No one wants to overwhelm their website visitors, so it’s common to question how many pages are needed while still prioritizing a good user experience.

Generally, a website should have a minimum of five pages. You should add 5 or more unique pages to improve user experience depending on the type of site, your competitors’ websites, and your resources.

A website can technically contain as many pages as you want if your hosting has enough storage.

Just because you can make as many as you want, that doesn’t mean you need a separate page for every little thing. 

You can have too many pages if you create them without any keyword research or goal. There is much more to understand and determine the number of pages needed for your site.

Other things should be considered, such as understanding what you aim to achieve with your website and how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works in different search engines.

 

 

Is It Better To Have More or Less Pages on a Website?

Companies with 51-100 pages on their website receive 48% more traffic than those with 1-50 pages.

But more pages don’t automatically mean more traffic. Correlation is not causation.

Adding 1000 pages of bland, generic, or aimless content does nothing for your website’s performance.

Users do not want to dig through hundreds of pages that are just repeats of each other. They are coming for whatever they are looking for, and that’s it.

You want your website to contain pages where each one reflects new, updated, and useful content that creates digital marketing for you.

To start, let’s go over the core web pages you should add to any site you have.

 

 

What Are the Most Important Pages on a Website? The Core Pages

The most important pages on a website include the following four to five pages:

• Home
• About
• Contact
• Privacy Policy

Home: The home page is the most crucial page on a website. It’s the first thing visitors see when they arrive, so it’s essential to make a good impression.

Make sure your home page includes all the relevant information about your business or organization.

About: The about page is where visitors can learn more about your website.

Include information about your history, mission, and values but make sure you focus on developing a personal connection with visitors here.

For a company website, this could be where you talk about your business.

Contact: The contact page is where visitors can get in touch with you. Include your contact information and a brief message form.

You may also want to include links to social media accounts or a map of your location.

Privacy Policy: The privacy policy page allows visitors to learn more about how you handle their personal information.

The privacy policy typically includes information about the types of data you collect and how it’s used.

It’s important to be transparent and straightforward with your visitors so that they trust your website and feel comfortable using it.

What Other Pages Should Be Included in a Website?

 

 

Some additional important web pages on a site include:

• Blog/News
• Terms & Conditions
• Products/Services
• FAQ
• Testimonials/Reviews
• Portfolio or Gallery
• Sitemap
• Locations
• Landing

The importance of these web pages will depend on the type of site you have. 

Products and reviews pages are crucial if you have an e-commerce site, but you might not need a portfolio or blog page.

Below I give a brief description of each of these pages to help you decide how many pages you may need from this list.

Blog/News: A blog is a great way to share more pages containing news and information with your audience.

Blog web pages help keep them updated on what’s going on with your company or product(s).

It can also be a platform for sharing helpful industry information or tips that help your SEO on all search engines.

Terms & Conditions: It’s essential to have web pages that outline the terms and conditions of using your website.

Terms & conditions can include copyright information, acceptable use policies, disclaimers, etc.

Products/Services: If you have a website for a business, it’s essential to have a page or multiple web pages that showcase your products or services.

The product/service pages let shoppers know what you have to offer and why they should choose you over other options.

FAQ: Frequently asked questions web pages (FAQ) are a great way to provide information to your website visitors.

It can help answer common questions about your product or service and address any concerns they may have.

Reviews: Customer reviews are a valuable asset for any business. 

Having the reviews prominently displayed on your website can help show others why they should use your products or services.

Portfolio: If you have a portfolio of previous work, it’s important to share it on your website.

A portfolio allows potential customers to get a better sense of your skills and experience, which can help them decide whether or not to work with you.

Locations: A location page is designed to get traffic from a specific area, usually miles away from the local business’s primary address.

Having a separate location page for each location of your small local business is critical in order to hit the target audience in each area and let visitors know where you can serve them.

Landing page: Landing pages are usually designed with a specific goal, such as generating leads or selling products.

A landing page is a web page that serves as the entry point for a website. It is typically the first page a user sees when they visit a website.

