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.
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
-
Hreflang Errors 404 vs "Page Not Found"
For a websites that differ between catalogs (PDPs) what hreflang error causes the least harm? Obviously the best solution is to only have hreflang for shared products, but this takes more work to implement. So when no identical product exists... 1. Hreflang points to 404 or 410 error. 2. Hreflang points to 200 status "Page Not Found" page. This obviously has the additional issue of needing to point back to 100+ urls. I want to avoid having Google decide to ignore all hreflang due to errors as many correct urls will exist. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | rigelcable0 -
Do You Add City Name & Key Word For Every Page?
Hello, I'm new to SEO but feel I have a decent grasp on it. However, I had a question pertaining to key words and using my city name in it. For instance, if I am using the key word "herniated disc treatment" do I need to put in my city name behind it or does google recognize that I am already in my city area because of my geo tagging and having it listed on the footer of my site? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! -Scott
On-Page Optimization | | slgray0 -
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 -
Is Disqus comments useful as per SEO?
Is Disqus comments useful as per SEO? We have some comments on each of our pages and its time taking to moderate them, so wanted to know if its beneficial in any ways for SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | bsharath0 -
How long should I leave an existing web page up after a 301 redirect?
I've been reading through a few of blog posts here on moz and can't seem to find the answer to these two questions: How long should I leave an existing page up after a 301 redirect? The page old page is no longer needed but has pretty high page authority. If I take the old page down—the one that I'm redirecting from—immediately after I set up the 301 redirect, will link juice still be passed to the new page? My second question is, right now, on my index.html page I have both a 301 redirect and a rel canonical tag in the head. They were both put in place to redirect and pass link equity respectively. I did this a couple years back after someone recommended that I do both just to be safe, but from what I've gathered reading the articles here on moz is that your supposed to pick one or the other depending on whether or not it's permanent. Should I remove the rel conanical tag or would it be better to just leave it be?
On-Page Optimization | | ScottMcPherson0 -
Is there benefit to having longer article headlines?
I am seeing a trend in digital publishing on sites like HuffPo and others where they are increasing the length of article headlines to 3-4 rows of large type, often containing multiple sentences. Other publishers like CNN.com still have shorter headlines and character counts. Perhaps this is just a design aesthetic, but I am curious if there is any SEO value to having longer headlines assuming you are able to fit your targeted keywords/terms and message in something shorter?
On-Page Optimization | | barberm0 -
Two Word Company Name (Combined to One) & SEO
Hi All, I'm dealing with a company that has a two word name like "GreatCompany". They rank #1 for that but not for "Great Company". The phrase is not super competitive, but obviously they are not writing the company name with two words anywhere on their site. Has anyone had to deal with something like this? Thinking about creative solutions but I'm fairly sure we're going to need to use the name both ways to have an effect here (or use PPC to augment) but I don't really love the idea of doing that... will feel very odd and inconsistent for visitors. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | ketanmv0 -
How long is too long for domain URL length?
I noticed one of the negatively correlated ranking factors was length of URL. I'm building a page from scratch, we are trying to rank for 'Minneapolis Fitness' and 'Minneapolis Massage'. Is www.minnnepolismassageandfitness.com just ridiculously long? Or does the exact match outweigh the penalty for URL length?
On-Page Optimization | | JesseCWalker2