How much content is needed to be competitive and rank well?
-
When considering on page / on site seo what process do you use / take to evaluate how much content is needed to be competitive and rank well?
-
Content needs to be good enough to share, and to be shared in the first place you need to be aggregating that content through social channels relevant to your target audience.
Try - Wow, Why and How
Content to "Wow" and stop them in their tracks - A big enough "why" to stay - A big enough "how" to meet their immediate need.
I agree with much of what has already been said here, however quality is not always engaging! Its nice, but it has to be attractive enough that it wows your visitors in the right way, and this is not easy, but definitely worthwhile.
Another problem with content that answers questions to quickly is bounce rate - if the answer arrives to quickly your audience will leave too quickly. finding content that slows down a visitor and holds their interest is important, but its a fine wire to walk.
-
I think if you are looking entirely just to rank you will have to look at the competition in the space. Be sure to consider quality of the content just as much, if not more, than the quantity of the content.
Additionally, you should be focusing on creating content that serves your target audience. Can you produce enough valuable content to serve the market as an authority? Or, will people find your site and go elsewhere to find what they are looking for?
You should also focus on creating your content for multiple readership paths, i.e. - headings, subheadings, images, and links. Not only does this provide value to your audience, but will help in your rankings as well, contributing again to the quality rather than the necessary quantity.
-
When considering on page / on site seo what process do you use / take to evaluate how much content is needed to be competitive and rank well?
I go out to the SERPs where I want to rank and look at the quality of their content. Then I make a page that is better, a page that blows them out of the water.
The answer is not in the number of pages. Instead it is the quality of the single page for that search term. It usually requires a very substantive page to defeat what is at the top of the SERPs. Lots of easy-to-understand text, photos, tables of data, graphs, mabye a video. You can beat tough competition for difficult keywords with one page like that.
A nice gem is more interesting to people than a ton of crap.
-
This is a very subjective question Mark.
For example, if you work in a highly technical market, it could be assumed that you are going to need more content than normal to explain processes, technical features and research. However, if you are writing a sales page, you would need less content as you want to get your messages across with big call-to-action type messages and supporting content.
I would certainly also look at competition in the market and see what those who rank well, do. This can only really be used as a guide, but it can give you an idea.
Some say that the average page should be no less than 250 characters - others say no more than 750. There is no right or wrong answer, but you do need to focus on making it as comprehensive as possible.
I hope this helps a little.
-Andy
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
-
Urgent help needed for site move with major ranking loss
URGENT HELP/ADVICE NEEDED I am so stressed and worried about my website domain change. I desperately need advice as soon as possible. I will try my best to keep this as brief as possible. I have owned and operated my punk clothing business online at the URL toofastonline.com for 15 years now. And for a long long time we ranked #1 for punk clothing on Google & life was good. However, thanks to the arrival of several cheap marketplaces and other unanticipated changes our ranking dropped considerably. The last few years have been extremely hard on us, to say the least, we came really close to losing the business altogether. But finally after lots of hard work & long hours, things started to improve. Ranking went back up, and we were busy again. I had been toying with the idea of buying the domain TooFast.com for about 10 years, but I never had the money to do it until this now, so I made the leap and as of Jan 9, toofastonline.com became toofast.com. Unfortunately, I now know that I set up the domain change hastily, without doing any of the pre-work Google suggests to do. I didn’t know it then but I did it wrong. And our site which wasranking #7 for punk clothing on Jan. 8th is now number 51 and today is only Jan 24th! I AM PANICKING. I have looked for help, posting jobs on Shopify Experts site several times now, opening accounts with MOZ and SEM Rush, spending countless hours on the phone with