Long Pages vs. Short Pages

[AVWeb]

Hi Seo-Guy... I thought I'd get the ball rolling with a real SEO discussion!

I'm interested in informed viewpoints about the benefits and drawbacks of extended content pages vs. short, targeted ones.

Of course, there are so many factors to consider!

My current development strategy entails developing both. In other words, I like to have a mix of long, detailed, information-rich content pages to pull in traffic from those using complex search phrases, and I also like to develop short, highly optimized pages to claim those little "gem words" we're all seeking to secure.

I have found that the longer my content pages get, the harder it is to secure main topic key terms... Considering, of course, that we're not talking about sites with alot of PR power.

I have one very minor ( but meaningful ) key term that I've been chasing for a few months. I easily landed a google #8 spot with a PR 3 page, effectively outranking all pr3, 4 and most pr 5 pages with content specializing in this term.

I then "gave in" and wrote another relatively lengthy page, using text links to leverage the PR in-site. The additional text link back to the main page resulted in jumping up to the #3 spot. Great. So I'm faced with competing with two at least mid-PR 5 pages that are well written, and I have two pr3 pages targeting the term.

I've had fun studying this; there's no money involved in claiming the term ( it's a medical term ). At this point, I think I'm just going to throw some PR at it.

However, it would be interesting to see opinions:

Site
------Hub1
------Hub2
------new topic/page1
------new topic/page2
------new topic in question/page3
-------------Optimized Short page linked only interlinked with page3/4
------same topic second section - page4

Do you think that the above method, which in essence creates a triangle composed of three pages, would be the best method for harnessing the power of both short optimized pages and long content pages?

[seo guy]

Here are my thoughts:

For competitive Gem terms you need ney must have a targeted page less than 500 words specifially associated with that kw term and its derivations only.

Then to capture all smaller peripheral phrases, write supporting content pages which can be long or short (Let the subject matter and a focus on page text quality -NOT SEO- determine the outcome of these pages) Then link back to the main kw loaded theme entry page with each support page.

This way you have intentionally optimized for your marquee term and because you werent thinking SEO when writing your quality content you unintentionally optimized for everything else.

I think this is pretty much a concurance with what you stated as a dual pronged attack previous but wanted to make sure and agree with you with clarification to the benefit of other members.

Now for your linking strategy I actually dont quite follow it :
Can you describe in terms of www.domain.com links to /category/ Categories index.html is the optimized page and all subs in category are support pages linking back to the main index of the category (Or is that what your describing :-)

Just want to make sure I understand your strategy before I go off on something that isnt what your describing
Cheers

[AVWeb]

Hi Seo-Guy:

Yes, we're on the same wavelength, here.

mysite.com
---mysite.com/section1/
-------www.mysyite.com/section/page1
-------www.mysyite.com/section/page2
-------www.mysyite.com/section/page3
-----------------mysyite.com/section/page3a
-------www.mysyite.com/section/page4 ( same topic as page 3 )
-------www.mysyite.com/section/page5

Section "hub" pages are interlinked ( parallel ) via targeted text links, with a link to the homepage. Section Pages are linked to each other in the same manner, with a link to the main Section, and a link to the Homepage.

Of course, the "page 3a" would be my theoretical optimized page. Page 3 and Page 4 really can't be effectively optimized without changing the value of the pages to visitors, something I won't do simply for SEO.

Page 3a, my thoughts: If I designed such a page, it, in this case, would be a "definition" page. I would take the PR focused to that page and return it back to pages 3 and 4.