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.
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!
-
Does the same thing apply to regular articles?
Yes. Word count should be based on one primary question, how many words would it take to properly discuss the topic. If the topic is "What is the definition of...." then the word count can be quite small such as 100 words. If the topic is "Cardiomyopathy Risk Assessment" or any technical topic the word count can easily exceed 1000.
The judgement you exercise is when to pull back or expand upon various tangent topics. For a dictionary page, you could include a lot more then the definition such as synonyms, antonyms, thesaurus matches, origin of the word, examples in sentences, etc. For the Cardiomyopathy topic, you can greatly reduce the word count by offering additional pages on various tangent topics. One page can focus causes, another cures, another definition, etc.
-
Hey everyone,
This makes perfect sense. We'll focus on the quality of the blog post and not necessarily on making it long for the long tail.
Does the same thing apply to regular articles?
I'll close this soon. Thanks!
-
As many as it takes to write a good piece on the given subject.
Pages do not need a lot of text to rank, Matt Cutts has stated. but having said that, the more text the more chance of long tails
-
I don't disagree with any of the other answers, but I have to say the target should always be 250 words. Any less than that, and basically you don't have enough to say to warrant a post.
What I've found is that if I'm struggling to get up to 250, it means I need to think about it more and then when I come back to it I blow past 250 easily.
-
Write the content for the audience...there should be no minimums for superb content!
-
I totally agree, I have been asked this question a few times before and my answer is the metric for writing isn't length but are you the website owner answering the question the searcher is asking.
-
Setting a word count goal, quota or limit is a great way to mess up a great blog post.
The topic, your audience and your expertise should determine the length of the post.
-
I'm afraid there is no answer to that question. Here is why.
Each blog article you offer will cover a specific topic. More specifically, the article will focus one or more keyword phrases. The question search engines will decide is which web page is most likely to satisfy a user's query for that phrase.
If your article topic is "Houseism defined" then 100 words is probably enough. You could expand the article to 1000+ words by offering examples, explaining the history of the term, share instances where a House-ism was used in media outside of the television show House, etc.
The more content you share, the more thorough your topic coverage is of the keyword BUT the more opportunities arise to go off topic or dilute your message.
How many words should be in a blog post for it to be optimal for the search engines?
Enough to fully cover the specific keyword phrase target of the page. Always examine the top 5 SERPs for the target phrase. Search results are a competition. Some low quality articles rank as #1 and other high quality articles can't break the top 3 due entirely to competition.
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
-
New blog contributors
For context my website is a content resource portal. In SEO training I have been told that it is a good SEO move to have as many content contributors as possible. As a result we are pushing to recruit new content contributors so they can be listed as new contributors/authors on our site alongside their valuable content. Would this move be good for our SEO rankings and is there anything in particular to consider with this?
Content Development | | Chanice0 -
Does google penalize you if you post content in french and english on a website
I'm trying to encourage content editors to only post content in either English or French. For example we have a French press release but the team are wanting it on our site in French and English. I thought this would fall under duplicate content rules. Does google penalize you if you post content in French and English on a website?
Content Development | | EstherBrice0 -
References for Healthcare Blog Content?
Hey everyone, We have a couple B2C medical/healthcare clients we produce content for and I was wondering what the industry stance is when it comes to giving references at the end of a blog, assuming there were no statistics or direct quotes used in the content. A lot of our content is written via research on a specific condition/treatment and doesn't really dive deep into specific medical nuances. Things like risks, recovery timelines, questions to ask, etc. are written about mostly. Still, should we be providing general references at the end of blogs to sites like WebMD, Medscape, etc. Thanks for any input!
Content Development | | danielreyes0 -
At what point to stop comments on a blog? Do too many comments hurt the page?
I have a page that's ranking pretty well, and driving sales. That page is starting to get 10+ comments per day and is starting to get quite long. I was wondering if there is a point where I should disable the comments? My gut tells me that people interacting with the page, and Google seeing responses with the users SHOULD be a good thing not bad. But, then I think that a majority of the content of the page is no longer the article, but the comments. All the comments are good, non spammy and directly related to the topic. People just asking questions, etc. Good engagement, I should be happy right?
Content Development | | DemiGR0 -
Is it okay to delete old blog posts?
Hi All, I'm doing some SEO work on an entertainment (movies/tv/gaming) blog that started in 2011. Their recent articles have gained some popularity due to improved content and marketing, but there is some old stuff from the early days that was poorly written and gets virtually no traffic. These are mostly old news pieces. Out of approximately 10,000 articles, about 1,000 are receiving the lions share of the traffic. I feel like their good content is getting bogged down in a sea of crap. Would there be any harm in deleting some of those old posts? Is there a best practice for culling content? Thanks!
Content Development | | 74andsunny0 -
How Are You Handling Blog Posts/Author Pages when Employees Leave the Company?
What do you believe to be the best approach in handling blog content for employees once they have left the company? We don’t want to remove the blog posts so they need to stay, but then there are the author pages. This gets tricky because the CMS ties the blog post to the author. One approach might be to change the author’s name to the Company’s name to get around author pages for people no longer with the company. It’s kind of tricky because the blog posts won’t have the same credibility if they don’t have a person’s name/photo associated with the post. We could leave the blogger’s page and list him as a “Contributing Author” once he’s left the company. Thoughts?
Content Development | | RosemaryB0 -
How many articles are ok to publish a day on my website blog?
I have a blog on my website which is a part of the website. Currently I publish one article a day. Is it ok if I increase it to 2 a day? Is there any limitation in order not look negative to Google
Content Development | | AlirezaHamidian0 -
Should a business blog be on a separate site or on the ecommerce site itself?
Hey there. I'm a new Pro member and this will be my first question on the Q&A. Thanks in advance for your responses. I'm the owner of an ecommerce site that sells custom candles. www.prometheancandle.com in case anyone wants to take a peak. I've become somewhat of an expert on all-things-candles over the past 4 years and I am thinking about starting a candle related blog. My question is this. Should I build this blog on the ecommerce site itself, say @ www.prometheancandle.com/blog.php, or should I devote a separate site to answering candle related question, history of candles, etc? At first, I was thinking that the blog should remain on the ecommerce site so readers would have easy access to the shop to be able to purchase products. But then it occurred to me that people who may be interested in reading up on candle history, candle making, meditation & candles, etc., may not want to go to an obviously ecommerce site to do that. I know Google values informational sites more than ecommerce sites (at least I think they do), so that encourages me to lean towards the separate site. Well, I may have just answered this question myself, but I'd definitely be interested to hear feedback and opinions. Thanks so much guys and I look forward to hearing from you.
Content Development | | Devynn0