security risk it presents. When it is loaded by your browser, it is simple for criminal individuals to utilise it to corrupt your device.

Many people’s browsers come with flash disabled by default (including mine). Today, HTML5 has mostly taken the place of flash in terms of functionality. Flash is gradually being phased out in favour of HTML5 in display advertisements.

Google Advertising will no longer enable you to post flash-based ads starting in July and will stop displaying flash ads across the network starting in January of next year, perhaps sounding the death knell for the service.

It should be clear that Google does not like Flash. Flash pages lack URLs in addition to accessibility and vulnerability issues. As a result, Google has trouble accessing and comprehending the content.

Although text in flash can be indexed, the number of mobile devices that don’t support flash is growing.

Usability

With specific algorithms looking at things like page layouts and updates being released that specifically target this, usability is becoming a more important component of SEO work.

From Google’s point of view, it makes sense because a bad user experience results in consumers not like the search experience and could result in Google losing some of its customers.

Page load speed

The user will have a bad experience if your page takes a long time to load. They will probably return to the search results page and check for other results by clicking again.

Google takes into account page load times as a ranking factor since it understands that slow pages lead to a bad user experience.

Ad placement

Rankings will suffer if your page is loaded with adverts that make it difficult to read or access the content. Webmasters find this challenging because it calls for balancing a page’s ranking and usability. In the end, the page may only make money through adverts, but the lower the rating, the fewer visits.

Problematic advertising includes those that appear above the fold and those that obstruct the text. If you have a lot of advertising above the fold, try moving some of them down the page to see if it affects your ranking. Google prioritizes content above advertisements.

Page layout

Google takes the page layout into account as a whole, much like the issues with too many advertising. You can run into issues if your material is displayed below the fold. A written section should always begin above the fold. Consider placing a headline over a large image if you, for example, begin your postings with one.

Conclusion

Off-page factors are becoming more significant than on-page SEO. Your pages’ content has an impact on the search terms for which they rank. You may rank higher and receive more organic traffic with the help of our guidance. When creating a new website, it’s crucial to make sure that the URL of your page can be read by people.

Use your installation’s permalinks function to change URLs from numbers to words for improved search engine readability and relevance. The page title is the most important on-page feature for your keywords (unless you count the body copy as one element). Make sure all of your keywords are in the title, emphasizing the most important ones.

People May Ask

Is it better to have more pages on a website for SEO?

Additionally, having more pages increases the likelihood that your website will rank, which in turn affects the ranking factors for your website. The best suggestion for ranking highly is still to develop high-quality content rather than merely posting a lot of stuff every week or month.

What is the number 1 goal of web optimization?

Making your website as appealing to search engines and actual people as possible is the aim of website optimization.

How many pages is too many for a website?

There is theoretically no cap on the number of web pages, and Wikipedia, for instance, has over 297 million pages indexed by Google!