Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Digital Marketing
    3. Web Design
    4. Multi-page articles, pagination, best practice...

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Multi-page articles, pagination, best practice...

    Web Design
    3
    4
    2450
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • jmueller0823
      jmueller0823 last edited by

      A couple months ago we mitigated a 12-year-old site -- about 2,000 pages -- to WordPress.
      The transition was smooth (301 redirects), we haven't lost much search juice.

      We have about 75 multi-page articles (posts); we're using a plugin (Organize Series) to manage the pagination.

      On the old site, all of the pages in the series had the same title. I've since heard this is not a good SEO practice (duplicate titles). The url's were the same too, with a 'number' (designating the page number) appended to the title text.

      Here's my question:

      1. Is there a best practice for titles & url's of multi-page articles?

      Let's say we have an article named: 'This is an Article' ... What if I name the pages like this:
      -- This is an Article, Page 1
      -- This is an Article, Page 2
      -- This is an Article, Page 3

      Is that a good idea? Or, should each page have a completely different title? Does it matter?
      ** I think for usability, the examples above are best; they give the reader context.

      What about url's ?  Are these a good idea? /this-is-an-article-01,  /this-is-an-article-02, and so on...
      Does it matter?

      2. I've read that maybe multi-page articles are not such a good idea -- from usability and SEO standpoints. We tend to limit our articles to about 800 words per page.  So, is it better to publish 'long' articles instead of multi-page? Does it matter?  I think I'm seeing a trend on content sites toward long, one-page articles.

      3. Any other gotchas we should be aware of, related to SEO/ multi-page?

      Long post... we've gone back-and-forth on this a couple times and need to get this settled.
      Thanks much!

      Jim

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • jmueller0823
        jmueller0823 last edited by

        Guys, thanks.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Oli-Sherry
          Oli-Sherry last edited by

          Just to weigh in, I would agree with Jeff in that 1 long page is much better from both a usability and SEO standpoint.

          In my view, multiple pages should only exist if it is in the context of a hub page. For example, consider a page that is for slow cooker recipes. Instead of having hundreds of recipes on 1 page, it would make sense to have a sub-page for each recipe. Eg:

          • Example.com/slow-cooker-recipes/
          • example.com/slow-cooker-recipes/lamb-stew
          • example.com/slow-cooker-recipes/chicken-casserole

          Check out the site architecture section on the following link for a good explanation:

          http://moz.com/blog/how-to-rank

          Best of luck!

          -Oli

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • customerparadigm.com
            customerparadigm.com last edited by

            Jim-

            I'm not a big fan of articles that are broken up onto many pages.

            The thinking in the past has been:

            • Break up the pages, and you get more page views.  (Great if you are serving advertising.)
            • The page will (possibly) load more quickly because you have less content on each page.
            • Many marketing agencies want everything above the fold, so shorter pages "look better."

            The reality, I think:

            • Users hate having to go to the bottom of a page, then to click on the "more" option, and then wait 3-6 seconds for the page to load.  Especially on a mobile device.
            • It is more complex to have duplicate page titles.  I'd recommend the rel=next / rel=previous tags, that could help in this case.

            My $0.02 is that you should go with the single, long page articles.  I have found that search engines love, love, love pages that have a lot of content (as long as it's well written).  A page with 12,000 words of content will often outrank something with 250 words of marketing fluff.

            If in doubt, though, test it out, and convert one or two over and test out how they're ranked.

            Thanks!

            • Jeff
            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • laurentjb

              What type of website is best for seo.

              website

              I need a new website for my health insurance business. What type is best for SEO? Many thanks

              Web Design | | laurentjb
              1
            • vtmoz

              Dead end pages are really an issue?

              Hi all, We have many pages which are help guides to our features. These pages do not have anymore outgoing links (internal / external). We haven't linked as these are already 4th level pages and specific about particular topic. So these are technically dead end pages. Do these pages really hurt us? We need to link to some other pages? Thanks

              Web Design | | vtmoz
              0
            • SEOguy1

              Problems preventing Wordpress attachment pages from being indexed and from being seen as duplicate content.

