Which is better: One long page or many (many) short pages?

[draggar]

I'm devoloping an informational site and there is one common (and very important) factor that spreads across many items but needs to be inluded with the site.

My question is, would it be better (SEO and user-friendlyness) to have one long page with all the information or links to (much) smaller pages for the item-specific version?

I see the good (and bad) with both.

One long page: less clicking for the user, and it's quicker to get the information, but they'll have to look (I'm thinking of having anchored text and links for quick finding) and the page will be large.

Several short pages will give them exactly what they need, but will require an extra click. Also, the pages will be tiny so they will load up very quickly.

The pages will be all text (except adsence). I may put in some pictures in the future to help out with the information, but they will be very small in file size.

Thank you in advance!

[stapel]

To a certain extent, the answer depends upon the material, how it's being broken up, how long is "long", how short is "short", and the predilections of your users. But I think the general consensus here [google.com] is that breaking up a longer article into a few shorter pieces is generally the better-liked by users.

Of course, "your mileage may vary".

Eliz.

[londrum]

if you're using adsense, and want to make money off of it, then i would suggest splitting them up into as many pages as you can -- whilst still keeping it usable to your readers.

the more pages you have, the more page views you will get.

and the more ads you can display, the more money you will earn.

you'll probably find that it's a lot harder to attract inbound links on short pages though. so it's swings and roundabouts.

[CWebguy]

If over 1300-1400 words, you may want to break it up. If less you might not want to worry about it. Otherwise, just do what feels best! God bless!

[edited by: CWebguy at 2:09 pm (utc) on Sep. 4, 2007]

[draggar]

The document I am using for it is about 1700 words, so I guess it would be best to split it into different pages.

Thanx for the info!

[Frida]

you don't want to make your readers bored I guess? Forget about the long page, then.

[raedthakur]

yes even i think the longer the page the less its likely that the visitor will read through till the end and come back