How many pages does a product site need?

There is no number of pages that ranks. Google has said there is no word count that ranks either, and the same logic applies upward: a site of thirty pages that each answer a search outranks a site of three hundred that do not.

• A page can only rank for one cluster of searches, so more searches means more pages. That is the only honest reason to add one.
• Every page is crawled, judged and stored. Pages with nothing to say spend that budget without returning anything.
• Every page is also yours to keep accurate. Three hundred pages is three hundred things that can go stale.

So the question is never "how many". It is "which searches do I want, and does each one need its own page".

These exist because people look for them by name, not because of search volume. A product missing one of them looks unfinished to a buyer and to an assistant answering questions about your category.

Eight pages. Add an integrations page if you have integrations, a security page if you handle data, and a status page if you sell uptime. Ten to twelve, and the product is completely described.

Beyond the product pages, each addition should pass one of four tests. A page that passes none is a page you will be deciding what to do with in a year.

1. It answers a search that has demand and that no page of yours answers. Check the second half: an existing page probably covers it.
2. It closes a doubt that stops buyers: the comparison, the alternatives page, the security page, the case study.
3. It is something people link to: a tool, a study, a table nobody else publishes.
4. It is a task your users have to perform, which is documentation.

Adding pages is not neutral. Three specific things go wrong, and they arrive in this order.

The third is the one to take seriously. Google's spam policies describe scaled content abuse as many pages made primarily to rank rather than to help, whoever or whatever made them, and the judgement is about the site as much as the pages.

Some products end up with hundreds of pages legitimately. The difference between a library and a pile is that a library answers many distinct questions and is maintained.

• Build one when you can name twenty distinct questions your buyers ask, in their words, that no page of yours answers.
• Build it in families where the pages differ genuinely: one per error, one per term, one per tool comparison, one per task.
• Structure it as hubs and pages, so nothing is three clicks deep and nothing is an orphan.
• Maintain it: a quarterly pass over the pages with the most impressions, checking every claim.

A hundred maintained pages is an asset. A hundred abandoned ones is a liability you will spend a quarter unwinding.

Take yourproduct.com, a fictional invoicing tool for freelancers, eighteen months old, one founder.

Sixty-seven pages, built over eighteen months, maintainable by one person in a few hours a month. No page in that list exists because a number needed reaching.