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
-
Url shows up in "Inurl' but not when using time parameters
Hey everybody, I have been testing the Inurl: feature of Google to try and gauge how long ago Google indexed our page. SO, this brings my question. If we run inurl:https://mysite.com all of our domains show up. If we run inurl:https://mysite.com/specialpage the domain shows up as being indexed If I use the "&as_qdr=y15" string to the URL, https://mysite.com/specialpage does not show up. Does anybody have any experience with this? Also on the same note when I look at how many pages Google has indexed it is about half of the pages we see on our backend/sitemap. Any thoughts would be appreciated. TY!
On-Page Optimization | | HashtagHustler1 -
Placement of key words in URL
I notice that the MOZ Page Grader considers "/keyword1/keyword2-keyword3" in a URL string to be less effective than "/keyword1-keyword2-keyword3". Is this correct from Google's perspective? If I am trying to maximise my SEO for the page title "Business building tips", for example, does Google think my URL is more relevant if it's in the form: 1. www.website.com/business-building-tips
On-Page Optimization | | Gavin.Atkinson
2. www.website.com/business/building-tips or
3. www.website.com/business/business-building-tips My instinct tells me 3 is more powerful, but logic tells me if I have a whole section devoted to "business" and one of those pages is "business building tips" then 2 should work just as well, possibly better?0 -
How many words for product description
Hi, I've read articles on the MOZ blog, which stress the point for unique product descriptions. I think this was even mentioned in one White Board Friday. Now I am in the process of writing them. How many words should they have at least in your opinion? Best, Robin
On-Page Optimization | | soralsokal0 -
To Many Links & Long Titles
One of our clients currently has a number of pages that "Too many on page links", Now her menu in itself has the majority. With it being an eComerce website it has quite a few categories. How harmfull is this to search rankings. The other side of thing's, Currently the client has a large number of pages where the title of the page is the product, However her products for example could be "The pink fluffy bear 2x4 with extendable arm and voice activation ( batteries not included )" Again, how Harmfull is having a large volume of pages named like this.
On-Page Optimization | | bmkdigital0 -
"Heading 1" vs. "Title" Style for SEO
In Word, you can specify "Heading 1" text which Google presumably treats the same as an HTML tag. Is there any benefit in using the "Title" style? Is it the equivalent of a web page's title?
On-Page Optimization | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Why doe SEOmoz include my categories and subcategories when counting on page links?
Hi everyone, I am new to SEOMOZ, but it looks like really good program. I ran a report last week, and SEOMOZ says that out of 10001 pages, I hve a total of 9995 warnings. When I take a look at the breakdown, it says I have too many on page links. I removed the links from the bottom of each page, but my on page links are still over 100. Does this mean that I will have to get rid of categories and sub-categories in the navigation bar? Thanks, Don
On-Page Optimization | | ge01734000 -
Landing page too long
In my first seomoz test I have many tilte pages for products that are over 70 charachers long. The part #'s are long like 10-782-10-10-10-PPxxxx etc. All these part #'s are not my key products and I could delete or truncate. My question is if the part numbers are not that important, is it OK to leave them as is or is ranking being damaged because they exist?
On-Page Optimization | | Wales0 -
Best article about internal linking structure?
Hi! Could you please recommend me a good and deep article about best practises in internal linking structure? I need to rethink the structure of a big site (lucky me it's very hierarchical) and I would like to have a look at some great articles about this to consolidate some ideas and have some new ones. I've read some but I would like some recommendations 🙂 Some articles about information architecture would be appreciated as well! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | jorgediaz0