Depends on many factors Dude! How good is each one? Are you supplying what it most likely relevant to what is most likely in the mind of the surfer making the search query? That is what you should be asking yourself and what really counts. Of course it is a given that more articles (if rightly done) will give you more scope on anchor text links both internally and externally, but if the on page text content doesn't measure up - befor you publish hit delete and don't bother as unless what you put online helps us all, the search engines included, why waste everyones time?
I would go with one 500 words using header for seperate section. Also, this way, you have better control over keyword density.
Google frowns on those 100 words articles unless it is breaking news and lots of other sites are linking to your site.
Thanks for your advice, guys. Then, how does this relate to the Pagerank score? Or does it even relate?
no relation between word count and pagerank. Pagerank is nothing to worry about. I would more worry on serp and traffic it brings in.
It's depends if you are target article or News marketing then go with 500 or if you are writing post on your blog then write 5 post on different -2 topic and post in your blog with image it...
As for me I think it really depends how well you create those content if those 100 each content is unique and useful then I guess it has weighed same with 500 posts ..I think its not with how many words but how unique and useful your content is .
If you wer going to write 5 100 word posts on the same subject, like chapters, just put it into one - much more user friendly
There is typically not a lot of information that you can relay in only 100 words... You are much better off spending some time writing "quality" 500 articles IMO. There are lots of advantages to this such: 1) You can actually delve into the topic a bit and provide your readers more than a 1 liner 2) It's more likely that you can work in references (and create links to) a couple other posts on your site 3) It's more likely that the article will rank for extra long tail phrases that you weren't even targeting I think I saw a while back where someone on SEOmoz had performed a study that showed basically that the more content you had on the page (like 1000+ words), the more likely it was to rank, drive traffic, and get linked (assuming it is good info)
What kind of traffic are you targeting? If it is from social networking sites, and they are likely to add comments, then 100 words post is good. You can start a debate and wait for them to join in. If you want your traffic from search engines, then 500 words is definitely better.
You shouldn't focus on word count specifically for SEO, as it doesn't really make the greater difference; there are other determining factors involved in ranking for a specific keywords than just the length of the article. You should be writing to get your point across. If it takes 400 words, then fine, leave it at that, but if you need 600 or 900 words to have your article make clear sense, then go for it. Don't always focus on the SEO aspect of things. SEO is only part of the equation. Just think, if you had the SERPs to get the traffic, but lacked content that was good enough for someone to bother to read, what would happen?