For Google ranking, more content is not always better

In SEO, content is king. But it must be the proper kind of material for your target audience and the SERP environment for each client.

In the SEO industry. The phrase “content is king” is frequently heard. Although I agree with the statement, it should not be applied universally to every site in every circumstance. In fact, for small enterprises and local businesses, too much low-value material might have the opposite effect.

The situation.

Last year, Sterling Sky worked with a personal injury lawyer client in Florida who was struggling to rank for some of their most important keywords. The law firm had another company set up dozens of boilerplate service area pages targeting social security disability phrases before engaging with us. Each page was dedicated to a specific city or service region. But the users who visited those pages received no practical benefit.

The issue.

The pages had the following characteristics:

1. Very similar content.

In most of the service area pages, the location was the main difference. This is a typical strategy used by firms who want to target multiple places in the hopes of attracting searches seeking “keyword + location.”

2. Created with the intent to rank in those cities.

Because the information was created solely for the purpose of appearing in search results, it did not meet the demands of the searchers.

3. No links.

There were essentially no incoming links (or internal links) on the various service area pages, making it difficult for search engines and searchers to find them.

4. No traffic.

Because of the aforementioned cases. The services area pages were not assisting the local business site in any manner and may have even contributed to cruft.

 

The solution.

We decided to delete all of the pages and redirect them to the main social security disability pages on the site because they weren’t contributing value to the site, mostly owing to points three and four noted above.

 

 

The result.

My colleague Carrie Hill noticed significant improvements in their local pack rankings for “social security disability attorney” within weeks of implementing this strategy:

 

We also witnessed growth in an organic web search for certain phrases. This is a screenshot of Whitespark, a rating tool:

In some businesses and markets, service area pages can be quite effective. However, before implementing a strategy like this law firms. It’s critical to assess the impact of the content you’re adding to your site.

Why we care.

When you invest time and money into an SEO strategy. It’s critical to have a testing strategy in place that iterates and produces the intended results. Every circumstance necessitates a thorough examination of each client, their market, and the SERP environment to determine whether they require additional material on their site and, if so, what the best form of content is for the target audience they’re attempting to reach.

Rather than generating and releasing a boatload of material without a plan or strategy to back it up. Make sure you have a plan in place to generate links to the content including internal links and check to see if the pages you’ve already created are receiving traffic.

Instead of introducing 50 of these service area pages as a first step. It might have been wiser to add a handful and see how well they perform in the case study example.

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