Events: If you’re hosting any events, whether they’re physical or online, be sure to promote them on your website.

Events are a great way to get people interested in what you do and build up excitement for future events.

Plus, they give you an opportunity to collect contact information from potential attendees so that you can follow up with them afterward.

Sitemap: Last but not least, it’s essential to have a clear, easy-to-use sitemap on your website so that visitors can quickly find the information they need.

 

 

 

A sitemap serves as an outline of all the pages on your site, making it easy for users to navigate and explore different sections of your website.

Still, need help deciding what additional pages your website needs? Keep reading!

Now, if you have the bare minimum pages for your website but can’t figure out which of the others to add, let me help you.

 

What Pages Do Websites Similar to Yours Have?

First, let’s take a step back and answer – what kind of website do you have?

Do you have a:

• Local business
• Ecommerce
• NonProfit
• Service
• Blog
• Portfolio
• News

First, you want to make sure you cover the pages you need depending on which type of site you fall under from the list above. 

Local business: Make sure you have the locations pages for each of your physical locations.

 

 

Ecommerce: Create product pages with categories and subcategories in your menus. Cart, account, review, and customer support pages might also be good ideas for your business online.

Non Profit: Create a donation page or link to the service you use that takes donations. You might also want events and gallery pages.

Service-based consulting business: An appointment scheduling page with a calendar might be an excellent tool for your business that provides a great user experience.

We’ve covered the different types of websites and some examples of where to use each type of page for them. So now you know what your website needs.

But if you want to take your website to the next level, you’ll want to read the next section.

What Pages Do Your Competitors’ Websites Have?

 

 

Now that you have narrowed down your core pages and the additional pages based on your website type, you can look at your competition.

What are your most successful competitors’ websites doing? How many pages do they have?

Look at the most successful competitors in your industry and competitors closer to your level and geographical location if location is relevant to your website’s purpose.

You’ll see that the most successful competitors’ websites may look very different from competitors who are closer to your level.

In any competitive landscape or industry, you’ll want to combine the best of both sets of websites.

The most successful competitors in your industry may have the fanciest-looking sites with the best features for users.

Still, they will lack the unique local touch of the competitors closer to you.

Things like local language and copy from you and your local competitors give visitors a sense of trust that bigger national sites may not have.

Keep in mind what the target audience in your industry expects websites of businesses to have. How many pages do they expect you to have?

If you don’t know, do the research. Ask past customers and current prospects what they would like to see on a website.

Review your current website and ask yourself: What could make it better?

Why would somebody choose a competitor over you?

Using this research as a guide, you can get incredible insight and figure out the exact pages you’ll need to make your website the best it can be.

 

What Type of Resources Do You Have for Your Website’s Pages?

You’ve done the research for your type of website, looked at your competitors, and discovered your customers’ needs and expectations.

You know how many pages and what features your website should have.

It may be nice to have user accounts, appointments scheduling calendars or a live chat that all sync with the rest of your business systems.  

Maybe that’s what you found the biggest websites in your industry have.

Features like those need custom development that takes a long time and is very expensive.

You have to keep in mind the necessary costs a website needs to begin with, including the domain and hosting. 

Luckily these days, great platforms like WordPress provide free solutions for the design, development, and maintenance of websites.

But you still need the time, money, and content required to create the bare minimum core pages we discussed using these platforms or any other ones.

Now you need to take that research you’ve done to determine what pages your website should have and weigh it against the resources you have.

Prioritize which features and pages are the most important for your website.

I’ve created this list below of the resources you need for your website pages to help you do just that:

• Time
• Money
• Content
• Domain
• Website hosting
• SEO
• Maintenance
• Development
• Design

 

1. Time is probably one of the most important resources you will need when building a good website.

Whether you are planning to create your own content, manage an existing blog or website, or create a custom design for your website, it takes time and dedication to do these things well.

Therefore, make sure that you have enough time in your schedule to handle all of the tasks involved with building and maintaining a good website.

2. Money is a key resource when building a good website. If you do not already have a domain name and web hosting for your site, you will need to purchase both.

You need them both before you can start designing and developing your site.

