Advice on displaying 'pages' of content

[cgWerks]

Hi, I’m looking for some advice on methods of displaying multiple pages of content, and how it might impact SEO vs UX/UI concerns.

I’m rebuilding an old study content / exam website, where the content to be studied was all on one really long page. Besides being a bit visually unwieldy, I think from a user perspective, it also seems more scary than breaking each page-ish section (or less) onto it’s own ‘page.’

That said, I’m sure having all that info on one big, huge page helps for SEO both in terms of depth but also all the keyword combinations that would exist in that much content. If I break it up into multiple pages, I would imagine I’m also breaking up SEO-juice of the whole into multiple chunks, correct?

I tend to push for UX over SEO, but the owner probably wouldn’t be too happy if their site/page (all this content was on the main home-page on the previous site) drops in ranking, either.

The old way of paginating would be to literally create a page for each virtual page, and then link them all together with navigation. I’m wondering if there might be a better technique that would be both as nice or nicer in terms of UX, but also great for SEO?

Something like an accordion would work, but that is a bit too crude… or tabs, etc. That would keep all the content on one page. But, an interface more like a book, where you’re ‘turning’ virtual pages, but in actuality the content is all on one page to the search engine would be ideal.

Any ideas? (Note, I don’t mean fancy, like page turn effects, or embedding a PDF, etc… just a simple, clean, fast interface for pagination within a WordPress page.) Whatever the solution, it needs to work as well on a cell phone as a desktop, so that is another big consideration in terms of interface.

Thanks, -Steve

[cgWerks]

Just to keep viewers of this post up-to-date, I forgot about the TOC (table of contents) feature of X and WordPress built-in pagination. After reading a bit more about it, it might be just what I’m looking for in terms of SEO friendly (and simple) page breakup.

The page still does a re-load though… so if there were something smoother like that anyone knows of, I’d love to hear about it. Thanks!

Also, I’m using an LMS (LearnDash) for the exam itself, so I might also put the content within the course itself and use LearnDash’s pagination… but the content needs to be also available outside the course… so I think I’ll try the above.