Long articles

Best way to split

[aspdaddy]

I have quite a long article (with a few afilliate links) that I'd like indexing in Google, but also want to make it user friendly by splitting it over several pages.

What advice is there here for doing this that is google friendly. Apart from small filesizes - any particular naming of the files,link text & position of the next page links etc?

Thanks

[NorthernStudio]

Put a note and a back-link on top of page two (or later) for anyone who lands there from a search engine. (You could put a no-index tag on later pages but may prefer visitors finding a slightly inconvenient link over perhaps not finding your article at all.)

I'd also put a brief description at the top of later pages for those who do enter at a continued page and also something for Google to bite on.

[europeforvisitors]

I'd break the articles up by subtopic. For example, if I have an article on Elbonia City, I'll break it into:

- Introduction (Elbonia City)
- Tourist information
- Hotels
- Restaurants
- Transportation
- Museums
etc.

Similarly, if you were writing an article on the different types of herding dogs, you might have:

- Introduction (Herding dogs)
- Old English Sheepdogs
- Border collies
- Bearded collies
etc.

Breaking the article into subtopics is helpful for readers, and the fact that it optimizes those pages for Google is just icing on the cake.

[steveb]

Make the page titles slightly different to cover and plurals or similar keyword variations like Teddy Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt.

[killroy]

I concur to the topical split. Also make sure each section is optimized for its own keywords. So emphasize words accordign to the section heading. In the info section emphasize the widget infomration bits, while in the "where to buy widgets" emphasize "purhcasing widgets" "buying widgets" you get the idea.

Treat the article as a source of content, but after deciding on the split, work on each page seperately.

Also, don't linke between them with "page 1" page 2" and so on, link by section titles.

SN

[aspdaddy]

I totally agree with the topical split for keywords, its sort of done that anyway -
intro/6 very technical issues/conclusion.

Currently I have previous and next links
on each page with the title of the section in the link texts, and the words next, previous also in the link text. I have these links at the bottom of the page but it doesnt look great at all.

Europe, I just looked at a couple of yours and see that you dont link to previous pages except the last page links to the start.

Theres a high chance people will come in mid article from google because of the keywords, whats the ideal navigation in these cases?

>Make the page titles slightly different

Yeah, they are well different :) I parse the filename to decide the ads