First the Question: For the purposes of SEO, is it better to have one very long page with lots of content, or to cut that page into many shorter linked pages (ie page 3 of 30, next, back, first, last, etc) Now the Background: I am going to post an academic paper on the web, and want to optimize it to be found by the search engines. I am going to post it in HTML with a download option (PDF), and was wondering how to structure the HTML portion. The overall document is about 30 pages.
Hi Rob, I think you should aim at 300-400 word pages interlinked with your keywords in the link anchor text (not "Next", "Back" etc). More pages with 300-400 words will be better in terms of SEO than one large page. Split your paper in natural main sections and put each on a page. That way you will also be able to have individual page titles, meta tags etc. beside the gain from the interlinking. This will all give you better ranking. Structure each page in natural smaller sections and use h1, h2 and h3 tags for headings/subheadings. Doing this you will please both your visitors and Search Engines.
Depends on how many keywords you want to be found on. Also keep in mind G only looks at the first 100K. So IMO, chop it up in 100K chunks, optimize each bit for a different related keyword and get links to the various sections with the optimized kw's in the anchor text.
I will have to disagree there. 100K of text is a way more text than 300-400 words which I consider optimum. Chances are that the hole paper could fit in the 100K limit.
Well, at least 100K chunks. Nielsen once said 80% of people don't scroll. I find it boring too. So IMO it's best to keep everything above the fold indeed. 3-400 doesn't allow for a great number of kw repetition with it staying readable though. Anyway, it depends on many variables what is best. If it is a tough topic, then clear broken up point might be best. If you audience is well clued up on the matter then one page could be fine. Scrolling sucks though.
True, but in terms of SEO, more pages with lesser text will give heavy advantages for optimizing. That also goes for only one keyword/keyword phrase because your have the advantage of interlinking + keywords in anchor texts.
As far as my surfing experience goes, when I search for a keyword and keyword lies somewhere on page4, it still will take us to page1. Now when I use ctrl+f on this page, I won't be able to find the keyword on this page.So what I do is to go for the second link provided by the search engine.And thats what every body must be doing without bothering that the keyword actually lies on page4.
Not quite my experience. The SE's will (try to) show you the most relevant pages for your search and the link in the SERP will be to that page. It is possible though to optimize a page in Google for keywords without even having those keywords on the page content because of the nature of backlinks and anchor texts.
Gotta agree here........... Keep your pages relatively short and work on a good navigation structure.
Make the pages easy to read and easy to navigate. I have several topics on my site that have been broken into two or more pages because the length of the text is so long. It makes it much easier to read and not get lost. (also better for seo as well)
Hi Rob, You have received a lot of good advice. I too would advocate smaller pieces. But, there is a catch. It would be great if you could structure pages and navigation in a way that a page is (i) sufficiently stand alone AND (ii) also serves as a gateway to the other pages. There might be some navigational resistance from readers who reach an inner page directly from a search engine. If at all, working the content is still an option, make sure that the individual pages convey value too. Hope this helps Ajeet
When using the multiple, smaller pages ... wouldn't it be best to create a link list on the indexpage with links to - each - page (anchor of the links containing the keywords) and also link back from each of the pages back to the index page (also with keyword), also put links (with keyword anchor) to the next and previous "chapters" like T0PS3O mentioned. This way it's easyer to get the SE's to crawl all the pages.
percept, what you define here is the concept of tabs; which can make in principle a lot of sense. however it does require that the visitor already has an understanding of the basics behind tabular navigation; personally I wouldn't bet this is the case on a worldwide scale
I didn't mean tabs (maybe I explained it wrong), I was thinking a structure like in my illustration you can see below (quickly done but it should be clear)