Community Discussion - Do you think increasing word count helps content rank better?
-
In the online marketing community, there is a widespread belief that long-form content ranks better.
In today's YouMoz post, Ryan Purthill shares how his research indicated 1,125 to be a magic number of sorts: The closer a post got to this word count, the better it ranked. Diminishing returns, however, were seen once a post exceeded 1,125 words.
- Does this jibe with your own data and experiences?
- Do you think increasing word count helps content rank better in general?
- What about for specific industries and types of content?
Let's discuss!
-
I have back correlated data to performance looking in particular at content length, keyword and phase density and prominence both overall and within different page elements against SERP rank and page performance (engagement or conversion based on whatever the particular critical measure might be). There does appear to be a minimal length of non-boiler plate text necessary to achieve both, although optimal length of content for inspection and semantic determination does not appear to be the same as page outcome, which should not be surprising.
What I have also found is that just while its possible to be too short with content, it is equally possible to be too verbose, particularly if the content begins to extend into a wide variety of topics and subtopics. My guess is that search engines have a harder time deciding what the message of a page is when it turns into an encyclopedia.
-
Numbers, number, numbers.
Simply put, no. You can rank an article 1st page for a highly sought after term, if it says something that is going to perfectly answer a question. It isn't the length of the text, but the content therein.
One example always given, is "i F***ing Love Science". They don't need to write 2000-word articles in order to rank well. Strength is partly in numbers here. They can rank short articles that contain a video with seemingly little work, but Google knows just how accurately it will answer a question.
As Egol also mentioned, there is also lots of studies into the use of the correct keywords, supporting content, and then look at EAT (Expertise, Authority & Trust) and YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) and simply put, are your trustworthy enough to believe what is said, and are you enough of an expert to be making statements about the subject.
I am loving content marketing at the moment as there is a lot going on, and seeing some fantastic wins!
-Andy
-
I don't believe it's the length or the number of words so much as how much more information those extra words bring to the table. More words isn't better, but more information is.
-
we should point out that long content the most of the time is really well written. The creator is looking to engage with the visitors and puts a lot of effort in that.
From my experience, this is really the correct answer.
We have a target minimum of 1500 words per landing page for our content team but of course, if they get to 1100 words and are genuinely stuck for quality content from there, 1100 is perfectly ok.
In the early days we started out with a minimum of 500 words and after noticing positive results within days of content going up we started increasing that and measuring the response in terms of rankings and user interaction. Each increment (800, 1000, 1500) saw consistent improvement over the previous one but 1500 words did seem to be the tipping point; beyond that there were significantly diminishing returns.
As you mentioned, that longer content is typically going to have far more effort into it so really, what the Moz study has measured is a correlation between quality+wordcount and improved rankings.
-
I don't think there is a magic number at all when it comes to content length. Writing an extra 500 words just to fluff up an article or SEO page isn't going to help anything or anyone. The ultimate goal of search engines is to provide the best results for a query, therefore the ultimate goal of content writing should be to solve a problem, provide an answer, et al. If you can do that in 200 words, great, if your product/service is complex and requires much more education and it takes 2,000 words, great.
We should write with the user in mind, get into the mindset of someone searching for our offerings and think about what we'd want to read, no matter how long. I don't care how great the content is, if I'm searching for a new pair of running shoes, I'm not reading 1,125 words, and if that's all I see when I land there, I'm bouncing.
-
Thanks for the info. If I look to the southeast from my home or my office the first major ridge of the Appalachians rises out of the Earth and occupies a spectacular 180 degrees of my view. If I cross a few of those ridges to the south the way people talk changes and words seldom heard elsewhere are common in the spoken language. I worked in that area for about twenty years and loved the words, the cadence and the tone that most people used.
-
I can't claim I know the origins of the word. I use it here only as a synonym of "cling on to". My name is a bit more mundane, in that it was a street I used to work on when I created my SEO accounts.
-
Glom ?? A word, I used to hear in a previous life.
Now, maybe I understand the name "Highland" ?
