Wordpress Post as Slideshow - One long page vs many short pages?

[ILM_Marketing]

We are working on implementing a slideshow format for some of the posts on a website, and it appears that using this format breaks a long post into several shorter pages. That's what we want from a user experience standpoint, but are wondering if there are negative SEO implications from having the content broken up in this way, and whether search engines will view it as one longer page or several very short pages?

Here is an example: http://www.forthebestrate.com/10-cheap-ideas-for-summer-fun/

Thanks for the help!

[irvingw]

more pageviews is good, and this is preferred, however you should allow only the first page to get indexed and the paginated subsequent pages should all be noindex,follow so that you aren't creating tons of low or no content pages.

[vmialik]

Hi Megan

Generally longer (authoritative as they are known) articles perform better.

However there are cases where article can be broken down into multiple sections here is one example:

http://moz.com/community/q/one-long-article-or-3-smaller-articles-broken-down-into-logical-steps?sort=newest

In response to having more pageviews:  If page views had any or significant optimization power, people would create programs to visit or manipulate the increase in pageviews. However on one long article it is easier to get authority combinted social shares, links, etc. Some big news sites do break up the articles with a similar method to your example. I have not found out why they do that whether for SEO purposes or some other usability or other methods.

Another thing to consider broken up articles might not play nice with RSS feeds

Let me know if this helps

[vmialik]

Just updated with some more info and thoughts

[ReferralCandy]

I would go for a long post in view of both SEO and user experience actually.

In terms of SEO, breaking up content into very short articles will shorten the length of each page, which may not be seen positively by Google. This can work out if you have a really long article, but with reference to the link you provided, I feel it would be better if it can be all in one page.

From a user experience viewpoint, it can be quite annoying for users to be clicking several times just to read the entire article. You would also have to optimise each page to load quickly (e.g. Mashable gallery posts), otherwise it will drive people away easily after reading the first 2-3 pages.