Keep pages long or break them up?

I've always liked what Fairfax does in Australia (smh.com.au, theage.com.au): for a long piece they'll break it into pages but also offer at the end of the first page a "single page" button that gives you the choice.

Ultimately multiple pages help page views, but from a readers viewpoint it never hurts to provide the choice.

Thanks guys, this is awesome stuff. I hope you guys don't mind but for others on Gooruze I summarized your comments in an article and I gave all of you credit for your work. I also noted that it was not my content and put all of your names down. If you are opposed to this, please PM me and I will take down your content.

http://www.gooruze.com/articles/273/Long-or-Short-Page-Length/

Thanks again for the responses.

For usability, break it up.  Not too much, just separate based on topics.  Easier to read.

There is no correct answer for SEO.  Why? Because each keyword is treated differently.  Google may like 1000 words of text for the term blue bicycles, but only 200 words for red bicycles.  Search the terms your are looking for and look at the top 10 to 15 results.  Base the answer on what is found on those pages.  If the majority have 1000 words on the page, then follow that, if they have 100, then have 100, etc... 

NOBODY reads text that long on the web. Where it makes sense....break it up.

Its funny - i still hear 'professionals' harp on about 'minimising the number of clicks' in a user experience. But you have to ask yourself is this just a hangover strategy from the old days? The days when we went to make a cup of tea whilst we waited for the next page to load.

ADSL now means that 'minimising clicks' is no longer the challenge. Maximising user experience is.

In fact if you're a publisher (and you are selling ad impressions) there's an argument to say the more pages the better as each page equals a new ad impression. But this doesn't necessarily mean a poorer user experience.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Why are newspaper stories printed in columns?
• Why is copy broken into paragraphs?
• Why do we use bullet points?

The answer is, as readers, we like to have a break, a rest, an opportunity to contemplate as we read. We like to tackle content in easily digested "bits".

So in answer to your question I would say, "break them up" but see if you can structure the content so that it holds the interest of the user from page to page.

seems like a perfect question to go in the Tactical SEO Group.

Longer pages will usually increase your time spent on site, but limits your pages per visit.

Obviously shorter pages will increase your page views (increasing ROS inventory) but unless you have compelling links to the next content, don't count your eggs before they hatch (they may not click through anyway).

Typically, this question can be answered in a multitude of ways - if your ad space runs out before the content does, there is a disconnect.

A while ago (2001) Jared Spool wrote that people will scroll all the way down for compelling content. But the same logic implies that people WILL click through for compelling content.

My advice (which may or may not be right for you) would be to break it up into aesthetically pleasing different content tidbits and use compelling textual links or attractive image links (with alt and title tags) to get them to click through. For SEO, you'll want to differentiate the Page Title Elements of all URLs involved with a record that has multiple pages, and be sure to link to the sub-pages with keyword-rich anchor text.

There are plenty of ways to skin this proverbial cat (and I know some real Gooruze will give you great answers here), but from my limited experience, I'd say break it up, but don't shatter it. Always give a reason to click and a clear explanation as to what they are clicking to, and change the Page Title Elements for each new record (though it may be a subset of a larger record).

Make sense?

I'll be anxious to see the other responses, and I'll be ready to take notes!

I can see arguements for keeping the pages long and keeping them short.

First thing I would check is the page size and load time.  If the page size is over 100K, then anything greater than 100K won't be indexed.  Also check the load times - if the page is taking too long to load, that will also be impacting your user exerperience.

I would then check the keyword density on the long version and then on the multiple page version.  Do you dilute the density too much (decrease density) or do you actually scale it out (i.e. similar densities but with more keywords across greater pages).  That may control where you split a page.

Multiple pages will also give you the abilty to target a greater array of keywords (long tail) and optimize for them using the URL string, <H> tags and internal linking (page to page).  That stands out as a major benefit for me in the SEO side.

Of course, usabilty experts may disagree with me!

 

Playing devils advocate, I can pull up tons of results that are over 100k in the index

Thanks Brian - I have always worked on the 100K limit.  Seems that Serge Bondar last year ran a test "Serach Engine Indexing Limits: Where Do they Stop?" that I have missed up until now. You forced me to check my data!

Based on his data Slurp stopped at 210kb.  So in the interest of staying SE neutral, staying under that limit would be wise - unless of course things have further changed since then.

Thanks again for picking that up.

 

Your bring up a worthwhile point. There is a difference in a page being crawled and found in the index and google bot actually assessing content/links etc past 200+k sized pages. Its a good bet the stuff near the bottom of a page that size isn't going to count for much.

thanks for the link, that was a good read