From what I know glom is a word from the Scots dialect, used here in the states by people in parts of New England and the Appalachians.
-
I think that this is going to fall into the same category as some other ideas about "optimal content". Back in the day there was "keyword density". Then came "latent semantic indexing" where your words had to relate to other words on your page. And now we have a "magic" word count (don't get me wrong, it's an interesting stat)
I had to spend a LONG time deprogramming people from these ideas because people glom onto them as the limit lines of SEO. They're dangerous in the sense that if someone thinks the line is "10% keyword density" or "1125 words" people will start measuring them and making sure that their page on "blue widgets" has exactly 10% KD and 1123 words so Google will love it (who cares if it's crap nobody will read?)
My advice on content is that it should read naturally. Don't pull out any measuring sticks. Stop with the SEO hyper-focus. If it doesn't read like something you would tell a personal friend it's probably not worth writing. Or ranking...
-
For a while I was seeing Google respond to certain search queries with in depth article options. They experimented with a small section that was similar to page by / author results. It doesn't seem to turn up as much but I did find this:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/3280182?hl=en
Is this still happening?
-
I'm with EGOL on this. "Don't underestimate the value of great media, probably more valuable than the text but without the text it's impotent." I'd add promotion efforts to the that statement. Even great and long content needs a bit of promotion to get the attention it deserves.
-
I just read Ryan's article a second time and reflected on my beliefs as described above.
They looked at "related search" to see if there were topics that would beef up their articles. It is possible that adding information about topics made their article more relevant to Google because it "covered topics that people are asking about". I wonder if the "hernia" and "gall stones" articles had that type of improvement. That could explain the jump in rankings because of a sudden increase in the relevance of the article to the query.
I've always belived that "a diversity of important query words" is key to rankings. Ryan's study points to where the important query words are recommended by Google. I really like how he did this and plan to look at it when I revise old articles or write new articles.
I have always believed that a "media beyond text" is important. My thinking was that photo, video, tabluar data was where to get this. However, his "Q & A" and callouts with "prevalence information" might have the same effect because they give the reader "something special" to consider while reading the article. It is possible that the article already has such information embedded within it, but calling it out with a diverse format could be "refreshing change" or "more interesting" for the reader.
I think that his article was one of the most important articles that has been on the Moz Blog. Reading it a second time has probably been one of the best investments of my time in the past year. Thank you Ryan.
-
I feel it does. To get away from just link stuffing. Having quality content surrounding your anchor text in an informative and relative way I feel always performs better. I agree with the above comment on the 1000 words + always do seem to perform well.
I try and structure things to around 1 link, or anchor text, per decent paragraph of quality information.
-
Hi,
First of all we should put a limit: how long is too long? Personally I'd like to put the limit over 2.000 words.
It's known fact that Google loves long content. But also we should point out that long content the most of the time is really well written. The creator is looking to engage with the visitors and puts a lot of effort in that. That's why long content also ranks high.
In my experience nearly and above 1000 words always performed well. Even better than longer articles.
Also, I recommend my writers and my colleagues that make several articles when the extension is massive. That helps increasing interaction with the visitors and keeps them moving over other pages
GR
-
I don't think we can look at a word-count in a vacuum; not only because there are so many contributing factors, but because there are likely variables that effected this "magic number" (a concept that I feel is bunk) that weren't measured and considered or weighed in any way.
Most importantly, I don't think such a figure has any use to a specific person, business, site, etc. It's interesting data, but it says nothing about what any individual should do or expect. In my experience, my readers want anywhere between 300 - 2000 words; but again, this means practically nothing. There are different types of posts, subjects, content-uses, audiences based on these, and many other variables.
I think that, if one's data shows that their posts aren't doing well, word count is one area in which it may be worth exploring different solutions. But there are dozens of more vital and useful data points out there and readily available.
-
I don't believe in "magic numbers" and I don't believe that "walls of text" have any magic either.
I do believe that Google enjoys substantive content, that is understandably written, addresses a diversity of important query words for its topic, engages visitors, includes media beyond text, and is on a website that is in good technical health. The most important part of that is "engaging visitors" and that is a broad term that can include many on-site and off-site actions. Don't underestimate the value of great media, probably more valuable than the text but without the text it's impotent.
