Is Optimization On Large Sites Different Than SEO For Small Sites?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Large websites and smaller websites differ in a number of ways, not just in quantity of content. To be sure, quality of content, regardless of your site’s size, is the most important thing. But is it any different optimizing a large site than optimizing a smaller site? I think so.

One of the most important differences between large sites and small sites is infrastructure. Your internal linking strategy will be different and evolve as you grow from a small site to a large site. If you only have five web pages to index and rank then that is much less to manage than 1,000 pages. Each page may link to every other page on your website and that will help you. Having 999 inbound links from the same domain won’t necessarily help your large site. It’s important to develop your internal linking patterns in such a way that they benefit the end user and in such a way that it benefits your site in the search engines.

One way to ensure that a larger site’s infrasture meets both of these goals is to diagram your site in a tiered fashion. For instance, Tier 1 is your index page, Tier 2 consists of all pages that link from your index page, and Tier 3 pages link from your Tier 2 pages. Is this the only infrastructure you should consider for a larger site? No. But it is one option that can help you manage your pages better.

A small site may not need a sitemap, but a larger site almost always does. Some large sites may need more than one and you could provide a sitemap for each section of your site.

Other considerations that a larger site may need to consider that most small sites will not include:

• URL development issues like similar content based on the same keywords (what will your URLs look like?)
• Page design issues for Flash and graphic-intensive navigation
• Special coding issues for PHP, ASP, and other “large site” languages

Ongoing development is an issue for sites that just keep growing. What works for a site with 20 pages won’t necessarily work for a site with 200 pages. It is best to think ahead and consider what you will need for that 200 page site when you’re at the 20 page development level. Otherwise, you may find yourself in search engine optimization hot water looking for a cool stream that doesn’t exist.