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.
When writing content for a website what is the optimal copy length?
-
My site is currently in the mist of a redesign and I’d like us to compile some recommendations on the length of copy for a page to rank well but can't seem to find any up to date articles on this.Does anyone have any suggestions, comments, or feedback?Thank you.
-
I have hundreds of articles on my site and they range in length between 500 and 4000 words - with lots of photos.
My retail pages usually have several hundred words of unique relevant content and they often link to article content (500 to 4000 words) that explains how to use the product, how to select, how to repair, etc. These are clusters of content around retail products. In my opinion, it is the best way to rank.... but sometimes your articles will rank better than your retail -- but, that's OK because we have house ads on those pages to let visitors know that we sell the stuff.
-
Thanks Monica!
-
Thank you for sharing this link.
-
Thank you Hutch, this is very helpful.
-
Google doesn't have a minimum, but as a rule of thumb, I stay above 500 words per page.
Some things to consider are how many links are on the page. You want to keep your HTML to text ratio at about 1:2. It will help avoid duplicate content issues in the future.
Hutch has a great point, you can't limit yourself to fill the target words per page if it will inhibit your ability to convey your message. If you need 1000 words then you need 1000 words.
Just some helpful tips about content writing, make sure to utilize images and try to incorporate some user generated content. Both of these things will help increase the value of your content and offer an advantage to your searchers.
Good luck!
-
Yeah i agree with Hutch, Google does not appear to have a minimum/maximum word count for indexing content. So just write as much as is required
-
Write as much copy as you need to convey the information that is needed for your visitor on that page. If you can create a good user experience on one page with 100 words (by answering the pain that they would be going to that page to solve) and then you need 1,000 words for your next page, then do that to. Don't make arbitrary copy limits or goals based on SEO, make your pages user friendly and your copy useful and your pages will rank well for the appropriate content.
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
-
Duplicate content with tagging and categories
Hello, Moz is showing that a site has duplicate content - which appears to be because of tags and categories. It is a relatively new site, with only a few blog publications so far. This means that the same articles are displayed under a number of different tags and categories... Is this something I should worry about, or just wait until I have more content? The 'tag' and 'category' pages are not really pages I would expect or aim for anyone to find in google results anyway. Would be glad to here any advice / opinions on this Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia1 -
How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content
How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having duplicate content. I mean somewhere google says they will prefer original content & will give preference to them who have original content but this statement contradict when I see Indeed.com as they aggregate content from other sites but still rank higher than original content provider side. How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
Duplicate content penalty
when moz crawls my site they say I have 2x the pages that I really have & they say I am being penalized for duplicate content. I know years ago I had my old domain resolve over to my new domain. Its the only thing that makes sense as to the duplicate content but would search engines really penalize me for that? It is technically only on 1 site. My business took a significant sales hit starting early July 2013, I know google did and algorithm update that did have SEO aspects. I need to resolve the problem so I can stay in business
On-Page Optimization | | cheaptubes0 -
If I enbed the same video from my YouTube account on two different websites, will I get a duplicate content penalty?
I have a YouTube video I want to show my B2B and B2C customers. But I have a different websites for each. If I embed the video will I get duplicate content strike against me?
On-Page Optimization | | RoxBrock0 -
Schema.org for news websites?
So as of late I have been on something of a mission to mark up my news website with as much accurate and detailed Schema and Open Graph data as possible, in order to not only allow the search engines to understand my content properly, but also to ensure everything appears in the most ideal fashion when linked to from Facebook, Google+, etc. Here is an example of a typical article page: http://www.nerdscoop.net/technology/video-games-459 As you'll see I currently have news posts marked up as article because that is essentially exactly what they are, but is there a better way to emphasise that they are news rather than just generic articles? My second question is regarding the category pages and the home page. How would be best to mark these up? With OG the task is fairly simple, because I can specify the homepage as being a website, but not so with Schema from what I can see. Either way, this is an interesting subject to me and I look forward to any discussion as a result. Thanks for looking.
On-Page Optimization | | HalogenDigital0 -
Sliders and Content Above the Fold
I was just inspecting a wire frame that is going out to a client and realized that the slider may interfere with the "content above the fold." Can't believe this had not struck me on others. If the Header has basic business info, etc. in it and you place a slider to display images in the area just beneath the Header or slightly down from it, does that decrease the amount of content seen a being above the fold? Or, is content above the fold established by virtue of H1,2, 3, etc.?
On-Page Optimization | | RobertFisher0 -
Optimize a PowerPoint presentation
how to SE optimize a PowerPoint presentation on the website? Will it help to upload it to slideshare ?
On-Page Optimization | | intiGrow0 -
Percentage of duplicate content allowable
Can you have ANY duplicate content on a page or will the page get penalized by Google? For example if you used a paragraph of Wikipedia content for a definition/description of a medical term, but wrapped it in unique content is that OK or will that land you in the Google / Panda doghouse? If some level of duplicate content is allowable, is there a general rule of thumb ratio unique-to-duplicate content? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | sportstvjobs0