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Is it recommended / advisable to separate a medium-size page into multiple pages for (potential) SEO benefits? One example is I need to design a new product tour section, which describes about 5 different features. So, the choices are:

  • Combine all into one page (the content is not lengthy, anyway) and provide users with a way to navigate around those 5 features (e.g. using jump links). This is simple and doesn't require extra page loads to browse around.
  • Separate the content into 5 different pages, with its own URLs.

Different SEO "consultants" had recommended different route; I'd say it's a split between the two choices above although more and more are moving towards the second option. For me, the first one has some merits by itself: simplicity and we can easily add a nice interaction for the navigation (e.g. sliding effect for enhanced experience). Also, I remember there's a minimum page length to benefit from SEO; so why separate it?

What would be a good quantifiable measurement for SEO in this case? I am not comfortable to compromise usability, design, and whatnot just for the name of SEO. I believe SEO should be used wisely as recommendations, not necessarily as rules.

moey
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From an SEO perspective, each page should be about one main topic. If you have more then one main topic per page then you're diluting your content and making it more difficult to target your pages for one set of keywords. So if you have five different features you would like to talk about you should have five different pages with each page covering one feature. That way your page <title> and <h1> are fully optimized to that page's specific feature.

From a usability perspective, if you do not have much to say about each feature, making your users jump around on five pages to see all of it will only serve to turn them off to your product which is obviously contradictory to your goals.

To summarize: if you have enough content to discuss each product feature put them each on their own page for maximum SEO benefit. If not, put it all on one page for maximum usability.

John Conde
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  • Thanks for your input and I agree on all points, esp. the second paragraph. But, are there any *quantifiable* measures to back it up (unfortunately, "usability" is also hard to quantify)? It's often hard to convince people, who are blindly into SEO, to consider that sometimes usability or user experience should have higher priority over the elusive SEO benefits. – moey Aug 30 '11 at 23:30
  • It's actually basic SEO so you should be able to find similar information wherever you look. – John Conde Aug 30 '11 at 23:41