Long page - good or bad?
-
Our attorney wrote a dozen articles that range from 300 to 700 words on various topics of the certain law area. These articles are all placed on our FAQ page with anchored table of contents.
This page does frequently come up on the first page of the google when people search for the questions discussed in these articles. 90% of these visits are not local therefore they are not potential clients. Attorney views it more like a community service then a marketing tool.
However, I think there might be a problem. People read though the page and close it because usually they can find what they were looking for right there, however GA counts it as bounce because they did not browse to another page.
Would large number of bounces hurt our standing with Google? Would it be better to separate the page into multiple pages for each article to make visitors browse?
-
These short articles are a great resource.
If this was my site I would place each article on a separate page. I would also find at least one image to display with it (a photo or graphic) - and write a generous caption to appear under that image.
This makes the article page a little more substantive.
The value of these pages in my opinion is the potential links that they will attract.
I would also create a side menu that has links to the other short articles. I would also look for opportunities to link to them with in the text of other articles.
Also, if these articles are getting a lot of bounces I would ask myself if they should be more substantive. Lots of people think that 300 words or 500 words is fantastic for an article... but to my standards that is skimpy. My goal would be to make each of these articles a best-on-the-web resource for that topic. That is how links are earned.
-
You need to keep in mind that the nature of blog posts/articles, is that users typically look for information and once they find it they leave. In general these type of pages have a bounce rate >80%. So it won't affect your standing with Google.
However in working with legal sites, what I have found is that they purposely write long pieces of copy because they can. To be honest most people wouldn't read through all of it, due to their lack of understanding and patience from all the technical terms. The target market is typically middle class income earners.
So just recommend to your client to write content that get's to the point, rather than creating additional pages. More pages does not mean you have a better standing with Google. However if you know for a fact that users typically ask certain questions, then put these on FAQ page.
Regards,
Vahe
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Google not giving ranking to the intended page of my website.
Hello friends, This is my very first question, I hope I will explain my issue correctly. I have created two pages related to SSC CGL keyword on my website: https://www.ibtindia.com/ssc-cgl-notification-exam-date 2) https://www.ibtindia.com/ssc-cgl-apply-online I want to target the keyword SSC CGL Apply Online on the 2nd URL but Google is only considering the 1st page for all the "apply" related keywords as well. Can anyone suggest to me how to get the second page in rankings for its intended keywords? I will be very thankful for this help. I tried adding image but its showing dummy. Please you can check it op GOOGLE SERP Second page
Search Behavior | | namitathakur0 -
Dark Traffic & Long URLs - Clarification
Hi everyone, I've been reading the 2017 report by Groupon and the 2017 article by Neil Patel r.e. dark traffic. Both of these articles work on the assumption that most long URLs are not direct traffic because people wouldn't type a long URL into their browser. However, what happens to me personally all the time is that I start typing a URL into the browser, and the browser brings up a list of pages I've visited recently, and I click on some super long URL that I didn't bookmark but have visited in the past. That is legitimate direct traffic, but it's a long URL. I'm just wondering if there's something flawed in my reasoning or in the reasoning of Patel and Groupon. Maybe most people aren't relying on browsers like I am, or maybe things have changed a lot in the past 3 years. What do you think? And are there any more recent resources/articles that you would recommend r.e. trying to parse out dark traffic? https://neilpatel.com/blog/dark-traffic-stealing-data/ Thanks!
Search Behavior | | LivDetrick0 -
How does Google treat significant content changes to web pages and how should I flag them as such?
