SEO Tycoon

**Learnin' n00b** · 07-27-2011, 03:44 PM

If I write a pretty long article, would be better for SEO purposes to post it as one page, or break it up into multiple parts/pages?

**chrishirst** · 07-27-2011, 04:10 PM

Search Engines could not care less, how about considering what your users and readers might prefer??

**Angelosanto** · 07-27-2011, 06:34 PM

^Agreed. Whatever makes the article more readable/easier to navigate for the user would be the best route to go. In general I would probably say that having a full article on one page is best, though if it is so big that it has clearly defined sections then maybe some sort of menu system would be appropriate.

Just think of how you would want to read it and do that

**ConceptMarketing** · 07-27-2011, 06:56 PM

The goal is to mix up SEO optimization with being user friendly. If a page looks great to spiders but cannot be followed by someone interested in your content than it is not that worthwhile to me. My advice is to seek a balance between them. Create content for users that is easily crawled by spiders and not the other way around.

**chrishirst** · 07-28-2011, 09:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ConceptMarketing

The goal is to mix up SEO optimization with being user friendly. If a page looks great to spiders but cannot be followed by someone interested in your content than it is not that worthwhile to me. My advice is to seek a balance between them. Create content for users that is easily crawled by spiders and not the other way around.

You don't need to "reach a balance".
Search providers want to show the best possible pages to users for their query, and if you make your pages for the users of search rather than bots, you are working WITH them rather than trying to force your pages to be shown.

It is always far easier to work with, than against.

**barrywheeler** · 07-29-2011, 10:36 PM

Chris, why then, do most sites or "experts" recommend articles of around 500 - 750 words in length?

Is it simply to relief reader fatigue?

**chrishirst** · 07-30-2011, 11:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by barrywheeler

Chris, why then, do most sites or "experts" recommend articles of around 500 - 750 words in length?

Is it simply to relief reader fatigue?

Probably because they don't know any better and are just repeating something that was said as a throwaway comment by Jill Whalen way back last century, and because the "experts" are always looking for exact figures where none actually exist.

The Reverend Ronald Knox had it exactly right with:

"A sermon should be like a womans skirt, Long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to be interesting"

If your topic requires a thesis of a thousand words then do so.

If you can get the information into a hundred words that's ok too.

If the topic can be "serialised" in discrete parts (chapters) with any loss of cohesion for the reader, that's ok as well.

If it is a tutorial or explanatory piece that can be a single entity or spread across several pages, then do either or maybe both.

Don't get hung up on the silly people who quote exact numbers because nine time out of ten they will have guessed.

WRITE for human beings!

We read books that are thousands of words long by reading a chapter or a page at a time, put the book down and pick it back up hours maybe days later.
We read searialised novels in magazines at a chapter a week.

Do NOT underestimate and insult your audience by assuming they have the concentration span of a fish and need feeding with little bits of information at a time. The human brain is a remarkable thing, the more information you can feed into it the more it can absorb.
You can even give your readers the option by making a serialised (paginated) version AND a "long" version available for them to choose, track the data from that and you then know what YOUR user prefer.

Do a short survey and ASK them which they prefer, if you are smart you can then give personalised version of your pages for each user.

The posibilities are many fold, do not limit your choices to what you think search engines "prefer". Because they also want what is best for users!

**barrywheeler** · 07-31-2011, 12:19 AM

I do tend to agree "write for human beings" which is what I do practice, but I've noticed somewhat better rankings for articles of shorter length than longer length.

I've wondered why and have surveyed them. The results have been so diverse, there's been no clear answer.

**Angelosanto** · 07-31-2011, 06:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by barrywheeler

I do tend to agree "write for human beings" which is what I do practice, but I've noticed somewhat better rankings for articles of shorter length than longer length.

I've wondered why and have surveyed them. The results have been so diverse, there's been no clear answer.

Have you considered that it could be other factors causing this and that article length has nothing to do with it? It doesn't really make sense that SEs would prioritize the relevance of an article by it's size as opposed to it's content

**barrywheeler** · 07-31-2011, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Angelosanto

Have you considered that it could be other factors causing this and that article length has nothing to do with it? It doesn't really make sense that SEs would prioritize the relevance of an article by it's size as opposed to it's content

I've thought there may be other factors across the site(s) and do realize there can be other factors coming to play here.

Sites I have containing "shorter" articles, in general show lower bounce rates, people staying & reading longer.

That's what made me wonder if these things weren't being used as an indicator of user experience and resulting in some higher ranking.

With all the "ranking" factors, I guess there's really no way to tell for sure.

**chrishirst** · 07-31-2011, 07:18 PM

"bounce" rate is a per page measurement not a site average and should be keyword or referrer specific.

Do the shorter article have a lower "bounce" rate than longer articles for the targeted keywords?

do shorter articles convert better?

**barrywheeler** · 08-01-2011, 11:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

"bounce" rate is a per page measurement not a site average and should be keyword or referrer specific.

Do the shorter article have a lower "bounce" rate than longer articles for the targeted keywords?

do shorter articles convert better?

Shorter articles do have lower bounce rates (from what I'm seeing) in several of the niches I'm in targeting the same keywords as the longer articles.

Conversion rates are similar regardless of length. Sites generate revenue passively from Adsense and have advertising shown above the fold.

**marknel** · 08-02-2011, 02:10 AM

This article is on the average Internet user's attention span
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1834682.stm

I would rather recommend to break up your text in a logical way.

**charlie84finn** · 08-02-2011, 02:37 AM

One page is the better one because article content should be related to users mind. Some user will be not going till the last page and avoid to read it again so keep your content limited to one and half page that is maximum 500 to 700 words.