Hypothetical: Add content, lose in SERPs?

[MerlinX]

Let's say I have a site devoted to "blue widgets" and my incoming links target that phrase. But then, without changing anything else on my site, let's say I add several pages that deal with "red gadgets". Will simply adding these new pages hurt my ranking for the phrase "blue widgets"?

I guess what I'm asking is: how likely is it that the Google algorithm will see the new pages and rank on the assumption that I am now more of a "red gadget" site, thus penalizing my ranking as a "blue widget" site?

[crazyhorse]

I guess google will rank your site as a "widget site" then, take a news site for example, it has local news, world news, wheather ...etc. Hope you get the point of what im trying to say.

[MerlinX]

Originally Posted by crazyhorse

I guess google will rank your site as a "widget site" then, take a news site for example, it has local news, world news, wheather ...etc. Hope you get the point of what im trying to say.

Sorry - I don't think I'm getting it. Do you mean that the new "gadgets" pages would have no effect on where I would rank for "widgets"?

[trevHCS]

Can't see it having a huge effect as each page of your site is looked at individually so the pages on blue widgets would still be seen as that and you'd even have a chance to rank for red widgets.

Trev

[longcall911]

Originally Posted by MerlinX

how likely is it that the Google algorithm will see the new pages and rank on the assumption that I am now more of a "red gadget" site, thus penalizing my ranking as a "blue widget" site?

I don't think you would lose rank for blue widgets at all. In fact, each page *should* be optimized for specific keyphrases. And, there is nothing wrong with having multiple themes for a site.

Search Engines rank specific pages, not sites in general. Granted, it is more difficult to rank well for multiple phrases, but that is normally due to the fact that it is difficult to get other sites to link to specific pages in your site (deeplinks). And Google seems to value those inboud links highly.

[MerlinX]

I recently found this under Google's "Technology Overview" section...

Google's search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google's technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.

This would seem to indicate that adding pages to a site to target secondary keywords, might hurt rankings for pages already targeting a primary keyword.

Thoughts?