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.
Should cornerstone content have 3,500 words? Does Google discern words from the main text and from the references?
-
Is it true that cornerstone content should have at least 3,500 words? I've done some research and found that the recommended amount is between 2K-10k.
Also, the content that we create/publish has a lot of references/citations at the end of each article. Does Google discern words from the main text and from the references? Meaning should I count references as part of the word count?
Thanks for the help!
-
A Very Happy New Year to you, too! So glad my reply was helpful to you, and good luck with your publication.
-
Thanks so much for your detailed response Miriam! This is very helpful. Happy New Year!
-
Hello There!
Earlier this year, we had a good discussion about Cornerstone Content (a term that is widely used by Yoast though not by everyone else) here on the forum. You might like to take a look: https://moz.com/community/q/are-core-pages-considered-cornerstones.
Yoast is a very respected company, and they've created some classic products. That being said, I personally question advice like this being given on their blog:
"You’ll need to write an article of at least 900 words."
_900 words _sounds to me more like a public school writing assignment than criteria for a professional writer or publisher. Let's talk about this.
Wordstream has been kind enough to cite Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO as a good example of cornerstone content. I've contributed to that guide along with other staff here, and can attest that a specific number of words was nowhere in the plan for contributing. Instead, the plan is to cover the topic at hand thoroughly, and this is what all good writing, both on and off the web, does. Because of this, while I can appreciate that there is a desire to know if there's a word count that impresses Google, I don't think it's a good way to think about writing or publishing. If it takes 500 words to explain something, write them. If it takes 10,000 words, write them. The point is to explain a topic to a reader in a way that engages them and results in them feeling fully informed.
My best guess is that a company like Yoast is striving to offer some general guidelines for strong, lucrative publishing strategies, but when people start throwing set numbers around, it doesn't match my concept of building authority as a publication. I would rather that publishers focus on quality than word counts. The only time I can see the necessity of counting words is in offline publications that have limited paper space for an article. On the web, they sky's the limit, and the quality of what you publish is what wins readers.
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
-
Google Index Issue
2 months ago, I registered a domain named www.nextheadphone.com I had a plan to learn SEO and create a affiliate blog site. In my website I had 3 types of content. Informative Articles Headphone Review articles Product Comparision Review articles Problem is, Google does not index my informative articles. I dont know the reasons. https://www.nextheadphone.com/benefits-of-noise-cancelling-headphones/
Content Development | | NextHeadphone
https://www.nextheadphone.com/noise-cancelling-headphones-protect-hearing/ Is there anyone who can take a look and find the issues why google is not indexing my articles? I will be waiting for your reply0 -
I want to use some content that I sent out in a newsletter and post as a blog, but will this count as duplicate content?
I want to use some content that I sent out in a newsletter a while ago - adding it as a blog to my website. The newsletter exists on a http://myemail.constantcontact.com URL and is being indexed by Google. Will this count as duplicate content?
Content Development | | Wagada0 -
How to deal with lot of old content that doesn't drive traffic - delete?
Hi community, i hope someone can help me with this, We are migrating our e-commerce site next februari. I'm preparing the content migration. For a large part exact copies of our product listing and product detail pages will be migrated.
Content Development | | Marketing-Omoda
However, we also have a lot of old blog content, which is, because of seasonality and trendiness, outdated and doesn't drive traffic anymore. It actually is just worthless content. (Not only as a traffic driver, this also counts for extremely low to none internal driven traffic (both internal search and internal navigation). We have about 4.000+ blogs of which about 100 drive the most traffic (mostly incited by e-mail and social campaigns and internal navigation promoted on important category landing pages during some period. Is it a bad signal to search engines to delete these old content pages? I.a.: going from a content-rich to a content-poor site?
Off course I will migrate the top 100 traffic earning content and provide proper redirects to them0 -
Content Writing - it should be for the main corporate site, blog or for social media?
Hi There, I have my main site : example.com and a related blog https://blog.example.com/ My management does not believe frequent content posting on the example.com My Queries 1- Will it help boost ranking of **example.com **if we share frequent content on our blog https://blog.example.com/? How much impact it has? 2- Every body says content is the king, Ok fine, but when you are not allowed to share it on the main corporate site, then where to share it? Blog and social media sites? please help. 3- We are in a business where clients do not bother to go on sites and read, so in this scenario is it correct to say that you hav to create the content for search engine consumption even when your clients dont need it/or have not in the habit of reading it? Hope somebody will enligten me caught in catch 22. Regards Tanveer
Content Development | | Sequelmed1 -
Content Writing Service Recommendations
I am looking to hire a content writer for our sites. Anyone familiar with a service where the manage the content on your site? Basically, come up with topics & content ideas, then writing the content. Please give me an idea of the pricing if possible. Greatly appreciate any help.
Content Development | | inhouseseo0 -
Blog Posts: 1 link per 125 words?
I've seen this "1 link per 125 words" for blog posts suggestion pop up a variety of places. I wanted to know if that's "correct" or a best practice? In my posts, I generally write between 800 to 1200 words with about 4 to 6 links in the body of the post. However, (and this may be a problem) I add about 13 links in my closing paragraph, "if you have any legal questions, etc etc, click here for your "Tampa personal injury attorney, Clearwater Personal Injury Attorney, etc etc for all the areas we practice in related to that blog post." Should I stop doing that? Does that come off as spammy? (The blog is hosted on our site, if that matters for this question at all). Thanks, Ruben
Content Development | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Can you have too many words on a page for SEO?
One line of thinking is that you can not have too many words on a page because the more words you have the higher the chances that a long tail phrase will attract traffic. But can you go overboard with this? Is there a limit to the number of words on a page in terms of SEO?
Content Development | | ProjectLabs0 -
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!
Content Development | | BobGW0