Should cornerstone content have 3,500 words? Does Google discern words from the main text and from the references?
-
Is it true that cornerstone content should have at least 3,500 words? I've done some research and found that the recommended amount is between 2K-10k.
Also, the content that we create/publish has a lot of references/citations at the end of each article. Does Google discern words from the main text and from the references? Meaning should I count references as part of the word count?
Thanks for the help!
-
A Very Happy New Year to you, too! So glad my reply was helpful to you, and good luck with your publication.
-
Thanks so much for your detailed response Miriam! This is very helpful. Happy New Year!
-
Hello There!
Earlier this year, we had a good discussion about Cornerstone Content (a term that is widely used by Yoast though not by everyone else) here on the forum. You might like to take a look: https://moz.com/community/q/are-core-pages-considered-cornerstones.
Yoast is a very respected company, and they've created some classic products. That being said, I personally question advice like this being given on their blog:
"You’ll need to write an article of at least 900 words."
_900 words _sounds to me more like a public school writing assignment than criteria for a professional writer or publisher. Let's talk about this.
Wordstream has been kind enough to cite Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO as a good example of cornerstone content. I've contributed to that guide along with other staff here, and can attest that a specific number of words was nowhere in the plan for contributing. Instead, the plan is to cover the topic at hand thoroughly, and this is what all good writing, both on and off the web, does. Because of this, while I can appreciate that there is a desire to know if there's a word count that impresses Google, I don't think it's a good way to think about writing or publishing. If it takes 500 words to explain something, write them. If it takes 10,000 words, write them. The point is to explain a topic to a reader in a way that engages them and results in them feeling fully informed.
My best guess is that a company like Yoast is striving to offer some general guidelines for strong, lucrative publishing strategies, but when people start throwing set numbers around, it doesn't match my concept of building authority as a publication. I would rather that publishers focus on quality than word counts. The only time I can see the necessity of counting words is in offline publications that have limited paper space for an article. On the web, they sky's the limit, and the quality of what you publish is what wins readers.
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
-
Cornerstone Content?
Yoast keeps pestering me about Cornerstone Content. Is it really a ranking factor? Ryan
Content Development | | drdougweiss0 -
Blog Content
I keep reading that a steady stream of new blogs from my site is a great way for getting inbound links to my site. My question is... Does the content of my blogs have to be relevant to my site? My site is www.marblerenovation.com. If the blog should stay relevant, I am finding it pretty hard to create engaging content around cleaning marble floors. Also, does anyone know of a good place to find bloggers to help create this content? Thanks in advance everyone Dave
Content Development | | david.smith.segarra0 -
Content building: Ratio of blog messages?
What is a good ratio for publishing blog messages on our company website? Which ratio is "Panda-friendly"?
Content Development | | wellnesswooz0 -
How to fight against a site always "re-write" your content?
A site is always copying our content then re-write to their site, how to fight against this kind of action? (Many of those copied content can get a rank very closely behind us, which will grab some of our visits ) I tried to find DMCA, but as they have changed some paragraphes, etc, DMCA can't punish them as copying. I think many of you also have met such a problem, how will you handle this situation??
Content Development | | JonnyGreenwood0 -
How to Get Rid of Duplicate Content Captured on Article Lists
We have a ton of articles and blog posts on our site. Currently, we display summary lists of articles that contain the first paragraph of the article in the summary list. However, in my reports, this is coming back as duplicate content with the full article itself. How do I fix this? Ex: article main page- http://www.robots.com/articles/10 First article on that page- http://www.robots.com/articles/viewing/grippers-for-robots (which shows up as duplicate content with the main artilce page). With our blogs, we have the most recent 5 blogs (in the same summary format) listed on our main blog page. We then have categories that people can sort by. But again, this is causing us duplicate content because those pages show the first paragraph of the blogs related to that category. Ex: blog main page- http://www.robots.com/blog. First blog listed on that page- http://www.robots.com/blog/viewing/robots-and-automation-bringing-jobs-back-to-the-united-states (which then shows as duplicate content with the main blog page). And then you can also select categories to see related topics: http://www.robots.com/blog/category/buying-a-robot which is showing as duplicate content also. Help! How can I prevent this? Thanks! JWanner
Content Development | | jwanner0 -
Hosted eCommerce with Outstanding Content Management
Can anyone recommend a hosted eCommerce solution that makes blog/article creation very easy and seamlessly integrates the content into the storefront? If the solution also offered great social media tools, also, that would be great.
Content Development | | DenverKelly0 -
Define: Good Content
I am curious to hear what you guys consider to be the characteristics of good content and in which order if you have a preference. Here are a few I can think of: Informative (you can learn something new) Substantial (enough of it and thorough) Complete (doesn't give half-baked information or ideas) Unique (not regurgitated original content) Helpful (practical actionable information) Visual (content complemented by media) Referenced (claims made are substantiated through citations) Entertaining (or otherwise emotional, e.g. surprising, sad, shocking, controversial) Formatted (easy to read and follow) Timely (right content at the right time, applies for news) Professional (writing style, grammar, spelling and sentence structure) Can you add to this list?
Content Development | | Dan-Petrovic1 -
Please help me stop google indexing https pages on my wordpress site
I added SSL to my wordpress blog because that was the only way to get a dedicated IP address for my site at my host. Now I am noticing Google has started indexing posts both as http and https. Can some one please help how to force google not to index https as I am sure its like having duplicate content. All help is appreciated. So far I have added this to top of htaccess file: RewriteEngine on Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$ RewriteRule ^robots.txt$ robots_ssl.txt And added robots_ssl.txt with following: User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: / User-agent: * Disallow: / But https pages are still being indexed. Please help.
Content Development | | rookie1230