Testimonial pages

[yatesandcojewelers]

Is it better to have one long testimonial page on your site, or break it down into several smaller pages with testimonials?

First time I've posted on the forum.  But I'm excited!

Ron

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Welcome! Lots of great info and people floating around here, I'm sure you'll learn a lot!

SEO-wise, 1 long page

Conversion-wise, probably per service/product (x related testimonials would appear on the x service page, y testimonials on y service page, etc).

There is no reason to make 5 testimonial pages for the same service instead of just one.

[TomRayner]

Hi Ron, welcome aboard!

I think you should approach this from a content perspective - if each of your testimonials are substantial enough to justify unique pages, then by all means go for it.

There's no particular % or threshold for a minimum number of words you should aim to have, but it might be a good idea to have at least 300+ words of unique content.  This should be easily achievable if you include a history of the company you worked with, some quotes from them on the work you did, along with a general breakdown of the work you undertook and the results that you achieved.  I don't know what services you provide, but it might also make more sense to have individual pages as the work you undertake for one company might be very different to another.

Keeping them separate as well might allow you to keep things organised in the future, should you get a steady stream of satisfied customers - and here's hoping you do!

As for the SEO benefit, there wouldn't be much difference between individual pages or one large one.  A page with more content might rank for more long-tail keywords than several smaller ones (although they may not be particularly attractive keywords), whereas you could argue that a company might be more inclined to share the testimonial page, should it be a bespoke page that is unique to them and only includes them.

[yatesandcojewelers]

Thanks so much Tom.  This helps me.

[yatesandcojewelers]

Thanks Oleg!  The testimonials are customers of our jewelry store, Yates & Co Jewelers.

[kadesmith]

I just want to add a little bit to what Oleg said considering conversion-wise vs seo-wise.

One question you should ask yourself when considering what to do is, "What will help my end user decided to actual pay me for my product/service?"  In your case, if you're wanting people to actually read the testimonials, shorter, and fewer is better because when someone sees a lot of text they tend to skip over it.  This is why top 10 lists are effective as blog posts.  The old adage of "you can't judge a book by its cover" should read "you shouldn't judge a book by its cover."  I can and do judge by a cover.  Magazine publishers have known this for a long time.