Additionally, there may also be other costs involved in creating a website, such as paying for your web design or development services if you do not have the skills to create and maintain your site on your own.

3. Content is another essential resource you will need when building a good website.

Having plenty of high-quality, relevant content is key to attracting visitors and potential customers to your site. Your content needs to serve your visitors.

Service is vital whether you plan to add new content to an existing blog or website, create original articles, or write product descriptions and other content for an e-commerce store. 

4. A domain name and hosting are resources you will need when building any website.

These two resources essentially provide the foundation for building your entire site. Choosing a domain name relevant to your business or website topic is important.

You want to find a web hosting provider that can offer you the features and tools that you need to create and maintain your website based on your needs.

5. SEO, or search engine optimization, is another significant part of building a good website.

By optimizing your site for the major search engines, you can help ensure that your site appears as high up in the search results as possible for relevant keywords and phrases.

SEO makes it more likely that potential customers and clients will find your site and convert into customers when you provide good user experiences.

6. Maintenance is an ongoing resource you will need when building a good website.

Even after your site is up and running, there are still tasks that need to be done regularly to maintain its performance and keep it looking fresh and up-to-date.

For example, you may need to add new content on a regular basis, update your site’s design or layout periodically, or fix any broken links or other technical issues that arise.

7. Website development is an important resource when building a good website.

You can create your website from scratch using HTML and CSS code or hire a professional web developer to build your site for you.

Keep in mind that this task requires time and expertise to be done well.

A quality website development process will help ensure that forms, features like accounts, and custom design elements are included on your site, and all work correctly.

8. Design is another important resource when building a good website. Your website’s design should be user-friendly and easy to navigate.

Additionally, your site’s design should be responsive. It should automatically adjust itself to display correctly on different screen sizes and devices.

A good website design will help ensure that your site’s visitors have a positive experience, whether viewing it on a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Building a good website requires time, money, content, a domain name and hosting, SEO, maintenance, development, and design. 

By ensuring that you have all of these resources in place, you can create helpful and amazing pages and websites for your target audiences.

 

 

How Many Pages Should a Website Have for SEO?

A website should have as many high-quality pages as it can for SEO. 

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search quality, stated, “just having a number of pages doesn’t give you a boost.”  For Google & SEO websites’ page quality beats page quantity.

There are a few occasions in which Google will act to reduce your authority, either at the page or domain levels.

Your website will suffer if you give them a cause to believe that you’re manipulating the system by producing low-quality spammy content.

Adding numerous pages with no real purpose might be seen as spammy or manipulative behavior.

But if all of your pages contain quality content based on keyword research, adding more won’t be an issue.

More high-quality pages with different unique content may allow your site to rank for more things.

 

 

A Quick Recap Then It’s Over to You

How many pages should your website have? Your website should have a minimum of four pages, including home, about, contact, and privacy policy pages.

You should add additional pages depending on your type of website, competitors, customers, and resources at your disposal.

If you guess how many pages your website needs, you’ll put in months of work, maybe even a year, just to regret your decision.

Save yourself a ton of lost sales, traffic, and resources for your website by doing the research I outlined in this article.

Anything that happens to the potential to make you money needs an investment.

Once you do that research and get the right pages on your site, be prepared to see some great results!

 

FAQ

Are Single Page Websites Good?

A single-page website is good for the following: lead gen pages, promotional event pages, and app showcase pages. It simplifies your overall website design and can improve your website’s load time.

However, if you are concerned about SEO or organization, you might want to stick with a traditional multi-page site.

 

How Many Pages Is Too Many for a Website?

A website should have as many high-quality and relevant pages as it can.

No amount of pages is too many pages if they have quality content that serves your website’s visitors with a good user experience.

 

How Many Pages Should a Local Business Site Have?

A local small business site should have a minimum of four pages: Home, contact, about, and privacy policy pages.

Additionally, you should create blog/news, terms & conditions, products/services, faq, testimonials/reviews, gallery, sitemap, and location pages depending on the type of business you have.

Small business owners! Read the article above as I go over everything you need to know to determine which pages to add.