              Hi According to a Moz Crawl, it looks like the Wordpress attachment pages from all image uploads are being indexed and seen as duplicate content..or..is it the Yoast sitemap causing it? I see 2 options in SEO Yoast: Redirect attachment URLs to parent post URL. Media...Meta Robots: noindex, follow I set it to (1) initially which didn't resolve the problem.  Then I set it to option (2) so that all images won't be indexed but search engines would still associate those images with their relevant posts and pages. However, I understand what both of these options (1) and (2) mean, but because I chose option 2, will that mean all of the images on the website won't stand a chance of being indexed in search engines and Google Images etc? As far as duplicate content goes, search engines can get confused and there are 2 ways for search engines
              to reach the correct page content destination. But when eg Google makes the wrong choice a portion of traffic drops off (is lost hence errors) which then leaves the searcher frustrated, and this affects the seo and ranking of the site which worsens with time. My goal here is - I would like all of the web images to be indexed by Google, and for all of the image attachment pages to not be indexed at all (Moz shows the image attachment pages as duplicates and the referring site causing this is the sitemap url which Yoast creates) ; that sitemap url has been submitted to the search engines already and I will resubmit once I can resolve the attachment pages issues.. Please can you advise. Thanks.

              Web Design | | SEOguy1
              0
            • DRSearchEngOpt

              Best way to indicate multiple Lang/Locales for a site in the sitemap

              So here is a question that may be obvious but wondering if there is some nuance here that I may be missing. Question:  Consider an ecommerce site that has multiple sites around the world but are all variations of the same thing just in different languages.  Now lets say some of these exist on just a normal .com page while others exist on different ccTLD's.  When you build out the XML Sitemap for these sites, especially the ones on the other ccTLD's, we want to ensure that using <loc>http://www.example.co.uk/en_GB/"</loc> <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
              hreflang="en-AU"
              href="http://www.example.com.AU/en_AU/"
              />
              <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
              hreflang="en-NZ"
              href="http://www.example.co.NZ/en_NZ/"
              /> Would be the correct way of doing this.  I know I have to change this for each different ccTLD but it just looks weird when you start putting about 10-15 different language locale variations as alternate links.  I guess I am just looking for a bit of re-affirmation I am doing this right.</xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br> Thanks!

              Web Design | | DRSearchEngOpt
              0
            • Ron10

              What seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page?

              what seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page?  My old SEO guy set up my photo gallery like that claiming that because each photo was a separate page, it added a big seo benefit and i never understood what he was talking about.  Maybe alt text on the photo with key phrases in it pointing to my other pages to give my site a theme for google?  I'm not really sure.   He has since moved away and i am considering redoing the photo gallery to multiple images on one page to be more user friendly to my users.  This photo gallery is 3 years old and the photos might have some page rank to them helping my site so i don't want to remove this gallery if there really is a benefit to it and it will hurt my site.  I once removed four static page rank 3 pages from my site that weren't used for my site anymore and my rankings dropped 5 positions.  Thoughts anyone? Thanks! Ron

              Web Design | | Ron10
              0
            • WebbyNabler

              Best Webhosting Suggestions??

              Good morning my fellow Mozzers! I am currently looking at adding some diversity to my current web hosting and I was hoping I could get some suggestions. I dont currently need a VPS or Dedicated Server, I just need some shared hosting, you know, packeges that are sub $20 a month...i mean i will pay more than that, but so far everything i look at that meets my needs(basic hosting, email, ect...). This is for client sites and they are growing in number somewhat rapidly. I currently host with GoDaddy and they are amazing in the support department, but I do question whether their servers are causing slow page loads ect...but all in all I am happy with them. I have used Netword Solutions in the past, but left them because i was not a big fan of talking to support people in india and malasia. I do think that their servers might have performed better than GoDaddy so i am not ruling them out at this point i am looking for a provider that has excellent support and who has servers that are not so overloaded the can render pages and content slowly. Performance is very important to me. I am not looking for the cheapest, I am looking for the overall best. Thanks in advance SEOmoz family!!!

              Web Design | | WebbyNabler
              0
            • SeMeAntoja

              I have a button that repeats it self many times on same page, what can i do so button name does not affect my SEO?

              I have a shopping car button named "Add to car" but it repeats on many pages on my website, is this affecting my seo? If yes.. What should i do so it does not affect? Should button appear on hover? Thanks

              Web Design | | SeMeAntoja
              0
            • wazza1985

              What CMS system is best?

              Hi Guys, I am in the process of developing some new areas of work and a good CMS is going to be required to make my SEO and everything included work to its best. What CMS systems are the best ones to use from an SEO prospective and generally all round? Thanks

              Web Design | | wazza1985
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.