How many words per page?

[AdamWormann]

I know this has been answered before, but I don't think it has been in about a year (and we all know how quickly the SEO landscape can change).  We're having a little debate on it right now and I'd be curious to get some feedback from the community.

What is the minimum number of words you would use on a page?  Does it matter to you if it's a second tier (website.com/x) or third tier (website.com/x/y) page?

It's always a tough sell on design between trying to keep it clean and trying to provide a lot of useful information.  I'd be curious what your thoughts are.   Thanks!

-Adam

[Fahaddd]

[Spammy comment removed by forum moderator.]

[CustomButtonCo.com]

Well if you think the brand exposure TSC has that catapults them to top rankings.  If you a small retailer selling Horse Stall Mats with zero brand it will be an uphill battle.  However I have found the amount of on page content plays a minimal role to the overall ranking factor.  The biggest factors would be to have great branded links that pertain to your business, Social Media Presence with high engagement, and useful evergreen content on your site for people.

It looks like you have decent rankings for that keyterm. With out going to involved it looks like a little push from links to that page and work on your social media engagement since that's really lacking.

[Greatmats]

I'm confused by this because the author says a good percentage of the pages on Page 1 consist of 1000 words or more.  However, I find a large number of pages on Page 1 consisting of very little text.  For example, if you were to search for "horse stall mats", the number one listing is Tractor Supply.  Go to the page and there's very little by way of keywording in the content itself.  The meta is kw'd but there's very little related content (text).

[DarinPirkey]

Don't think of the word count as metric.  Think about your users (I know that's becoming cliche now).  Does a 200 word post help them with something or at least useful.  I don't know of many that are.  Sometimes that sort of short winded post may be better off on Google+, FB or Twitter.

Neil Patel wrote a really good article a year ago this time about the more words the merrier.  Over 2,000 words in a post seemed to rank it.  http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/20/the-science-behind-long-copy-how-more-content-increases-rankings-and-conversions/

Also John Doherty wrote on the MozBlog about the types of posts that get links and he did some analysis to back it up.

http://moz.com/blog/what-kind-of-content-gets-links-in-2012?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+seomoz+%28SEOmoz+Daily+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[KeriMorgret]

Thanks! I also agree with what Neil Patel said in that post that sometimes, long copy can interfere with conversions. It's a big "it depends". Sometimes all you need is a brief answer to an FAQ that will take you 100 words, and other times you need 2000 words to properly cover a subject.

[mark_baird]

I have found pages with 1000 plus words and various pics references and a video or animation rank very well. I'm sure if you hit 5000 words it may get a bit out of hand but in my experience more is better within reason. It's the video or animation that I find really makes the difference. I still count 300-400 as a bare minimum.

[CustomButtonCo.com]

Certainly! Here is a great read on content length. But again Quality will be the biggest factor.

http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/20/the-science-behind-long-copy-how-more-content-increases-rankings-and-conversions/

[KeriMorgret]

Hi! Would you care to share more information about the source of that number? It's always helpful to know background for this type of information.

[CustomButtonCo.com]

Still around 700+ There is really not a formula as pages with 300 words rank very well.