One Big Page vs Several Smaller Pages

[richard-s]

Almost my first web-page - many, many years ago - was a glossary of medieval terms. (Based on the excellent list first produced by Michael Adams aka Morgoth in 1988.) That was all long before the advent of Wikipedia etc.

However, we now have Wikipedia and many other reference sources. So, the question is: What can my glossaries provide which is different and hopefully better?

At present, I aim to offer:

* Very fast page loading
* "Personalisation" - definitions refer to my web-site
* Ability to "browse" rather than only to see a single answer

This glossary started as a single page; when it grew too large, it was then subdivided alphabetically into several separate pages; particular topics such as "money terms" and "ancient measures" now have their own separate glossaries.

Richard

[jtracking]

I bet the reason you're asking is because you have seen many papes in the SERPs that were one page and quite long. I have over the years. Many of them were selling secrets of some sort from love to getting top SERs and I had to buy something. However, again I saw the one pages all over the place in the SERPs. Maybe if you find one of them and emulate its style you might be successful.
Me? I'd group it into pages and try to drill down (for each page) each keyword into a subgroup of sorts like if you're selling socks. The socks is your top level keyword and blue, white, yellow and green socks are your subpages.

[mono]

Have a PDF of the whole thing for download but break the web stuff into pages that load REAL fast. Ajax can help you here.
If it were me I'd worry most about the SEO for the home page.

[incrediblehelp]

I am sure some of you in this thread get clicks from the G "define:keyword" operator right? I get at least 20 a day on my KBK Marketing website glossary page. What do you feel is the best way t attract this type of placement in Google? With one large page full of keywords or links out to separate pages….or both? Personally when I set this up for clients I have one large page with all the keyword terms and then separate pages for each term which will explain more about the term and including other related content.

[mjtaylor]

How about something like this: Test Kit FAQ - TestCountry Frequently Asked Questions

The subpages here are either in SI or not cached ... so from an SEO point of view, this one doesn't seem to be working ...

[privatefleet]

The subpages here are either in SI or not cached ... so from an SEO point of view, this one doesn't seem to be working ...

Yes that's a shame as it looks well ordered from a visitor POV.

The page has a PR of 4 so it's a bit rough that it appears not enough PR is filtering through.

In fact it looks as if you have a pretty serious general SI problem -

Supplemental Ratio for Home Testing Kits & Home Hair Drug Test Kits or Urine Drug Testing San Diego
88.73%
Google has a total of 3240 pages indexed from Home Testing Kits & Home Hair Drug Test Kits or Urine Drug Testing San Diego
365 are in the main index
2875 are in the supplemental index

This illustrates my fear of having too many pages vs IBL's and is the only real thing supporting the 'One Big Page' idea.

[mjtaylor]

In hopes of laying some of the Supplemental Index fears to rest and helping people to climb out, I started a new thread on the topic here: Supplementals: Not What They Used To Be & Tips for Getting Out.

Cheers, MJ

[Seminole386]

This is how I did mine. Real Estate Dictionary
Five years ago it got tons of hits, today nothing. I haven't redone it because I have not maintained the site. If I was going to do it again today this page would be the same, each term would be listed on the attached page but the description would be on its own page and optimized for the term.

Good luck, hope this helps.