At the end of the day, the length of a page depends on the amount of writing it takes to get your point across but there are some key rules to make the page easier on the eye. It’s harder to read an article on a screen than in a newspaper or book and people switch off quicker.

300 - 900 words

As a simple guide you should aim for a single page to be between 300 – 900 words. No more, no less. If you write more than this you should look into splitting the content down into separate pages based on different themes. If you write less, try and combine pages.

There are a number of reasons for this page length rule including:

• Experience: reading on a laptop or monitor isn't a particularly pleasurable experience, making it hard for someone to actually sit down and read lengthy content in one go.
• Distractions: online there are many other websites drawing your readers elsewhere. Short content ensures readers get to the point of your article before they're drawn away.
• Search engines: work best on content of between 300 - 900 words. Any longer and the importance of the content drops. Shorter and there isn't enough content for a search engine to rate a page properly.
• Design: pages of this length simply look nicer than overly short or long pages.
• Practical: following nicely on from design, the length is there for practical reasons too. On good websites the menus are situated at the top and bottom of a page. If a page is very long it can become a pain to scroll up and down the page. This is also true of cross referencing and comparing different pieces of text on a page.
• Loading: it's becoming less of a problem with faster broadband speeds and better browser software, but reducing the length of a page increases the speed at which it loads.

Paragraphs

All webpages, no matter the length, should always be broken down into paragraphs with a line space in between. These paragraphs must never be longer than 2 – 3 sentences; remember people scan webpages, they do not read them in the same way that they would a book or magazine. Make scanning as easy as possible.

Split pages

If you have a 2,000 word essay on one theme you may find it difficult to find an obvious split in the content, so you can split a page into two or more pages of 900 words. You can link one page to another with ‘next page’ or ‘page two’ links but for best practice you really should be breaking up your writing with short titles – use these titles as the links.