Will shortening down the amount of text on my pages affect it's SEO performance?
-
My website has several pages with a lot of text that becomes pretty boring.
I'm looking at shortening down the amount of copy on each page but then within the updated, shortened copy, integrating more target keywords naturally.
Will shortening down the current copy have a negative effect on my SEO performance?
-
Had the same question, these answers are helpful, thanks!
-
I spend much of my time improving articles on a long-established site. Most of these articles are already long - 1000 to 3000 words - with multiple images.
The improvements are usually adding a new section to beef up the length and give the article relevance to a new suite of keywords or make it relevant to topics in the recent news. Do these help the rankings? If the site is already near the top of the first page for the root query, it usually doesn't. If it is deep in the SERPs at position 50 to 90 it usually does.
Regardless of how the ranking for the root keyword changes, these improvements often increase the traffic - because they expose the site to new keywords.
but then within the updated, shortened copy, integrating more target keywords naturally.
If you do a good job of this, I think you will get more traffic, and it might be a better result that moving the rankings up.
-
It could, but it also could help your ranking. The amount of text is not important as much as how relevant Google sees it compared to the search query, so if you are removing superfluous words and redundant passages they you should see an increase as your pages are more user friendly. If you remove good copy that was considered helpful then you would expect to see decreases.
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
-
Which page will rank higher, my main article or the sub article linking from it?
Hi all, Can you help me figure this one out? I'm currently creating content for my website and I very badly want to know which page will rank higher in Google, my main article that has some keywords that are and links to my sub-article, or my sub-article which is optimized for those keywords? I will demonstrate with an example since I'm not sure my question is clear: If I have an article that talks about different kinds of candy and it links to a sub-article that will elaborate on specific candies like a mint candy ,which page will rank for mint candies. Until today I believed that if my sub-article which is linked from my main-article will rank for mint candies since it gets the support from my main article.Lately when experimenting this I found my thoughts to be wrong. Can anyone help me with this one?Any insights? Thanks, Leebi
On-Page Optimization | | Leebi0 -
Use of '&' in meta title
Hi, I know that use of '&' would be helpful to save space and also add more keyword variation to the title tag. But just want to make sure if it matters if I use '&' in most of my title tags? And also is it common to use more than & in one title? Would the following title be different in Google's perspective regardless of the title length? I am thinking they are all targeting the keywords 'fruit cake' and 'fruit bread', but the first one is the best. buy fruit cake & bread buy fruit cake & fruit bread buy fruit cake and fruit bread Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | russellbrown0 -
How to optimize WordPress Pages with Duplicate Page Content?
I found the non WWW ans WWW duplicate pages URL only, more than thousand pages.
On-Page Optimization | | eigital0 -
301 to Intermediate Page then Rel=Canonical from Intermediate to target page
Hi I'm working on an eCommerce site and don't have direct access to the CMS. I had requested developers to provide me a facilty to 301 via htaccess however this is working slight differently. I need guidance from experts whether it's okay or not: Old Page: example.com/old Target New Page: example.com/new After Implementing the redirect, It redirects to an intermediate page or in other words, The same target URL with a question mark added: example.com/new? (notice the question mark in the new URL) This intermediate page has a canonical tag for the exact target URL. So, if I 301 redirect example.com/old to example.com/new? (Intermediate page) and If the intermediate page example.com/new? has a canonical tag for the exact target URL (example.com/new), Will I be able to pass the link juice and authority of old page to the new page?
On-Page Optimization | | Ankkesh0 -
How can I maintain my website's authroity if I change the domain name?
I have 2 sites. Site A is doing well and growing, but has a low Domain Authority. Site B is older, has a higher authority but I want to retire it as the site's topic is well dated. Can I move all of my content on site A, to site B, change site B's name to Site A's name keep its higher authority and add all of the content and 301 redirect from site A to site B? Whew, Thanks for any thoughts, Jeff Strassman
On-Page Optimization | | biggieshaws0 -
How do I cure 'overly dynamic' url's on an e-commerce website?
I've just launched an e-commerce website selling hosiery and have received aa report from SEO Moz regarding overly dynamic URL's. How do I resolve this issue - in words of one syllable please, I'm new to SEO! Here are three exapmles of over 120: http://www.yosassy.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=1&page=2 http://www.yosassy.com/index.php?route=product/product&filter_tag=&page=1&product_id=57 http://www.yosassy.com/index.php?route=product/product&filter_tag=&page=1&product_id=64 Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Not using H1's with keywords to simulate natural non SEO'd content?
There has been a lot of talk lately about making a website seem like it is not SEO'd to avoid over optimization penalties with the recent Google Algorithmic updates. Has anyone come across the practice of not using Headings (H1's, H2's etc..) properly to simulate that the current webpage isn't over optimized? I've come across a site that used to use multiple keywords within their headings & now they are using none. In fact they are marking their company name & logo as an H1 and non keyworded H2's such as our work or Contact. Is anyone holding back on their old SEO tactics to not seem over optimized to Google? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | DCochrane0 -
Should I use a Page Name variable after the ? for a dynamic web page
I'm converting for static to dynamic web pages. It appears that the page name is used for page ranking in the search engines. Will adding a Page Name variable help to increase our SEO. For example aspecialgift.com/subcat.php?PageName=GiftPage&ProductID=ABCDE. Does the page name variable make a difference?
On-Page Optimization | | NCBob0