I have several pages (~30) that I have plans to overhaul. The URLs will be identical and the theme of the content will be the same (still talking about the same widgets, using the same language) but I will be adding a lot more useful information for users, specifically including things that I think will help with my fairly high bounce rate on these pages. I believe the changes will be significant enough for Google to notice, I was wondering if it goes "this is basically a new page now, I will treat it as such and rank accordingly" or does it go "well this content was rubbish last time I checked so it is probably still not great". My second question is, is there a way I can get Google to specifically crawl a page it already knows about with fresh eyes? I know in the Search Console I can ask Google to index new pages, and I've experimented with if I can ask it to crawl a page I know Google knows (it allows me to) but I couldn't see any evidence of it doing anything with that index. Some background The reason I'm doing this is because I noticed when these pages first ranked, they did very well (almost all first / second page for the terms I wanted). After about two weeks I've noticed them sliding down. It doesn't look like the competition is getting any better so my running theory is they ranked well to begin with because they are well linked internally and the content is good/relevant and one of the main things negatively impacting me (that google couldn't know at the time) is bounce rate.
Search Behavior | | tosbourn0 -
Creation of Landing Pages. Subdomain or something else?
Hi, I have an issue deciding how my landing pages should be like and I would like to ask for your help. Currently my landing pages are configured and presented like this: http://www.example.com/fra/Landing75.php?t_src=example&t=AFF&t_cre=keyboard-price&t_trm=160o600&B=1496&A=371&TargetURL= I would like to know if making a subdomain landing page is advised, maybe something like this: http://LandingPage.example.com/Landing75.php?t_src=example&t=AFF&t_cre=keyboard-price&t_trm=160o600&B=1496&A=371&TargetURL= Or if you suggest doing something else with my landing pages - I would like to know that as well. p.s. - How I tell the webmasters (my affiliates) to make a clickable button that won't be a direct link to my landing page but will be some form of non-visible redirect? Thanks in advance 🙂
Search Behavior | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Looking for something better than Googles in page analytics
Buongiorno from 12 degrees C wetherby UK 🙂 I'm interested in measuring content engagagement, things like what gets clicked on mouse tracking beahaviour etc. Google Analytics in page analytics does a good job but is there another product able to guage user interactive behaviour with content (Yes ive added event tracking). Thanks in advance,
Search Behavior | | Nightwing
David1 -
Recovering from a Hack: How long until Google reindexes changes?
In a previous post I made, I was able to determine that one of my sites; http://pokeronamac.com/ was hacked and was feeding spam perscription drug content to search engines, then redirecting to another site when clicked on Google. I then contacted my web host, and, after they did a scan of our files, they determined that something within the wp-includes directory was compromised and malicious. They removed the file, though they weren't able to determine the source of the attack, or how they god in (should we be scared?). Anyway, its been several days now ~5 and if I do a site search the spam pages still show up, but the redirect is no longer working. At this point, I am at a standstill, because i'm loosing traffic on my site by about 90%, and google hasn't sent us any warnings of malaware or the like. I know I was recommended against this before, but should I attempt to submit a reconsideration request, or should I just wait it out? Thanks for your help, Zach
Search Behavior | | Zachary_Russell0 -
Dating Blog Posts & How Fast Google Picks up on New Pages
I had until a few months ago included the original post date of a new blog post on the site. I then removed it and none of my results in Google now include the blog post date, although for some (for articles written about events) Google includes the date of the event where you would usually see the post date. Since I did this, it seems like new blog posts are taking longer to rank on Google, some results are ranking well, and others declined relative to what I would have previously expected. What's the best thing to be doing? To include a date (considering a lot of my content is not time-relevant) or to keep it as it is now? The second thing, is I often go through and update my articles with new information and re-post it in my rss feed etc - ie the date becomes new again. How does Google treat this? Any ideas or comments would be great! Thanks
Search Behavior | | ben10001 -
Home page (s) deindexed
Ok odd one. 2 sites hosted on go daddy, neither sites has any cause for concern. But both sites have had there home pages deindexed or - 10000 penalty for no reason. We do the SEO for 1 site and not for the other. The server is shared with go daddy no idea on how many other 3rd party sites are on it. I've filed a reinclusion request for both sites. Any help is more than welcome.
Search Behavior | | therealmarkhall0