100 Words per category
-
These are the numbers of words I have heard mentioned as being "good enough" for the categories of ecommerce pages. Even at a stretch 50 words maximum.
What are peoples opinions on the volume of words required ?
-
this is why I'm glad EGOL is around when I'm not. Not only does he really know what he's doing from an SEO perspective, he runs his own site - proof from real world stuff.
Myopic SEO says "how little can I get away with". Sustainable SEO says "What can I do to eventually dominate in this niche, and not have to play the games other sites do."
100 words? Sorry - My recommendation to clients is 400 words on category pages, 1000 on information pages.
400 too much for you to swallow? Start with 200 each. Do other best practices SEO tasking - if you still find you're not getting the visits and conversions you want, write more high quality content.
-
I don't think it's the quantity so much as the quality. EGOL alluded to this. Semantic processing of keywords in relation to other keywords in a context relevant to the search term is key. We have examples of this where our site beats much larger and authoritative sites on long tail keyword phrases even with their brand name included. This is as a direct result of the number of ways the keyword is used in relation to other keywords.
-
....comparing to other sites with less content ranking higher than them...
A lot more goes into rankings than the number of words on a page.
If I wanted to save money on content I could find a lot of examples of short copy sites that rank ahead of me.... but my attitude on this is..."The hungry person usually eats the other guy's lunch."
-
I was looking at the site sportsdirect.com as an example .
and comparing to other sites with less content ranking higher than them ?
search arsenal home shorts
-
If you were google and you had a choice between two pages... one with 50 words and one with a few hundred. Which would you think is higher quality?
We have pages with short content on our site.... but we are working to improve them. When we improve a page from 50 words to a few hundred words that usually results in two things... 1) a ranking increase... and, 2) a lot more long tail traffic from the greater diversity of words on the page.
Time well spent.
-
Is it really needed though I know examples of sites with 50 words doing really well ?
granted the factors of link building are probably coming into play
-
Sure... 100 words... that's probably "good enough".... but in a competitive space don't you want "kickass"?
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
-
Word Count - Content site vs ecommerce site
Hi there, what are your thoughts on word count for a content site vs. an ecommerce site. A lot of content sites have no problem pushing out 500+ words per page, which for me is a decent amount to help you get traction. However on ecommerce sites, a lot of the time the product description only needs to be sub-100 words and the total word count on the page comes in at under 300 words, a lot of that could be considered duplicate. So what are your views? Do ecommerce sites still need to have a high word count on the product description page to rank better?
On-Page Optimization | | Bee1590 -
Best Tool for Retrieving Multiple URL Word Counts in Bulk?
I am doing some content analysis with over 200 URLs to go through! Does anybody know of, or can recommend any bulk on-page word count checkers which would help with the heavy lifting? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | NickG-1230 -
Removing entire site sections categories from an ecommerce store, best practices ?
Hi Whats best practice when removing entire site sections from an e-commerce store due to ending those lines and not having similar alternative pages to redirect them too ? Should you remove pages in GWT etc ? Any other measures to prevent probs such as 404 spikes etc ?? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Creative ways to dramatically increase content on ecommerce category pages?
I need to signficantly boost the content on the category pages on my ecommerce website. Currently, they're pretty thin, with some only having approx 50 words of unique content. In the past, I've intentionally kept the content on these pages quite light, to keep the aesthetic a certain way. It's a fashion-based site, so it's very much about the visual. However, with the introduction of Panda, I need to change this mindset. But, there must be slightly more creative ways to boost the content to stop the pages looking too text heavy. I'm not talking hidden text or anything, but ways to break it up in different blocks on the page to make it look natural/relevant, while keeping it looking great. Anyone have any good ideas? Or, any links to ecommerce sites that have employed brilliant methods?
On-Page Optimization | | Coraltoes770 -
Ecommerce, Adding Content To Categories/Product Pages
In an eCommerce store, when is it appropriate to add quality category pages content and when is it more appropriate to add content to the actual product pages instead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Category Anchor Text - all the same - should I worry?
I have analyzed several websites and have come across sites that have many backlinks from their category pages and those all have the anchor text of the blog title. Should I worry that categories in WordPress can have different Titles and Descriptions and there are plugins to help with the variation. I haven't found any good recommendations regarding if the anchor text should be changed for categories or how to accomplish that. (I have scoured SEOMOZ for answers but may have missed the answer.) Thanks, Linda
On-Page Optimization | | LindaJo0 -
Word structure on page optimization
My question is this. I have a scrabble dictionary site and I list a ton of words on the page. I removed then as links just in case Google might be thinking i am spamming, but could there be a difference in listing words like this word1, word2, word3, word4, word5 and instead like this word1 word2 word3 word4 word5 could the first way trigger Google that I am spamming?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
SERP listing of a websites' 'categories'
Hi all, just wondering if anyone has thoughts on what I can do to encourage SERP listings that include website categories, eg http://www.google.com.au/search?q=seomoz&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a . I'm assuming search engines only display type of listings when the search query closely matches the domain name? Thank heaps!
On-Page Optimization | | TheWebSearchMarketingCompany0