Jason Friedman on Signal vs Noise blog issued a challenge: Cut the size of your site in half in 2006. Ugh. Before you run off slashing and burning your web content, consider this: your positions in the search engines depend in large part on your content. Commenter Peter Cooper makes an excellent point that Google tends to rank sites with more content better (ignoring all other factors, of course).
This is indeed true. All your web pages that are indexed by Google are part of your “virtual sales force.� Each page has its own unique keyword focus. More pages = more opportunities to do well for keywords that you are targeting. In addition, there should be enough content for the search engines to sink their teeth into and ascertain a keyword theme. Less page content = less opportunity to rank.
So less is not always more. I say: double the unique, valuable content on your site/blog in 2006 and watch the search engine traffic roll in!
Stephan, I believe it’s Jason Fried not Friedman.
Although I agree with your “more” conclusion there has to be a balance between what the bots and the human visitors experience. More content can be confusing for us lowly animals and for companies like 37signals which are selling a software solution and not a widget simplicity is the key.