In counting words for a "long article," do comments count in the word count?
-
As Moz and others have proven, long articles help ranking, linking and sharing. My question is, do the comments at the end of an article count in the word count as Google counts it.
-
It feels like you're paying to much attention to the grains of sand and not enough attention to the beach. Think at scale--do you really want to be editing everyone's comments for ever and ever? How would your audience think about that? If you're audience is prone to misspelings and grammer errors (and whose isn't) so be it. One comment is worth a few errors and google's not going to ding you for that.
Instead, think about how you can get more people who are going to make those errors to your site. Don't knock your audience if they're engaging with your content.
-
I researched the spelling and grammar thing, and you re correct, it turns out it is not something that Google looks at, although there is a correlation between writing quality and ranking, for obvious reasons. Here's Cutts on the subject:
-
I'm definitely not saying that if you write a long post it won't be engaging - my last YouMoz post was over 2,000 words long, has had more than 40 comments and been tweeted about more than 400 times (self plug over). Long, engaging content that gets people talking is just as good as short content that gets people talking!
My point - and I think Chris's - was that if your article can be written in 200 words, don't put a load of filler in there to get to 1,000 because that's longer. You're likely to get less engagement, and so less tweets, shares, +1s, and backlinks. And when it comes to the ranking algo's that social interaction and linking is what you need to aim for, not length of article.
As an aside, I can't remember the last time Seth Godin wrote more than a couple of hundred words - and he seems to be doing alright!
I've not heard of Google looking at spelling and grammar specifically - could you point me to where you heard that, as I'd be interested in seeing it? But again, that could actually be an engagement question: "are people more likely to comment on a post if other comments are well written?" The thing about comments is that they somebody else's voice, not yours, so if you start editing those people's voices they may feel a bit aggrieved and so may be less likely to comment in the future. That will drive down the number of tweets, share, links etc and so adversely affect your SEO.
-
Thanks for your input.
"I would tend to agree with Chris though. Thinking about quality, engagement, and relevance will get you much more in the long term than just writing long articles that don't engage people."
There seems to be the assumption that if I write a long page, it won't be engaging. That's in incorrect assumption.
One thing this is making me think about now too is this: I think I should edit some of the commenter's writing. I know Google marks down pages for misspelling and poor writing, however it is that they judge the writing. My commenters are of very low intelligence (but great ad clickers!), and their comments reflect that. I don't want to get marked down for that.
-
Search engines look at the content on all of your page, so comments will count as well. Get lots of engagement on a short article and you've got as many words on the page as if you'd written a short article and got no comments.
I would tend to agree with Chris though. Thinking about quality, engagement, and relevance will get you much more in the long term than just writing long articles that don't engage people.
-
Yes, I read that too. I'm sure you noticed the part about
"Content Rich Sites Get More Links
People feel content is so valuable that they are willing to link to in-depth content more than they are willing to link to content that is short."
Don't confuse google liking links with google liking content. Google likes links--the content...not as big of a big deal (for google).
-
Appreciate the reply. But what you're saying isn't really supported by Moz and others' own research. (See this article, there are others.) It's proven that Google loves long article. Obviously, a page needs all the other factors, such as is the page even good, are their social shares, etc, but all things being equal, a long page is better than a short page as far a ranking is concerned (conversion is a whole other topic).
b=But what I did get out of your response is that comments DO count, and that Google in fact likes to see comments. Can you explain exactly what you mean about "the fact that the page has visitor profiles that have commented on it?" When you say "visitor profiles" are you saying the name in the comment must link to a profile of a registered member, as opposed to a comment that was made by an unregistered user comment and therefore does not link to any user profile?
-
Don't think about Google "counting" the words on your page--it doesn't really care about how many words it contains. The thing about words is that when used well, they can give others a reason to comment or share or like it--and shares and comments beget more shares and comments. A six word page with 50 comments is a whole lot better than a 2000 word page with none. In answer to your question, the comments on a page do count towards to the pages's content but the fact that the page has visitor profiles that have commented on it is where the real value is.
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
-
Web optimization for key words
Hi I’ve got a query around optimising websites for keywords. The organisation I work for has 3 websites that all sell aluminium joinery. Each website site represents a separate brand but the product is essentially the same across all three. In terms of optimising these sites for key words should I use different keywords for each site so as too not to make the brand compete with each other. Any advice would be great
On-Page Optimization | | APLNZ10 -
Authorship for articles with more than one author
Hello, Is there any way to do authorship for articles with more than one author listed? If so, how?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Exact keyword vs connecting words.
Hi guys, I'm wondering if there's a huge difference between exact keywords vs connecting words. i.e. "limo service chicago" vs " limo service in chicago" or something similar. It's tough to have 4+ keywords on a page sound great without using some form of connecting word. Will google still rank the page as high if I use connection words in a few instances of the keyword? Or should I just leave the exact keyword fir all instances. Thanks in advance. Aron
On-Page Optimization | | aronwp0 -
Re="tag" Question
Hello, I own the site I putted rel="tag" in categories and product links , its correct? There are a lot of categories and products , I wont get penalized right? Just making sure to know if Im doing it right , thank you for help me 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | matiw0 -
H1 Tags for Articles in Blog Category - confused ;-(
Dear Seomoz community This is my first post here. Until now I was only browsing the Q&A and learned a lot just by reading the existing topics. Since we launched our website with a new design last week I started to heavily use Seomoz to track down missing tags, descriptions and other on page issues. Just out of curiosity I checked the page outline of the Seomoz blog. I was really surprised! Seomoz uses only H1 tags on their blog main page. Each article is wrapped in an H1 plus the blog title. I am a total SEO beginner but until today I was thinking that using several H1 tags on one page is not optimal. We use one H1 tag on our site for the magazine category description (for example http://www.siam2nite.com/magazine ) and then for the articles H2. So my question. Should I change my H2 to H1 for the magazine articles like Seomoz did? Would really appreciate your advise on this Regards, Menelik
On-Page Optimization | | menelik0 -
Analyzing word count on page SEO
Hey guys quick question, when I am analyzing/ doing word count for a particluar key word and I want to make sure that i am no where near Keyword stuffing, does Google consider the alt and title tags keywords of images as part of the KW count when looking for on page Keyword stuffing. For example. let say I have a page that i just created with 1000 words. and Only 2 of the words are my target Keywords. Then, if i add a picture and add the keyword to both the alt and title tag and description of the image, does google now consider the "page" to have a total of 5 keywords? Also, a lot has changed recently since penguin and panda, is there a good rule of thumb for what ratio to stay under as far as keywords to text.?
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
Blog Comment IPs Seen By Google?
I have a page on a client's site for testimonials (a dental practice). The page is actually a post on a Wordpress install where customers can enter their testimonials as WP comments. In an effort to encourage more clients to give more testimonials I was considering setting up an iPad or other tablet at the receptionist's desk where patients would be able to enter their successes as comments on the page. If I made sure the patients all used unique names and emails in the Wordpress comments, would Google still see all the comments are from the same IP and view this as suspicious?
On-Page Optimization | | jargomang0 -
Separately bolded words
Do separately bolded words (for example: red and bike) increase the SEO value of a compound bolding in the code like red bike? I’m a rather inexperienced SEO. Thank you in advance for any feedback.
On-Page Optimization | | mosby1