How Many Words in Content for Good SEO?
-
I have heard it's best to have 400+ words of content for strong SEO per page. I believe this is true for the most.
I have a project in mind, however, that I am considering doing 100-200 words of content per page. This is for a glossary of terms for my industry, where I have a unique page for each term that describes what that term means w/ 1 image and a few links to related products.
Is having just 100-200 words going to be enough? Each page will still be unique, original content.
Or is it best to really try for longer articles?
In other words, is there a general rule for # of words per page for search engines to see the page as valuable and unique and to give it good ranking?
- Give me a BIG THUMBS UP if you found this question useful. It won't cost you anything! Thanks!
-
This site gets a lot of image search traffic. I can not tell you if the captions assist with that traffic. But I do know that kickass images on a same-topic page will get traffic.
-
I have a hunch that part of the Google Algo is how long people spend on a page, and lots of big pretty pictures along with text entices people to look at said pretty pictures thus stay on each page longer while reading.
-
Very informative on the added content getting long tail traffic. How did the images help though? Was it just the "content captions"?
Utah Tiger
-
Thanks, EGOL. That confirms what I'm thinking.
You mentioned image captions. I don't normally use them - do they help? I'm assuming this is for blog posts if its captions?
-
Just saying what happened here...
I had about 80 pages about topics that are similar to glossary entries.
I tossed them up with an image and two sentences. That was 3 or 4 years ago. Some of them ranked on the second or third page of google and they pulled a little traffic. Not much traffic a few visitors per day for most of the pages.
Then, after a year or two I started upgrading them to a couple paragraphs and one or two nicer, larger images with captions. Within a couple of months rankings went up (I don't build links on this site). Some of them were on the first page of google but most not. Traffic shot up like a rocket. Not that much from a ranking increase but because now there were lots more words on those pages and they interacted with queries to bring lots of long tail visitors. The result was each of these pages started pulling a few dozen visitors each day.
Now, I am slowly upgrading these pages to articles of 500 to 3000 words and three to twelve images with generous captions, some with data tables some with a video. Rankings on the ones that I have improved moved up significantly and are now in the top 5 of google. Traffic on the pages that I have improved now hits a few hundred visitors per day per page. I am working on another one today.
Bottom line... When compared to trivial content, substantive content pulls in lots more long tail traffic and will sometimes rank a little better on the basis of the richer content alone. An investment in richer content will immediately increase your traffic.
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 good is Google at reading geo-targeted dynamic content -- Javascript?
We are using a single page application for a section of our website where it generates content based on the user's geographical location. Because Google's Search Console is searching from Virginia (where we don't have any content), we are not able to see anything render in Google Search Console. How good is Google at reading geo-targeted dynamic content? Do we have anything to worry about in terms of indexing the content because it's being served through JS?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imjonny1230 -
Best SEO Strategy
Hi fellow Mozers: I have a question about strategy. I have a client who is a major real estate developer in our region. They build and sell condominiums and also built and manage several major rental apartments. All rental properties have their own websites and there is also a corporate website, which has been around for many years and has decent domain authority (+/- 40). The original intent of the corporate website was to communicate central brand positioning points, attract investors and offer individual profiles of all major properties. My client is interested in developing an organic search strategy which will reach consumers looking to rent apartments. Typical search strings would include the family whose core string would be 'apartments in Baltimore.' (Currently, the client runs PPC for each one of their properties. This is expensive and highly competitive.) In doing research, we've found that there are two local competitors who are able to break on to Page 1 and appear beside the National 'apartment search guides' who dominate the Page 1 SERPS (like apartments.com). The two local competitors have websites of either the same or lower authority than our client's; one has a better link profile, the other is comparable. Here's our problem: our local competitors only build and manage apartments. So, then, the home pages and all the content of their sites ONLY talk about apartment rental related information. Our client's apartment business is actually larger in scope than either local competitor but is only one of their major real estate verticals. So my question is this: if we want to build out a bunch of content which will rank competitively with our local competition, are we better off creating a new area of the corporate site, creating targeted content and resources appropriate for apartment seekers OR would we be better off creating an entirely new site, just devoted to the same? I'm wondering if a new section will ever rank well against competitors whose root domains actually feature content which is only rental related? Likewise, I'm wondering whether we'd be giving up too much, in terms of authority, by creating an entirely new site? I've also only found examples in the industry where an entirely new site was created, so it makes me question the strategy of building out a rental-specific section of a site which also contains information about their condo business. For instance, the Related Companies are a huge builder in the East; they have a corporate site and a site called https//relatedrentals.com . Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Woocommerce SEO & Duplicate content?
