Pros and Cons of a Single Page Forum Thread

[PatrickGriffith]

Let's say I have a thread located at mysite.com/how-to-do-xyz and that thread has 75 posts.  Let's further assume that the average post is well written and about 3-4 sentences long.  For SEO purposes, do you think it would make sense to display all posts on a single page, or spread them out over 3-4 pages?

Assuming I set it up for a single page, does this have any negative impact on the rare thread that is 500+ posts long?

I had always thought about doing it on a single page, but then designed my forum the multi page way because that's what everyone else does.  Yet, I see that SEOmoz does it the single page way, so maybe there is some validity to that.

Thanks much.

[shiftins]

The only seo value I could see between using 1 page vs many is if you allow do follow links in your commenting. this would allow links to carry a higher page rank instead of the comments on page one having a higher value than later links.

now for users, I personally tend to read more comments and get more involved when there is only 1 page regardless of how long. everything on 1 page makes it easy to read individual comments without searching through pages and i think to some extent it is phycologicallye more enticing to post on when you see a long list of coments.

[UnderRugSwept]

This could turn into merely a debate of opinion. For example, in my opinion, multiple pages are more user-friendly. My advice would be to find some research data that indicates which format is more preferred by the majority of users and do it that way. User experience before search engines always.