1 Page - 5,000 Words

[PTC]

I have a themed strategy piece I am figuring out what to do with. What are the implications of having a page with 5300 words of text? Feel free to chime in with your ideas too. Ive considered making this a free ebook for users and webmasters or just selling it outright.

[CoolDog]

I would make it a free ebook. Encourage people to hand it out, with your affiliate links in it.

[leporello]

Yeah noone is going to read something that large even if it is amazing. Even breaking it into 10 500 word parts would be tiresome for the reader. i think the ebook is a good idea.

[TheDonk]

Add a love story and some action scenes and turn it into a dramatic poker novel.

Otherwise yeah, I think the free ebook with your aff links is a good idea.

[321]

Yeah noone is going to read something that large even if it is amazing.

I don't get that at all. 5000 is not very many when talking about something that matters.

Four 1250 pages is probably the best way to do it. An ebook is pointless if you own a real website.

Something like this (assuming it is good) is what you should make the centerpiece of a website, something that people can seek out for years. Don't waste that by throwing it away, or making it easier to steal.

[xYassassinYx]

I agree with breaking it into sections.

As a user that is what I would prefer rather than one whole page of text

[OPC]

I don't necessarily like the idea of breaking it into various pages. If the content is link-worthy, which from the sounds of your commentary, it certainly sounds as if it is - you would have four to five pages (each requiring a link), whereas 1 somewhat massive page obviously requires a single link to encompass the entire content.

With that in mind, you could certainly break the content into logical sections with the use of javascript, so that the page does not "appear" as massive and overwhelming to a potential visitor. A tactic of that nature may well be a fair compromise to allow you an entire page worth of content while preventing the visitor from feeling overwhelmed.

[leporello]

I don't get that at all. 5000 is not very many when talking about something that matters.

Four 1250 pages is probably the best way to do it. An ebook is pointless if you own a real website.

Something like this (assuming it is good) is what you should make the centerpiece of a website, something that people can seek out for years. Don't waste that by throwing it away, or making it easier to steal.

Its based on alot of market research. Users just dont like reading things that are overwhelmingly long. 5000 words is alot and the quality would want to be absolutely outstanding to engage the reader for the amount of time it will take to read.

If you think about it, some Masters degree theses are just 25000 words long. So this article is 20% of a thesis. That to me is alot to read.

However, I do have an excellent section on one of my sites dedicated to deep stacked poker and the average user who lands there spends 20 minutes on site so i do think really high quality writing and content can keep people interested especially those who are looking to learn something.

[PokaPaloma]

Offer it as an eBook and use the power of viral marketing to drive people to your website.

Once in eBook format, tweet about it, including a link to the eBook (on the website that you are wanting to publicize). Followers will do some of the work for you, Re-Tweeting. Remember each Tweet is the name of a web page, so, type most important words first, so that Google categorizes it correctly.

Mention it on in your blog, and your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.

Also, studies show that links from blogs are more "trusted" nowadays than links from Google searches. Get your family, friends, and colleagues to write about your eBook (including a link) in their blogs.

[321]

Its based on alot of market research. Users just dont like reading things that are overwhelmingly long. 5000 words is alot and the quality would want to be absolutely outstanding to engage the reader for the amount of time it will take to read.

If you think about it, some Masters degree theses are just 25000 words long. So this article is 20% of a thesis. That to me is alot to read.

However, I do have an excellent section on one of my sites dedicated to deep stacked poker and the average user who lands there spends 20 minutes on site so i do think really high quality writing and content can keep people interested especially those who are looking to learn something.

It's certainly not poker market research. Poker players want what will help them. A 400 word article on something like bluffing helps no one (unless it is talking about one small apect of bluffing, or is part of a larger section).

This business rewards affiliates for high quality players, and you get longterm visitors to your site by having high quality content, the more the better. Significant content like we are talking about here (again, assuming it is very good) leads to top value players and a popular website.

Poker is not People Magazine where all concepts can be dealt with in 350 words. Some areas take more content than that, like "Winning Texas Hold'em". Even 5 x 1000 word pages wouldn't exhaustively cover that topic.

Long individual pages are not optimal, but long/deep/exhaustive content is exactly what serious players want and will come back for, so break it down into sensibly sized pages.

Low quality users don't want to read. Informed users have been reading Sklansky's books for 20+ years, even though he isn't Shakespeare and he writes a lot more than a thesis.

And of course the more pages you have, the more links you create for yourself, the more pages can be individually focused to catch longtail search traffic.

ebooks are completely counterproductive if you own a real website, and destroy the whole point of online marketing. Why would anyone want a Friend1 to email your ebook to Friend2 instead of sending a link where they can read it... and then read more of the rest of the site for you? You want people to talk to and link to your content so you can exploit the link power, manipulate your traffic via your navigation including making related areas of your website as plain as day for readers. And of course, 5000 words of good content will be found via longtail searches for years. ebooks destroy any potential for that.