Hi Moz fellows, I'm new to Woocommerce and couldn't find help on Google about certain SEO-related things. All my past projects were simple 5 pages websites + a blog, so I would just no-index categories, tags and archives to eliminate duplicate content errors. But with Woocommerce Product categories and tags, I've noticed that many e-Commerce websites with a high domain authority actually rank for certain keywords just by having their category/tags indexed. For example keyword 'hippie clothes' = etsy.com/category/hippie-clothes (fictional example) The problem is that if I have 100 products and 10 categories & tags on my site it creates THOUSANDS of duplicate content errors, but If I 'non index' categories and tags they will never rank well once my domain authority rises... Anyone has experience/comments about this? I use SEO by Yoast plugin. Your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance. -Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcandre1 -
Where Does Blogging Fit Into SEO
I read an article yesterday that said blogging comes under the heading of social media, which is at the top of the so called SEO pyramid. I have taken this to mean less time should be spent in social media compared to other areas of SEO. Yet content creation was at the bottom of the pyramid (more time allocation here). Isn't blogging part of content creation? I would have thought there is a limit to what can be done for service/product & landing pages. Whereas blogs are a great way to produce more unique content for a website. Any clarification would be appreciated. Thanks - Christina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
Wordpress Blogs and SEO
So far we have been creating separate blogs on wordpress.com for our sites, and writing there. Today I was told that there was better SEO hosting the blog on the actual domain. i.e. www.widgets.com/blog instead of widget.wordpress.com Is this true? Oddly I have had my WP beat my own URL on one account. So I am not sure if this is valid. Can someone tell me pros and cons of both? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Victim of negative SEO
Hello, I'm one of those people that got the "unnatural links" message from google. Since i run my site from the very first day and always was a one man business i know all the ins and outs of the website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Henkiepenkie
Basicly i have never ever used a seo company to submit my site anywhere.
Never ever i used any shady tactic to get better ranks.
The only thing i did was trading traffic/links with real active websites, being daily updated, high traffic, etc etc. So. After i got notified in webmaster tools i started digging into a list (provided by webmaster tools) to find out why i got this message (meanwhile i lost 75% of my se traffic in past 3 months) After searching for hours i found out that in the past 2 / 3 months my site has been spammed on about 150 forums (completely dead forums with nothing but spam on it) There was no logic at all since my site got linked with the most ridiculous and unlogical word phrases.
My site is adult related and all spam links contained word phrases like "bangladesh mobile" or "rock girl" or "animal abuse" or "ringtones" etc etc. if i ever would be so stupid to start spamming my 7 year old strong business i would at least use titles that would make sence. anyway.
I can't do nothing about these forums, i don't own them, i can't erase them and if there are any owners, they simply don't respond.
I made a list of all the forums and send it to google but the only response they come up with is "there are still unnatural links". I hardly believe they did anything with that list i send them. I don't know what else i can do and was hoping that somebody could advice me on what to do here besides sending google messages on a daily base. cheers0 -
Which duplicate content should I remove?
I have duplicate content and am trying to figure out which URL to remove. What should I take into consideration? Authority? How close to the root the page is? How clear the path is? Would appreciate your help! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis0 -
Advice on further SEO
I am frustrated by a lack of progress for a major keyword I want to rank for. I have made several pages, optimized with Onpage and even a whole site but I can't seem to get my ratings up. I am hoping somone can take a look at my pages and efforts and offer me some advice... Keyword is "National Currency" One site is devoted to this keyword: NationalCurrencyValues This site is ranked 30th and is down 9... and this page on another site is devoted to the same keyword ranked 26th is: http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/National-Currency.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Banknotes0