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.
When writing content for a website what is the optimal copy length?
-
My site is currently in the mist of a redesign and I’d like us to compile some recommendations on the length of copy for a page to rank well but can't seem to find any up to date articles on this.Does anyone have any suggestions, comments, or feedback?Thank you.
-
I have hundreds of articles on my site and they range in length between 500 and 4000 words - with lots of photos.
My retail pages usually have several hundred words of unique relevant content and they often link to article content (500 to 4000 words) that explains how to use the product, how to select, how to repair, etc. These are clusters of content around retail products. In my opinion, it is the best way to rank.... but sometimes your articles will rank better than your retail -- but, that's OK because we have house ads on those pages to let visitors know that we sell the stuff.
-
Thanks Monica!
-
Thank you for sharing this link.
-
Thank you Hutch, this is very helpful.
-
Google doesn't have a minimum, but as a rule of thumb, I stay above 500 words per page.
Some things to consider are how many links are on the page. You want to keep your HTML to text ratio at about 1:2. It will help avoid duplicate content issues in the future.
Hutch has a great point, you can't limit yourself to fill the target words per page if it will inhibit your ability to convey your message. If you need 1000 words then you need 1000 words.
Just some helpful tips about content writing, make sure to utilize images and try to incorporate some user generated content. Both of these things will help increase the value of your content and offer an advantage to your searchers.
Good luck!
-
Yeah i agree with Hutch, Google does not appear to have a minimum/maximum word count for indexing content. So just write as much as is required
-
Write as much copy as you need to convey the information that is needed for your visitor on that page. If you can create a good user experience on one page with 100 words (by answering the pain that they would be going to that page to solve) and then you need 1,000 words for your next page, then do that to. Don't make arbitrary copy limits or goals based on SEO, make your pages user friendly and your copy useful and your pages will rank well for the appropriate content.
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
-
Page Optimization Error
Hi, I am trying to track a page optimization feature for one of my project, https://shinaweb.com but i keep getting this below error: "PAGE OPTIMIZATION ERROR
On-Page Optimization | | shinawebnavid
There was a problem loading this page. Please make sure the page is loading properly and that our user-agent, rogerbot, is not blocked from accessing this page." I checked robots.txt file, it all looks fine. Not sure what is the problem? Is it a problem with Moz or the website?0 -
No index for http version of website
Hi, I've had a message from Google search console to say the sitemap for the http version of my site is tagged as no index. As the https version is indexed, do I need to change the http version to be indexed as well? Do I need to keep the http version of the site in search console alongside the https version, or should I remove it? Advice appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | Robingoodlad0 -
How long should my website content be (max and min number of words)?
I saw a web site which has been number 1 on Google for a long time, and the home page has 5700 words, but the results show it is not spam, so what would be the recommended word number for a home page?
On-Page Optimization | | Majapopa0 -
Does hover over content index well
i notice increasing cases of portfolio style boxes on site designs (especially wordpress templates) where you have an image and text appears after hover over (sorry for my basic terminology). does this text which appears after hover over have much search engine value or as it doesnt immediately appear on pageload does it carry slightly less weight like tabbed content? any advice appreciated thanks neil
On-Page Optimization | | neilhenderson0 -
How do i know about my website content quality is good or bad?
According to Google updates, content is the main part of the website ranking, so how do i know about my website content quality...if you have any type of tool for check website content quality please refer to me.
On-Page Optimization | | renukishor0 -
Fading in content above the fold on window load
Hi, We'd like to render a font stack from Typekit and paint a large cover image above the fold of our homepage after document completion. Since asynchronously loading anything generally looks choppy, we fade in the affected elements when it's done. Sure, it gives a much smoother feeling and fast load times, but I have a concern about SEO. While Typekit loads, h1, h2 and the page's leading paragraph are sent down the wire with an invisible style (but still technically exist as static html). Even though they appear to a user only milliseconds later, I'm concerned that a search engine's initial request is met with a page whose best descriptive assets are marked as invisible. Both UX and SEO have high value to our business model, so we're asking for some perspective to make the right kind of trade off. Our site has a high domain authority compared to our competition, and sales keyword competition is high. Will this UX improvement damage our On-Page SEO? If so and purely from an SEO perspective, roughly how serious will the impact be? We're eager to hear any advice or comments on this. Thanks a lot.
On-Page Optimization | | noyelling0 -
SEO for spanish website
Hi, A client has given us the site http://www.comtranslations.com/Home.html for optimization. He wants to optimize only the spanish part ( the link is on the top right ). By clicking on the link Espanol, the url opened is - http://www.comtranslations.com/Principal.html. He wants seo for this website for spanish keywords. The keywords are - Traducción
On-Page Optimization | | seoug_2005
Traductor
traducir español inglés
traducción My question is how do we go about this ? Shall we purchase a software that translates spanish to english ? Thanks0 -
Is it better to drip feed content?
Hi All, I've assembled a collection of 5 closely related articles each about 700 words for publishing by linking to them from on one of my pages and would appreciate some advice on the role out of these articles. Backround: My site is a listings based site and a majority of the content is published on my competitors sites too. This is because advertisers are aiming to spread there adverts wide with the hope of generating more responses. The page I'm targeting ranks 11th but I would like to link it to some new articles and guides to beef it up a bit. My main focus is to rank better for the page that links to these articles and as a result I write up an introduction to the article/guide which serves as my unique content. Question: Is it better to drip feed the new articles onto the site or would it be best to get as much unique content on as quickly as possible to increase the ratio of unique content vs. external duplicate content on the page that links to these articles**?** Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Mulith0