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Too much content - a most unusual dilemma

         

dibbern2

6:16 am on Nov 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I publish a collection of content about a health care topic. Because of state programs and legal issues, it is organized into seperate pages for each state. These state pages are organized under an index home page.

My problem is that the content for each state has grown considerably, and now, with new developments in the field, I have to add much more data for each state. I would like to divide each state's content into two pages, with each organized in topics that make sense to my visitors and at the same time capture the most active search terms.

I am afraid my scheme will confuse google and I will loose many hard-won top ranks that have taken years to build.

It would be nice if I had organized at the start into seperate directories for each state, with an index page in each directory. Alas, I can't go there now without loosing everything I've gained.

If you were me, would you pursue this idea of dividing one page into two pages? If you did, could you hold the rankings for the original page (page A) and win additional rankings for the new page (page B)?

I am worried about a structure that has many A & B page sets interlinking, but no interlinks between this A/B set and that A/B set. It certainly would appear odd to a bot that is looking for the usual index>>internal pages type of structure.

The alternative is to keep everything on a very, very long single Page A. But there are worries about too long a page, right?

Any suggestons would be most welcome. Thanks.

skweb

11:16 am on Nov 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



<<If you were me, would you pursue this idea of dividing one page into two pages?>>
No
<<But there are worries about too long a page, right?>>
Relax. Leave it as it is, but if there is new content, add a new page and link from this page.

TerrCan123

9:00 am on Nov 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



You can try a test for one state only and see what happens. I did the same to a topic on my site that divided things and the traffic on the old page dropped but the new page picked up traffic so it was probably the same after all was said and done.