Multi-page vs long page (single post)

Hi everyone,

I have a question around SEO efficiency with multi-page articles.

I would imagine if you had an article split into multiple pages, it would hurt the chance of the first page (beginning of the article) being considered important (and therefore hurting SEO impact).

Also I would assume that every page after the first is basically SEO irrelevant AND that means I'm relying on the first page which I know is going to be weaker because it's shorter.

I've noticed a lot of articles get split into multiple pages to maximize ad revenue but I have only seen those through paid advertisements.

Sorry to take so long to get to my point, burt am I right in thinking that:
A long page article is more efficient than a multi-page article in terms of SEO. AND that the organic growth outweighs the potential increase in adrevenue that a mutli-page article may gain.

Thoughts?

Hi,

I think that it depends a lot on the article's length and topics you are trying to target.
Did you check how well these multiple page articles are ranking from SEO perspective? Are they getting outranked by other articles targeting the same topic/topics but containing all of the content on just 1 page?

Basically I think the more topics you are trying to target the higher the possibility that if you target each different topic on a different page you will get better results.
For example, if you are creating a huge guide like Moz Beginner's guide to SEO it will better to use multiple pages and use a structure where you have 1 mother page and several child pages
/beginners-guide-to-seo/why-search-engine-marketing-is-necessary ; /beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research
You can see that each topic has different page - keyword research, on-page SEO, SEO 101, etc......

And this guide is ranking on 1# spot for "SEO guide" outranking Google's own guide.

But let's say that I want to create and rank an article for the topic "How search engines work". I will create only 1 page and write about crawling, indexing and everything in between.
That way you will not only rank for How search engines work and variations of it but also for more targeted queries like "how google crawler works" and "how google indexing works"

Especially for long tail keywords, Google wants to show articles specific to the problem that the user wants to solve.
I am seeing more and more serps for long tail keywords where more targeted articles that focus only on the context of the long tail keyword outrank more general articles from websites with higher authority that also answer the same questions very good but also provide information on other topics.

.... So I suggest you to put your articles on single page unless you want to create some massive guide/article with many topics. And always look at the SERPs and the user intent. If there are article that use multiple pages and still rank well then you have a real chance to do the same and outrank them.

I'd go for about 2000-3000 words that would be able to engage your viewers or visitors on a single page. If more than that, I'd prefer to break them down to sub-pages. The sub-pages can definitely have more relevant ranking in the process, when properly linked, and categorized on your blog.