Minimum # of words on a homepage?
-
When I design sites for clients I try to keep the homepage clean and simple. As a result, I usually end up with very little actual content.
For SEO purposes. What is the minimum # of words that I should have on any given homepage to avoid being penalized by Google?
Does it have to be at least 150 or something like that? Even though my internal pages have plenty?
thanks,
Martin
-
Hi Martin
There is no magic number although I have heard 100, 150, 300, 450 all given as the "best practice".
The minimum I would suggest would need to be an amount in which you could achieve mentioning the primary keyword naturally at least 2 or 3 times.
I tend to use the text on a home page as an introduction mentioning the company name, what it does and where. More details are then provided on an about us page. This approach usually means that keywords, phrases and brands are covered in this text.
There is obviously a balance to be achieved between providing not too much text for the user as we are told they don't read it but provide enough for the search engines to be happy.
-
For SEO purposes. What is the minimum # of words that I should have on any given homepage to avoid being penalized by Google?
Google does not penalize for a lack of content.... it is more the people involved in the website walking away from opportunity and therefore money. You penalize yourself on this.
Design is very important but in addition the website should accomplish the goals of the business. Those include: communicating a message, engaging the visitor and competing well in search. For most websites the homepage is the most powerful page and that makes it the one capable for competing for the most difficult (and often most profitable) keywords.
Take advantage of that power!
Great designers understand the goals of the business and understand SEO as well. They "get" these things perfectly. Then, they use their design skill to make a website that accomplilshes them first and at the same time is attractive. Sometimes trade-offs are made - but great designers can get all of the needed words on a page and still make it look fantastic.
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
-
What should I name my Wordpress homepage?
I work almost exclusively in wordpress now. And I always hesitate when it comes to naming a site's homepage. I have to give it a name - right? I usually pick the business name or /home. And then that is identifies as the site's static homepage in the Wordpress settings and it works just fine. But I've started to get warning that it is an issue because it creates redirects. For example, I just ran the Ryte service analysis on a website and it warned me about "Non-indexable pages with high relevance" and it's basically my homepage that has 29 incoming links that "passes all pagerank to https://ourdomain/home But what am I supposed to call my homepage if not "Home"? It's not like the old days where anyone has to type it in. The root domain loads the homepage just as it should. Can anybody advise me regarding best practices for what to name a Wordpress homepage for good SEO? With thanks in advance for your help.
Technical SEO | | Dandelion0 -
Index subpages but not homepage
Hello, Google index all my subpages, but not the homepage, how is this possible ? https://www.google.nl/#q=http:%2F%2Fwww.lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl He index the homepage of the neigbour country in the same language How possible ? Gr Marcel
Technical SEO | | Bossie720 -
Duplicate homepage content across multiple websites
Hi, I work for a company that runs 30+ membership based websites on separate domains and across multiple markets. The homepage for each site contains a section of content that highlights the site benefits and features. While each website serves a different market/niche, this section of content is essentially the same as each website offers the same benefits and features. What is the best way to avoid duplicate content issues while still being able to show the same section of content across 30+ sites? This particular section of content isn't valuable from an SEO perspective, but the rest of the content on that page is. Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | CupidTeam0 -
Some of the employees have done by mistake on wrong spelling word and the only difference was
hi, Some of the employees have done by mistake on wrong spelling word and the only difference was: difference of "a" he was doing for over 3-4 months the website has started coming on top for those wrong spelled keyword. Now currently he has started to do on right word. I have some questions:
Technical SEO | | Amtoj
Will my SEO for correct spelling keyword, be affected with this wrong spelling ? Can i save my efforts somehow ? There was 2 more keywords attached with it ( whose spelling was correct ) , so will i have to submit more directories, articles etc so will my seo get affected for those keywords for overwork ? Thanks0 -
Optimizing the homepage : should I have a h1 or not?
Hi everyone, I am launching a debate that may seem a bit basic for the most experienced of you 😉 In fact, after completing internships in two different agencies, I had quite opposite views of the optimization process for the homepage: View 1: The home page should be optimized on a keyword and should definitely have a h1. View 2: The home page is a branded page and should not necessarily have an h1 (unlike other pages). Bonus question: assuming that the view 1 is the right one, is it a good idea to put a h1 on the logo (only for the homepage) ? Thank you very much for your help
Technical SEO | | Axel_Janvier0 -
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?I see a person's name next to the website too
Technical SEO | | mainguy0 -
Homepage/Root domain de-indexed by Google
This morning I discovered that the homepage/root domain of our company site, http://www.collegeplus.org/, has been de-indexed by Google and Bing. Out IT dept. is claiming it's our fault because we changed the meta title on our homepage. But they will not give me access to GWT to see if there's any issues. I believe the issue lies within our robots.txt file - http://www.collegeplus.org/robots.txt I also don't believe we're suffering a penalty because all of our tier 2 pages are still indexed when any type of branded search is performed. We don't do things that can get a site de-indexed like this. Any ideas on what the issue may be? Or at least something to convince our IT dept. that simply changing a meta title won't get your homepage totally de-indexed? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | explorionary0 -
Duplicate Homepage: www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/default.aspx
Hi, I have a question regarding our client's site, http://www.outsolve-hr.com/ on ASP.net. Google has indexed both www.outsolve-hr.com/ and www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx creating a duplicate content issue. We have added
Technical SEO | | flarson
to the default.aspx page. Now, because www.outsolve-hr.com/ and www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx are the same page on the actual backend the code is on the http://www.outsolve-hr.com/ when I view the code from the page loaded in a brower. Is this a problem? Will Google penalize the site for having the rel=canonical on the actual homepage...the canonical url. We cannot do a 301 redirect from www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx to www.outsolve-hr.com/ because this causes an infinite loop because on the backend they are the same page. So my question is two-fold: Will Google penalize the site for having the rel=canonical on the actual homepage...the canonical url. Is the rel="canonical" the best solution to fix the duplicate homepage issue on ASP. And lastly, if Google has not indexed duplicate pages, such as https://www.outsolve-hr.com/DEFAULT.aspx, is it a problem that they exist? Thanks in advance for your knowledge and assistance. Amy0