I’ve needed information, not products. 
That’s just what I thought. However, I think you’ll find that most of the webmasters here at Site Point are building businesses on the web, not free informational sites. So the advice given here is to help them build successful businesses.
The way to build a successful web business is to take the disadvantage of readers clicking away from a web site and turn their urge to click into an advantage. The way to do that is to give readers the opportunity to click to other areas of your site and eventually through your sales process to conversion, using text links within content and breaking longer articles into shorter sections.
I took a look at the article you read and noticed that the top of the page contained links ( a table of contents) that led to the different subtopics of the article below, certainly a type of navigation meant to ‘shorten’ the article for those who didn’t need all of the information contained in the 11,000 words.
Unfortunately, it was poorly done since there was no ‘up’ or ‘top’ link to give the reader easier access to the index. Moreover, I believe that most folks would rather move forward through a site than back and forth and it’s certainly more beneficial for the website owner to lead their visitors through the site and through their sales process than to keep them jumping around a single page.
Breadcrumb navigation helps readers advance through a site while providing them with the ability to go back if they choose to do so. It also allows readers to bookmark a page of specific information, something which they can’t do on a one page article.
If you can keep the article “fresh” then go for as many words as possible, otherwise you need an absolute minimum 300 words.
What is the purpose of the article? If it’s just informational then I would say keeping it in managable pieces with pagination is ideal, but if it is a direct sales pitch, many people feel that longer is better. We’ve all seen this in action plenty of times around the web. It goes something like this
tempt the reader
offer the reader a “buy now” link
reader clicked? great
reader did not click…
tempt the reader
offer the reader a “buy now” link
reader clicked? great
reader did not click…
tempt the reader
etc…
An ideal article should have 500 - 800 depending on the topic one is covering. But a sales article should be longer like cringer said.
The length of an article depends on the material. For example, there is no point, in using your 1000 words article in a newsletter-e-zine that runs small items of 400-500 words. In this case, your editorial material should not be more than the existing length of the articles you have on the web site?
Is there any reason why one should prefer pagination over an index with anchor links?
Seems to me like anchor links would be a lot better for seo. You have a good point. 
personally, I like multiple short pages.
I hate when a page is loading and I glance over at the scroll bar getting smaller and smaller.
The smaller it gets the more impatient I get… even before I read the first word! 
500 is too short. 1000+ is often too long. I usually aim just around 1000, but around 750 seems to be the best. If you have a long topic at around 2000 words perhaps you should break it into two articles.
There’s really no such thing as ideal article length. The best length depends on the topic, the group you’re addressing (professionals vs amateurs vs children) and other factors. Obviously, longer articles should be especially well organized, with headings and perhaps an index.
Remember, also, a picture is worth a thousand words. I’m attempting to complement articles on my websites with tables in reference sections. For example, an article about state birds might be linked to a table that lists all the state birds.
You might also try including sidebars on longer articles.
That was a really good read, and kept me glued to the screen. I didn’t know that I was interested in diarrhea until I read that. And it will change the way I write, too. Thanks!
I would like to note how annoying pagination can be if done poorly. There are two ideologies about spliting web content into two pages:
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Break up a longer article so that it is easier to read. It helps to make the article not seem as long.
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Create multiple pages to generate more pageviews and more ad revenue.
Ideology 2 is bad! I hate websites that separate an article into pages that each have like three hundred words on them. So overall the article is like eight pages for something that could have probably been one or maybe two.
Page when needed, not to make more money.
At best an article could easily have 10+ pages without loosing the readers attention, but in the worst case even 100 words are too much. In my opinion it’s useless to rate an article based on the amount of words, as there are so many more important things you should take into your focus.
I think the presentation is much more important than the length, so choose a good line-height, font-size, make many paragraphs (but don’t exaggerate it), order your article with unobstructive sub-headlines (as soon as you can find at least three “content areas” in your article) and paginate the whole if necessary (I agree with charmedlover in this point).
A thing I really liked in a science magazine I’m reading (but as print): A “In short” section of every article which summarize all important contents in 3 short sentences, so you could remember the contents of that 4+ pages long article quite good.
Sorry, no word-numbers from me.
Greetings, Floriam
PS: Forgot to mention the fact that your article should be written nicly so it’s not deadpan - I’ll not read further than the first 2 sentences in that case…
This question is very typical.
I don’t think there is really a way to say exactly how many words an article needs. Some of the best articles I’ve read had less than 50 words. Other great articles had almost 10,000. You have to get your message across, and you should do it in as few words as you can. Other than that, I don’t think you can set a limit.
The ideal line length for text layout is based on the the physiology of the human eye… At normal reading distance the arc of the visual field is only a few inches - about the width of a well-designed column of text, or about 12 words per line. Research shows that reading slows and retention rates fall as line length begins to exceed the ideal width, because the reader then needs to use the muscles of the eye and neck to track from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. If the eye must traverse great distances on the page, the reader is easily lost and must hunt for the beginning of the next line. Quantitative studies show that moderate line lengths significantly increase the legibility of text.
Nice to know but, because web designers pay attention to resolutions and screen sizes, most web content pages are at the appropriate column width. The length (inch-wise) of an article is more important to the webmaster. As debated in this thread, most often the question is if it’s better to expect your reader to scroll down or to expect them to click to another page in a longer article. Or would it be better, in most cases, to keep articles to a length that allows the reader to complete them without needing to either click or scroll?
Hey guys,
Interesting topic and some very intriguing thoughts here.
DCrux, thanks for the link to that report. I was particularly interested to read that and boron’s comments on long articles. In light of those perspectives, I wanted to add a few thoughts to the conversation…
Here at sitepoint.com, we will not consider an article submission under 1000 words, and rarely do we receive an article less than 1500-2000 that is worth publishing. I’m sure this has a lot to do with the type of content we publish. No one complains about the length of our articles.
We use every one of the textbook-recommended tactics to improve the readability of sitepoint.com articles – short paras, a default short line length, images, headings and subheadings, multiple pages, etc. etc. Yet, almost without fail, when I receive a report of an error with an article (e.g. an incorrect image, incorrect formatting or a question about content) from a reader (rather than an author or someone else at SitePoint), the link the reader sends me is to the print version of the article, which is not paginated, and has a much longer line length than the online version. You can draw your own conclusions about why this is the case.
Writing content for the web is not about meeting a word count. As that study DCrux linked to – and other evidence in this thread – suggests, the online readership is continually maturing in terms of the way it uses the medium to gain information. Be creative about content production, and though you need to know and understand them, don’t be limited by the established conventions that everyone’s been wheeling out for years.
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Writing is about having a voice. I write untill I’ve said what I wanted to say.
If I’m writing for a client who’s set a word limit, I cut the article down to meet it. But I’d never add unecessary information for the sake of padding it out.
We need to give readers a bit more credit, they can see the fluff.