Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Simple question: How many words optimal for blog posts
-
Hello,
We're adding a blog to one of our sites.
How many words should be in a blog post for it to be optimal for the search engines? If it varies from industry to industry, please give a couple of examples.
We were going to do 500 words but that seems a bit long.
Thanks!
-
Does the same thing apply to regular articles?
Yes. Word count should be based on one primary question, how many words would it take to properly discuss the topic. If the topic is "What is the definition of...." then the word count can be quite small such as 100 words. If the topic is "Cardiomyopathy Risk Assessment" or any technical topic the word count can easily exceed 1000.
The judgement you exercise is when to pull back or expand upon various tangent topics. For a dictionary page, you could include a lot more then the definition such as synonyms, antonyms, thesaurus matches, origin of the word, examples in sentences, etc. For the Cardiomyopathy topic, you can greatly reduce the word count by offering additional pages on various tangent topics. One page can focus causes, another cures, another definition, etc.
-
Hey everyone,
This makes perfect sense. We'll focus on the quality of the blog post and not necessarily on making it long for the long tail.
Does the same thing apply to regular articles?
I'll close this soon. Thanks!
-
As many as it takes to write a good piece on the given subject.
Pages do not need a lot of text to rank, Matt Cutts has stated. but having said that, the more text the more chance of long tails
-
I don't disagree with any of the other answers, but I have to say the target should always be 250 words. Any less than that, and basically you don't have enough to say to warrant a post.
What I've found is that if I'm struggling to get up to 250, it means I need to think about it more and then when I come back to it I blow past 250 easily.
-
Write the content for the audience...there should be no minimums for superb content!
-
I totally agree, I have been asked this question a few times before and my answer is the metric for writing isn't length but are you the website owner answering the question the searcher is asking.
-
Setting a word count goal, quota or limit is a great way to mess up a great blog post.
The topic, your audience and your expertise should determine the length of the post.
-
I'm afraid there is no answer to that question. Here is why.
Each blog article you offer will cover a specific topic. More specifically, the article will focus one or more keyword phrases. The question search engines will decide is which web page is most likely to satisfy a user's query for that phrase.
If your article topic is "Houseism defined" then 100 words is probably enough. You could expand the article to 1000+ words by offering examples, explaining the history of the term, share instances where a House-ism was used in media outside of the television show House, etc.
The more content you share, the more thorough your topic coverage is of the keyword BUT the more opportunities arise to go off topic or dilute your message.
How many words should be in a blog post for it to be optimal for the search engines?
Enough to fully cover the specific keyword phrase target of the page. Always examine the top 5 SERPs for the target phrase. Search results are a competition. Some low quality articles rank as #1 and other high quality articles can't break the top 3 due entirely to competition.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Blog post generating irrelevant traffic. What should I do with it?
I have a blog post that has been generating more than 75% of my website's traffic month over month.-averaging about 1000 views a month. Awesome that so many people are finding and benefiting from this post, however it is really skewing my traffic. I have an 87% bounce rate, and I'm only ranking in terms related to this post as opposed to industry related terms. I'm not sure what to do with this blog post. I want to be able to better evaluate my website's performance and be sure I'm targeting the right audience in order to gain more leads. Would a 'noindex' or 'nofollow' be appropriate here? Thanks!
Content Development | | Ali_DeLeg0 -
Internal blog with history and some SEO value versus new external blogs with specialized content?
We operate a blog inside a folder on our site and considering the launch of 4 highly focused blogs with specialized content which are now categories on the internal blog. Wondering if there is more value in using the external new blogs or just keep growing the internal blog content. Does fact that the internal blog is buried amongst millions of pages have any impact if we want the content indexed and value given to the links from the blog content to our main site pages.
Content Development | | CondoRich0 -
Is it ok to have two blogs for my website?
Hi Pep's The blog for my website is integrated, but does not have a URL that matches the text. The company I use for my site say that it can't be changed. Basically it displays numbers instead of text in the url. So I thought, what about starting another blog as well as the original. Would this have any effects on my SEO, negative or positive? Any advice greatly appreciated! 🙂
Content Development | | MissThumann1 -
Shopify Blog vs Wordpress
We are moving our Ecommerce site to Shopify. Currently we run our blog on Wordpress and I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion on using the Shopify blog vs Wordpress?
Content Development | | Glaze0 -
Can We Publish Duplicate Content on Multi Regional Website / Blogs?
Today, I was reading Google's official article on Multi Regional website and use of duplicate content. Right now, We are working on 4 different blogs for following regions. And, We're writing unique content for each blog. But, I am thinking to use one content / subject for all 4 region blogs. USA: http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/ UK: http://www.bannerbuzz.co.uk/blog/ AUS: http://www.bannerbuzz.com.au/blog/ CA: http://www.bannerbuzz.ca/blog/ Let me give you very clear ideas on it. Recently, We have published one article on USA website. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/choosing-the-right-banner-for-your-advertisement/ And, We want to publish this article / blog on UK, AUS & CA blog without making any changes. I have read following paragraph on Google's official guidelines and It's inspire me to make it happen. Which is best solution for it? Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible. There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element) appropriately. In addition, you should follow the guidelines on rel-alternate-hreflang to make sure that the correct language or regional URL is served to searchers.
Content Development | | CommercePundit0 -
How many words should be placed on a home page, category pages, and product pages?
To optimize content for a website, how many words should be provided for a home page, category page and a product page?
Content Development | | gallreddy0 -
Posts vs Pages and Rankings Differ Greatly
I use wordpress for most of my sites and generally have a post 'news' section. What I've noticed is that just about every time a post will always rank much higher and much faster than a 'page'. As long as I don't let it get buried in the news archives it continues to rank well, better than if I were to create a 'page'. Is there any sort of reason this might occur? I'd like to be able to just create 'pages' but at this point in time it makes no sense.
Content Development | | GYMSN0 -
Can you use creative commons non-commercial images on a company blog?
Does anyone know if it is okay to use creative commons images on your company blog if they are under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. Technically you are using it on a commercial site, but you are not directly making money from the image or selling it.
Content Development | | ProjectLabs0