New pages...but no new traffic!

Hi!

Over the course of about 2 months we've doubled the number of content pages on our site: we used to have about 300 pages which brought in about 1500 visitors per day through Google. Now, a month or so later, we have 600 total pages but the traffic has remained exactly the same!

Going by Google analytics, I think many of the pages have been sent to the supplemental index. For example, here's some stuff about a particular page I added on the 10th of September:

-This page received no hits from Google between the day it was added, September 10th, and September 26th
-The page received 2 hits from Google on September 27th, and 1 hit on September 28th, but no hits since then
-When I check Google for the page, it's found with the "sitepage's url)" command but not with the exact title search. Instead, the first result is something completely unrelated and the second result is a different content page on my site which has a link to this page.

Does this seem like a supplemental index problem? Do I have to work on PageRank flow to fix this or something else?

I would really have too look to be sure...But here are some possibilities

-Your title is "common" and used by others
-The time is a little short to be ranking if the title is a common phrase.

To check it pick from the midsection(top of a div is perfect) of the text a part of 1 unique sentence (2 to 4 words) and the the beginning of the next (2 to 4 words). Copy and paste this into Google search, try it both "in quotes" and not. See if you can find your page this way.

-What content does the "unrelated" site have? Similar to yours?

-Is this page similar to the other one in the serps that has it's link? Duplication?

Drive some links to it in the meantime. They will help get it to perform better and IF it is in fact supplemental it is the first step to pulling it out.

--Melanie

Thanks for the reply Melanie!

I should have been a little more specific about the title. I actually have titles displayed as the page title, a category, and the website title. In that case would you say it might still be a common title, like maybe a common title compared to the other pages on my own site? When I search for that whole title in Google, the first result is a page from my site but still not that page I'm looking for. When I try searching for the page's text it's not found at all.

As for driving links to the pages, since I'm dealing with a few hundred, what would you suggest? Would using services like Digg count?

Common meaning not necessarily unique to that page. Things like "search engine optimization"...that would be a common title...but "bananas - apples - and search engine optimization" would not.

As far as the titles, in my opinion I would vary the phrasing of the titles in those locations.

You have added a great deal of content in a short time, it would not be unusual to see some flux from Google. Incidentally is it ranking at all for those terms in Yahoo or MSN?



They would help, but you must "mark" other pages besides your own as well or most social bookmarking sites will just bump you. Yahoo answers is good for some pages if you can match your content with a question...Its spammy otherwise. Stumble is the best, but ideally you want someone else to mark the pages...And not too many of them. Identify the ones that are not performing and concentrate on them first. Technorati links won't bring much traffic, but they are highly respected. There are also many "deep link" directories you can submit inner pages to.

The inherent danger of adding content that fast is not being able to care for the link building. There is too much content for all the pages to generate proper organic links from existing site visitors, yet they cannot rank very well without "some" links.

--Melanie

I think there is a lot of theory regarding the topic but there's also a fair amount of luck involved. It's like the stock market, pretty much everyone speculates and has 'theories' as to how it works, but at the end it is not much more than a gamble after you've done 'the basics'. There was a brilliant book written about this topic actually, called 'fooled by randomness'.

My last site (which launched only months ago) indexed very quickly but my newer site ('A Pigeon Called Frank') is having some difficulty, despite them both having the same kind of articles.

All I'm saying is, it's good to prepare with all the Google guidelines and what not, just don't drive yourself crazy over something that is really unpredictable.

Google is not unpredictable in terms of indexing and positioning. There are fair and good ways to make Google see your site faster and better, this doesnt involve luck or random terms of practices. The practice had been the same for over 2-3 years, with some variations i agree, but it is basictly the same formula; and even easier to rank now, because of the social networks and their social clones.

In terms of who is unpredictable, i will say that the competition itself are more unpredictable than Google's algo-fluctuations. The competition is who ranks you at the end; a solid marketing campaign and big *** budget will make you go down no matter what is Google doing to his algo.

I know some people may say that the Google Algo-Change may affect rankings dramatictly, well this is true and at the same time isnt. Over the past 3 years i had seen alot of changes on Google's Algo, and i can count with 1 hand the number of times that Google had really mess my rankings in a not PREMANENT way. I still think that with a solid campaign is very easy to stay in top of the competition; and also i still think that watching the competition is more important than ... is google making a change on his algo?, why google hate me?, how can i get on the top 10 fast?

May be. Now a days Google is not showing any page as supplemental result as it is used to do earlier. So, have a close look on your page like:

- either all pages have been cached or not
- Each page is having unique content, Title & Meta tags
- None of the pages shoud be blocked using robots.txt or nofollow attribute

What?

So you had 300 pages make you 1500 visitors and you think by merely adding 300 more will double it up?

Course you didn't double your links so you merely divided your link juice in half... which suggests you maintained the status quo.