GoDaddy, Shopify and even long chats with Google. I have spent all day everyday for the past two weeks trying fix everything to no avail. No one can start on my site issues fast enough. And I have been given so much wrong information that I feel like I have done irreparable damage. I was (am) not qualified to make this kind of a site change alone. Too much was done too fast and without any real working knowledge Google SEO. My brother was the SEO guy and since he left the business I have just been struggling along with it, just trying to keep my head above water. So now for the big question: Should I temporarily change my Shopify stores domain back to toofastonline.com? This way I couldstart at the beginning, fix all the 404 redirects, fix the 301 redirects, clean up code, get the site in top working condition, and then, as Google suggests in theirGoogle Search Console Change of Address Toolstart to do the change of address in small sections, I can not afford to make any more reckless decisions. I have started and stopped, updated, fixed, changed and tried to fix again too many times now. I dont want Google to think I am trying something shady.. I’m not, I just don’t know what I’m doing, and I need help. Here is as much info as I can think of, I am more than willing to pay for help or do the work myself, as long as what I am doing is the right thing. Any and all help/advice/offers are welcome! Maureen CONTACT DETAILS: NAME: Maureen Keough, Owner EM:<a style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Maureen@TooFast.com</a> PH: 856-599-1675 (W) DETAILS OF OUR SET-UP THE APPS & SERVICES WE USE: Google Admin / G-Suite User Gmail for emails Godaddy holds our domains Shopify hosts our storefront. My Shopify store was located at TooFastOnline.com for about 5 years Our Domain Changed From toofastonline.com to toofast.com on Jan 9 In Godaddy both toofastonline.com is being forwarded to toofast.com In Shopify I added toofast.com, made it my primary domain, but left toofastonline.com in there but it is just redirecting to toofast.com. STEPS TAKEN TO CHANGE | ADD | VERIFY THE NEW DOMAIN GoDaddy DNS Records Both Sites - Updated Pointing to Shopify’s IP Address GoDaddy Subdomains For TooFastOnline.com - Redirected But Causing SSL/HTTPS/Privacy errors GoDaddy Subdomains For TooFast.com - Added But Causing SSL/HTTPS/Privacy errors Google Admin - Updated Gmail MX Records TooFast - Added and Updated Gmail MX Records TooFastOnline - Unchanged Google Merchant Center - Updated TooFastOnline is now TooFast Google Merchant Product Feed- Updated TooFastOnline is now TooFast Google Ads - Finally got the New Feed Approved and It is Working Google Search Console - Updated I Think Sitemaps - Added and Asked To Crawl Google Analytics Added TooFast As A Property Seems To Be Working Google Analytics Tag Updated in Shopify Admin Google Search Console - Requested to Move TooFastOnline.com to TooFast.com, still not done. No Redirects were made prior to the “Move” All Social Media Channels Links were Updated By Us Mailerlite MX Records For Bulk Emails - Updated/Verified
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TooFast130 -
Do I need to do 301s in this situation?
We have an e-commerce site built on Magento 2. We launched a few months ago, and had about 2K categories. The categories got indexed in Google for the most part. Shortly after launch, we decided to go with SLI for search and navigation because the native search/navigation was too slow given our database. The navigation pages are now hosted navigation pages; meaning, the URLs have changed and they are now hosted by SLI. I have done 301s for the most popular categories, but I didn't do 301s for all categories as we have to go through each category one-by-one and map it to the correct navigation page. Our new category sitemap only lists the new SLI category URLs. Will the fact that we have not 301'd all of our former categories hurt us as far as SEO? Do I have to do 301 redirects for all former category pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevin_h0 -
Duplicate content with URLs
Hi all, Do you think that is possible to have duplicate content issues because we provide a unique image with 5 different URLs ? In the HTML code pages, just one URL is provide. It's enough for that Google don't see the other URLs or not ? Example, in this article : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112 The same image is available on: http://cdn-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize1-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize2-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize3-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg Thank you very much for your help. Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
Why have I lost my #1 ranking?
