How many words per page?
-
I know this has been answered before, but I don't think it has been in about a year (and we all know how quickly the SEO landscape can change). We're having a little debate on it right now and I'd be curious to get some feedback from the community.
What is the minimum number of words you would use on a page? Does it matter to you if it's a second tier (website.com/x) or third tier (website.com/x/y) page?
It's always a tough sell on design between trying to keep it clean and trying to provide a lot of useful information. I'd be curious what your thoughts are. Thanks!
-Adam
-
[Spammy comment removed by forum moderator.]
-
Well if you think the brand exposure TSC has that catapults them to top rankings. If you a small retailer selling Horse Stall Mats with zero brand it will be an uphill battle. However I have found the amount of on page content plays a minimal role to the overall ranking factor. The biggest factors would be to have great branded links that pertain to your business, Social Media Presence with high engagement, and useful evergreen content on your site for people.
It looks like you have decent rankings for that keyterm. With out going to involved it looks like a little push from links to that page and work on your social media engagement since that's really lacking.
-
I'm confused by this because the author says a good percentage of the pages on Page 1 consist of 1000 words or more. However, I find a large number of pages on Page 1 consisting of very little text. For example, if you were to search for "horse stall mats", the number one listing is Tractor Supply. Go to the page and there's very little by way of keywording in the content itself. The meta is kw'd but there's very little related content (text).
-
Don't think of the word count as metric. Think about your users (I know that's becoming cliche now). Does a 200 word post help them with something or at least useful. I don't know of many that are. Sometimes that sort of short winded post may be better off on Google+, FB or Twitter.
Neil Patel wrote a really good article a year ago this time about the more words the merrier. Over 2,000 words in a post seemed to rank it. http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/20/the-science-behind-long-copy-how-more-content-increases-rankings-and-conversions/
Also John Doherty wrote on the MozBlog about the types of posts that get links and he did some analysis to back it up.
-
Thanks! I also agree with what Neil Patel said in that post that sometimes, long copy can interfere with conversions. It's a big "it depends". Sometimes all you need is a brief answer to an FAQ that will take you 100 words, and other times you need 2000 words to properly cover a subject.
-
I have found pages with 1000 plus words and various pics references and a video or animation rank very well. I'm sure if you hit 5000 words it may get a bit out of hand but in my experience more is better within reason. It's the video or animation that I find really makes the difference. I still count 300-400 as a bare minimum.
-
Certainly! Here is a great read on content length. But again Quality will be the biggest factor.
-
Hi! Would you care to share more information about the source of that number? It's always helpful to know background for this type of information.
-
Still around 700+ There is really not a formula as pages with 300 words rank very well.
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
-
How realistic is it to get to googles first page
Hello, I cannot say what my website it for, as it is very unique ( or will be for the next 4-6 months ). I am currently developing this site now with the view to launch next month. I will be doing every bit of on-site SEO as possible. Spending countless late nights perfecting it, referring to MOZ checklists and blogs. When the site goes live my team of 4 will be constantly marketing/SEO for around 5 hours each a day. Things like doing guest blogs, normal blog posts, link building .... essentially all aspects that need to be covered. As well we are consulting with an SEO company to help us too. I have 1 main keywords which I need to rank for ( I can't show these ). This keyword has a 62% keyword difficulty, however, the website with number 1 position for this keyword only has 8 Domain Authority and 23 page authority. Given the fact 4 of us will be doing non-stop of-site SEO, aswell as paying an SEO company and in general my content and site structure will be a lot more releveant for the user. Is it possible for me to rank in the top page of google within 3 months of launch, and become rank 1/2 after 4-5 months? Thanks
Content Development | | Matthew_smart0 -
Can a rel author tag point to a Google+ business page
I’m trying to get my blog posts to show with rich snippets but they are a collaborative effort from our staff and as such are posted under our business name. We do have some guest bloggers who write under their own name and we use the author tags to show this. Is there a similar way to do this with a business?
Content Development | | mark_baird0 -
Pages and categories with the same name?
I manage a wordpress based site that is needing to under go a site architecture overhaul. the site is christ.org and one of the problems is it has 89 pages but really only 4 are navigatable (not a word apparently). The site also has over 400 posts so categories and parent pages are both definitely needed. One option is I convert a lot of the pages into posts, but would that happen to break any links pointing to those pages turned posts? Or another option is to keep the pages and posts and create a bunch of subpages, then I would most likely end up with similarly named categories and top level pages. I would guess the name of the category needs to be unique from page titles right? And not just unique but very much differentiated than any page title (not posts but page titles). Maybe what I need to do is convert the pages that are not really unique into posts and put them in the category it fits with. And then keep those that are unique as top level pages. The architecture needs some serious work I think 🙂 Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | ThridHour0 -
Advice on the layout on this page for user experience and seo
Hi, we are testing a new website using wordpress, we have never used wordpress before and normally use joomla so we would like some advice to make sure the page below is good user experience, good for seo and the layout of the page including text style and size and paragraph space is ok would love your feedback here is the page http://www.cheapflightsgatwick.com/david-cameron-economic-rescue-plans-fail-as-families-are-forced-to-give-up-holidays/
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How to optimize content pages with ecommerce?
Some content pages act as buyers guides for certain products for example Used Paddle Boards for Sale - http://www.islesurfboards.com/used-paddle-boards-for-sale.aspx this is a content page that gets huge amount of traffic and is pure content with no products on the page, but we also have a ecommerce section of the site that is Used Paddle Boards for Sale -http://www.islesurfboards.com/buy-used-paddle-boards-for-sale.aspx however this page just has a small paragraph and all the ecommerce product related to this section on the page. The content only page above gets all the traffic and rank and then they click over to the actual ecomm section wiht the products from a link on that page. Should i merge these two together so its just one page and put the content on the ecom page? If i do all the content with push the ecommerce products down which is not good so what does anyone recommend as a best practice? Also will this mess up the content pages rank is i merge them assuming i redirect? or Keep them seperate like i have with a content page regarding "used paddle boards for sale" and an ecommerce page that sells acutal "used paddle boards for sale"
Content Development | | isle_surf0 -
How can I resolve a duplicate page issue?
I have (an attached) report that shows duplicate content for a blog page and I'm not sure how to resolve the issue. The blog/website is hosted on wordpress.org, maybe it's something to do with having to add categories or tags - can anyone help please? SDtXT.png
Content Development | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Is this facebook a paid for page please advise
Hi i would love to have a commercial facebook page instead of my personal name, i would like to have my company name on facebook like the huffington post but not sure if you have to pay for it or not here is the huffington facebook page, can anyone let me know if this is a paid for page http://www.facebook.com/HuffPostUK
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Duplicate page title on blog
Is this something I should b concerned about? I get about 6 posts per page with unique titles - however the title per page is not unique. Is this important?
Content Development | | MartinSpence460