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I'd like to ask you one question. Is it better to have big pages, with a lot of text and lower kw density or small pages with biger kw density? . Does size make any diference to google?
Personally I find it annoying to have to keep clicking through practically-empty pages to get to the one I'm looking for, but then again, I've had some users complain the pages on my own site are too large, so I could be idiosyncratic on this...
practically-empty pages
I am hesitant about breaking pages up though at present they probably would do better in google: my impression is that the title of a page is given much weight, so many titles with many keywords would all in all do better in SERPS.
I am waiting for a bit and hoping for the next algo change :-)) - how about giving more weight to headers?
While some factors are easier to control for specific keyphrases when you have a small page, it also limits your access to those other keyword combos that can save your butt when the algo changes.
I think that standard editorial advice from the ink and paper days applies here. Put together your perfect page, with exactly what you intend to say on it. Then cut the size by 10-20%. You will do your users and the search engines a big favor that way.
There is a balance point between having to click to get to new pages, and having to scroll down for 20 screens. Both are overwhelming.
Keeping your users happy is where size counts. Small pages load faster. Large pages contain more information in a specific amount of loading time.
Ten 5k pages do not contain the same amount of information as one 50k page. You would probably have to make twenty 5k pages to match that 50k page. Users will not want to click through all 20 of those pages.
You solve this problem by adding better navigation, but that will also make the non-content part of those pages bigger, which makes the pages bigger.
In this case, you would probably be well off to make 6-7 pages of 10-15k with good navigation between them so the users can go right to the content that they are looking for.
Notice that I am concentrating on the user. The reason why is that search engines, or at least google, just don't care. It's a myth, backed up by bad science, that they do.
Me too think of the user, a website can't be successful without the user.
However, BigDave, after that I try to put myself into the shoes of an essentially stupid search engine trying to decide if the topic of the page is what the user is looking for.
And search engines just do not have that many possibilities to decide that, anchor text, titles, description, headers, matching words in the text...when they get more intelligent, text and sentence structure, semantic analysis...
The longer the text, more words, more words used in different contexts, less clear for this essentially stupid search engine what the topic is about.
So I try to be understood by humans and search engines :-))
For example let's say you have cooking recipes. You could put all your beef recipes on one page. But in most cases it would be better to have a new page for each recipe.
That way when somebody searches for "how to cook a foo steak", you have that in the title tag, etc. and that will increase your relevance for the SERPs.
If you left it all one page your relevance would be lower because your page is a page about beef recipes not specifically foo steak.
(I'm sure there are exceptions but this is just a general rule)
1) Quicker loading
2) More real estate in Google.
# 2 is particularly useful and allows you to focus on specific keywords/phrases.
You will get more traffic (targetted traffic at that) by opting for lots of smaller pages.
I never waste any time at all on keyword density. just write creative content that decribes the service/product. IMO KWD is a load of....unless you go way overboard.
People search for all sorts of variations on major topics, and you want those words on your page. So an ideal is basically complete/long pages on every topic.
User friendlieness is usually the best of both worlds. It makes sense to make a page for each recipe, but it does not make sense to split invidual recipes onto multiple pages.
Exactly! You make the page the size that makes the most sense. I have been to actual recipe pages that have dozens of unrelated recipes on that page. And I have read reviews of product where you have to go through 20 pages of only a few paragraphs on each page, just so they can sell more ads. They were both too tedious to use.
People search for all sorts of variations on major topics, and you want those words on your page. So an ideal is basically complete/long pages on every topic.
That is the point that a lot of "keword targeters" never seem to get. Of course we all want to rank well for the big keywords, but by targeting them so precisely, you miss out on the combinations that real people use.
If you are ONLY concentrating on the highly competitive terms, then if you are not top 10 on those terms (after all, they are competitive) then you are pretty well out of luck. But if you have hits on several thousand other kephrases, then you can remain in business.
Those more specific searchers are also a lot more likely to convert too.
And you just might be surprised how high you can rank with those pages that are only slightly focused when it comes to those competitive phrases. My biggest traffic keyphrase, by a high margin, sends you to a page that is relevant, but certainly not targeted for that fairly competitive term. And there are NO outside links to that page, and just the normal internal navigation links to it.
yes, and I would like to point out , that search-friendly is not necessarily the same as use-friendly :-))
But the vast majority of it *can be* if you do it right. Why not concentrate on that part to start with.
Granted, you probably cannot make your on-page factors quite as optimized while maintaining user friendliness. But you can get them very close.
Now, if you concentrate on those things that help both the user and the SE, it gives you great advantage in off-page factors.
People like to link to good sites, and they do not want to link to garbage. To get in DMOZ or Yahoo, your site has to be reviewed by a human. Same with most link exchanges. And you will never get free links if your site is user-unfriendly.