Hello! Ever since switching to a new website back in late 2014, my rankings have suffered. My webpage https://www.shwoodshop.com was always the #1 google position for the keywords "wood sunglasses" and "wooden sunglasses". For a while my site bounced back a forth between the #1 and #2 spots, but in the last 4 months I have been stuck with a #3 rank for both keywords. I hired an SEO company to help fix the problem but after a year of work, there was still no positive change. I have had multiple experts take a look at my site, but to no avail. All signs seem to point to a stronger, healthier site than my competition. My domain authority and page authority are much greater than the competition with the #1 and #2 rankings. I have used the On-Page grader and other tools to try and help, and even though I am getting an "A" grade, I'm still not improving my rankings. I ran a link metric comparison for my website versus the competition and attached it to this post. The main area I seem to be lacking is the Internal Equity-Passing Links. The top competitor has a ridiculous amount, which I think may be due to their use of breadcrumbs. Is this enough to make the difference? My other thought is that I could be suffering from duplicate page content. My website is setup to be "localized" via Subdirectories With gTLDs (.com/us, .com/eu, .com/au, .com/international). The on-page content is the exact same, but the prices for the products changes depending on your location. Moz shows a ton of duplicate pages due to this. Could I be getting penalized for this? I am an SEO novice and trying to learn as much as possible while investigation this issue. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated! -Taylor wUiyU
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shwoodeyewear0 -
Ranking Above sub-domains
So I work for a company that has a very successful affiliate that operates under a third level domain name such as "region.company.com". Their SEO practices are very good and they rank highly in keyword searches. However "company.com" does not even though it is not a subdomain. Even after optimizing the company.com's pages etc, the regional sub domain ranks much higher for keywords and the main company fails to rank at all. Is Google discounting the main company's page? Is it a matter of trust or time? or is it something else? How can I get Google to prioritize the main company website rather than a lower level domain affiliate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Resolute0 -
Many pages small unique content vs 1 page with big content
Dear all, I am redesigning some areas of our website, eurasmus.com and we do not have clear what is the best
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eurasmus.com
option to follow. In our site, we have a city area i.e: www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla which we are going
to redesign and a guide area where we explain about the city, etc...http://eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla/guide/
all with unique content. The thing is that at this point due to lack of resources, our guide is not really deep and we believe like this it does not
add extra value for users creating a page with 500 characters text for every area (transport...). It is not also really user friendly.
On the other hand, this pages, in long tail are getting some results though is not our keyword target (i.e. transport in sevilla)
our keyword target would be (erasmus sevilla). When redesigning the city, we have to choose between:
a)www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla -> with all the content one one page about 2500 characters unique.
b)www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla -> With better amount of content and a nice redesign but keeping
the guide pages. What would you choose? Let me know what you think. Thanks!0 -
Ranking stuck
Hello, I have a client with whom we are doing all the "right" things. We have a blog we add relevant content to once a week, we post on facebook, google+, twitter. We have stumbleupon and tumblr links. We have nice high pr links from local non-profits whom we sponsor for charity events. We are in the local citation sites and have 5 real reviews (working on more) But we are stuck anywhere from page 4 to page 2 for most of our keywords, which are all insurance related in the Gainesville area. I would love to hear some fresh ideas! http://dukeinsuranceagency.com , thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webzenz0 -
Can I swap a website yet keep it's high ranking for a competitive keyword?
Couldn't fit the entire question in the main bit so the explanation is here: Working on a client's website which is hosted by volusion and also been doing SEO for them for about a year. Now we've finally got them ranking at the lower end of page 1 (around 10+) for their main keyword. They now want to move from volusion over to Amazon Web Store 😢 which seems to be an SEO nightmare from even my basic understanding of SEO. From looking at the coding and the way Amazon Web store is built on top of how restricted you are from doing anything with it, I am almost certain the shop will be extremely difficult to optimise and we will have to completely change nearly all of the content. Finally! the actual question; I was thinking I could get them to delay their move to Amazon webstore until they are ranking in the top 5 for this top keyword. Once they switch over, i assume they'll keep this ranking for at least a short while? This keyword attracts a high volume of traffic and if this traffic is clicking on the result for their website, and google sees that people are finding this website valuable (not clicking back onto google results). Will they be able hold onto this high ranking? Basically what I'm asking is, this will be a terrible outdated badly SEO'd shop, but if a high volume of people are clicking on it and staying on it from their lingering ranking will Google just let it stay at the top? A massive amount of gratitude in advance for anyone who tries to help with this! 😄
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | acecream0