content issue for search engine

[link.master]

Hi Folks,
Happy New Year! Is it good to have one page website with tons of content or weather it is better to break up same content in different pages. Wating for your opinion on this issue.

Thanks,

[crankydave]

With a single page you lose all chances for creating internal links.

Dave

[shyflower]

What's good for your visitors is good for your site. Would you stay on a one page site and read "tons" of content?

Aside from not creating internal links, you also lose the chance to influence your visitors to click to new areas of your site, like your conversion page.

As far as Search Engines go, will your "tons" of content be relevant to one topic only? Remember, you have "tons" of competition all vying for premiere placement in the SERPs. What will you do to put your page in first position?

[imvain2]

I agree with all of the above posts, but I would like to post a completely different thought as to why multiple pages are better.

I think of it like the archaic phone book, if you buy a full page ad you can catch people's eye that happens to come across that page, or you can buy multiple quarter page ads across more pages and increase your visibility since you are in more locations.

And like SHY stated. One LONG page of content is just SO annoying.

I hate those marketer's sites who are trying to sell eBooks on every subject under the sun. Just about everyone of them use one long page and it is always unorganized and scattered. They look like someone just through it together at the last minute.

[craigmn3]

Definately many pages over one. And include a good navigation system. Treat your front page like a table of contents or....and index. It's better for search engine results, its better for the user.

[blitzen]

Echoed many times on this forum is to write for the user.
As a user, I loathe many small pages. I prefer to see all on one page, such as all policies on one page.

Another word of advice I've seen is to minimize the number of clicks a person has to take.
As a user, I love this advice.

[PumaSpirit]

More pages are most certainly better for all the above stated reasons. I, as well as most, hate cluttered, endless pages. Don't you?

In addition I'd like to mention page load time. Most visitors will not stick around until a large page is loaded. Just keep it short, sweet, interesting and easy to navigate : )

[kavinpparker]

more pages are better than single page.you should use site map.it ll help.

[Clarrie]

Originally Posted by link.master

Hi Folks,
Happy New Year! Is it good to have one page website with tons of content or weather it is better to break up same content in different pages. Wating for your opinion on this issue.

Thanks,

Lots of people have commented on the basis of usability rather than SEO.

If your "tons of content" is on multiple topics, then break it up. If it's one long document covering multiple topics then its difficult for the search engines to correctly identify the thematic content of the page as it will lack focus.

Start by looking at the keywords people might use to search for the content on the page, then look at how you might break down the page to address each individual audience.

e.g. you might have a long document on say, employment rights, but people when searching will have more specific information needs like maternity pay, statutory holiday pay, maximum working hours, workplace bullying etc. All of these might be included in your "tons of content" document on employment rights, but because the theme of the page is very broad it probably won't rank well for these individual terms. Breaking each specific topic out into a separate page gives each page much more focus, which will help search engine rankings for the specific search terms, and probably be of more use to visitors looking for specific information.

Individual pages can all be logically linked for visitors to follow up related topics, and this also creates plenty of link text opportunities.

Finally, another problem with REALLY long documents is that robots might not be able to eat it all - there is a string length limit for most of them.

[wyspa03]

With one, even very well written and optimized page, it will be hard to gain a substantial authority of the domain. if you in the competitive market G will not rank you high - in my opinion. Remember as well that you can leverage your SEO efforts with well planned internal linking structure.

[bobchrist]

Decide What is Important for your home page and split content into different pages accordingly, if you've large content consider adding blog with the sub domain.

[sparky]

I agree with everyones point of view and I also say it is better to go multiple pages then just one big one. But like everything this has limits as well. let me explain why I say this. I run a few retail store sites and I deal with a few different manufactures. On average I put 30 products per page and I still went out to 28 pages "Note the products are all the same products just different styles by different manufactures". No one in there right mind will look though that many pages to find what they want. So to fix this I went out and got a few different domains and I list 1 manufactures products per domain. DO NOT put all your products on every domain for risk of being black balled for duplicate content and it does not help you visitors.

The Upside of this
1. My visitors do not have so many pages to look though to find the style they want.
2. Since my domains are linked together it helps my IBL and PR.
3. Since Google only displays 2 or 3 listings per domain per search. I have a lot better chance of people clicking one of my sites.

I'm not sure what type of site you have but I have seen retail stores list 100 products per page and make the page a mile long. And all the nav stays at the top. I myself do not like it.

Remember if it helps your visitors then it will help you.

[acwebguru]

Multiple number of pages are are better than one.