Page Sizes

What is the best?

[Skylo]

Hi everyone,

What is the best size for a page in the eyes of search engines? And if one wanted to get the size of a page, what is the best and most accurate way of doing so?

Thank you :)

[Matt Probert]

Google states that it likes small pages. Try to keep each page focused upon one item only, if you have multiple products (for example) on a single page, consider making separate pages for each.

And always, keep it simple!

I repeat, keep the pages simple. Minimalist. No gimmicks, no visitor counters, no animated GIFs for the sake of them, no scrolling messages in the browser, no messing with browser settings.

Matt

[edited by: Matt_Probert at 2:42 pm (utc) on Jan. 25, 2007]

[piatkow]

I would summarise as "enough content to read without scrolling".

You still want enough content to let the page be found using a variety of relevant terms.

I have just been through an exercise of replacing large pages with sets of smaller pages and it seems to have paid off although in a few cases the search engines seem to end up on the wrong page.

[wolfadeus]

There are several rules and thumbs, but after all it will depend on your site and how it fits with user habits.

I run sites that have a maximum of 500 words content per page, others on which I average on 800 to 1000.

Divide your content in a way that feels natural. For some topics short articles are appropriate, for others not.

Good luck!

W.

[wolfadeus]

One amendment: For the index page and popular landing pages, there actually is a rule: The smaller, the better! (for loading-time-reasons, obviously).