SEO Value of Within-Page Links vs. Separate Pages

[maxkennerly]

Title says it all. Assuming that you're talking about similar content (let's say, widgets), which is better: using within-page links for variations or using separate pages?

I.e., do we have a widget page and then do in-page links to describe green, blue, and red widgets, or separate pages for each type of widget?

In-page pro: more content on a single page, thus more keywords, key phrases, and general appearance of real content.

In-page con: Jakob Neilsen says they're confusing. Also, for SEO, you only get one page title, rather than a separate page title for each.

My personal bias is for in-page, since I hate creating dozens of short pages for what could be on one page, but my suspicion is that separate pages are better for SEO.

[SteveOllington]

If I'm correct in my understanding of what you're saying, I reckon seperate pages as otherwise you're just linking back onto the same page (and even though it's still returning to the correct page for the terms, it initially says to the crawlers that you're pointing out of the page for the keyword you're trying to boost that page for). That is, if I follow your meaning, which I'm not confident that I do.

[CPU]

If as Steve points out we are understanding you correctly then multiple product pages with each one focused and optimised for each product is better than a long page featuring multiple products IF people are liekly to be searching for the product name.

Each page gives you a URL, title tage, alt tag and page worth of content to optimise and focus on that product. If you are worried that the page may be a little light on content then perhaps the descriptions need to be fleshed out.