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
-
MOZ rankings HUGE drop to 1
Hello, My website's MOZ rankings dropped dramatically to DA 1 PA 1 MOZ rank 0 Backlinks 0. A problem seems that my backlinks are no longer recognised, as there are of course many backlinks active and not the 0 mentioned. Also, I recently experienced a big drop in Google SERP, only for my homepage (main keyword), not for subpages (longtail). I don't know what might be the cause for the SERP and MOZ drop. The only thing I can think of is that the past months I first changed from http://www.mydomain to http://my domain and later to https://mydomain However this was done properly and added in Google search console. Also Google SC does recognise my backlinks still (eventhough most are to the old redirected http://www.mydomain version). Can this be the cause, or do you have any suggestions what might be the cause, or what I can do to find out? Obviously I am interested in finding out the reason for the big SERP drop as this might have to do with the same cause for the big MOZ drop. Thanks! 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | Torilion0 -
Google Analytics: Dashboard to show popular content per directory
Hello, I work for a furniture business and I would like to set up a dashboard in Google Analytics to show a table for each of the 10 sections to show the most popular content, ie. /Sofas
Reporting & Analytics | | Bee159
/Sofas/black-leather-sofa | 987 PVs
/Sofas/brown-leather-sofa | 782 PVs
/Sofas/classic-material-sofa | 636 PVs
etc. /Beds
/Beds/king-size-bed | 900 PVs
etc How would I go about doing this? Thank you0 -
Main Website Redirects to Mobile Website, Mobile Website counts this as direct traffic, is there a way to tell what the source/medium is?
Hello, The situation is that someone is arriving on my main website https://www.example.com and being redirected to http://m.example.com. When this happens my analytics says that the traffic is all direct coming to my mobile site. However, I know people clicking on my google cpc, and some google organic users are hitting the main website and being redirected. Before we didn't have as good of a redirect on our main website so I could tell organic and cpc traffic coming in, now my main website has a huge drop in these categories because they are redirecting to mobile but I can't tell on my mobile how much traffic from each is going to the mobile site. Is there a way to fix this? Is it because my main website is https:// and mobile is a http:// (as I know that sometimes makes traffic direct) or is it a bigger problem that can't be resolved? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | oxfordseminars0 -
Need help understanding what happened to our organic search.
I help run an ecommerce business that mainly runs on Google organic search (yes, I realize this is not a good place to be). Last April, we saw around 25-30% of our organic search cut. I’m pretty sure it was due to the mobile update but we had some changes in the past month or two before that. I’m looking for someone to review my analytics account and see what happened. Possibly this is called an audit? Also, we’re looking to ask some questions about long term strategy as we are thinking about a redesign and switching to a new platform. Maybe more content? Maybe more social?
Reporting & Analytics | | kirbyf0 -
Will the analytics offer me the same content review power as Hootsuite or Twitonomy?
Will the analytics offer me the same content review power as Hootsuite or Twitonomy? I need to know if I should get one of these tools in addition to this. I need information weekly about retweets, mentions, most popular content, reach, etc.,? I would like to be able to do this all from one place- here in Moz.
Reporting & Analytics | | Isaac55890 -
Have i got a manual action on rankings?
Hi guys, so recently Google released the 'manual actions' tab under 'search traffic' in Google webmaster tools. Recently hit by panda i checked this and got: " Unnatural links to your site—impacts links Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole." However was this not the message before saying it was not a complete manual ban, just affecting a few bad links? I was hit badly in the rankings but still have some good terms and traffic is not that bad still from organic non-brand. I have fixed many of the bad links (horrible articles submissions that went out of control in 2009) - do i do a reconsideratikn request? i have disavowed the bad links that are left 3 weeks ago? so do i wait to see if disavow works or do a reconsideration request?I was sure this was like the message sent out before which meant it wasn't that bad for your site, just a few links ignored? Any advice much appreciated, thank you.
Reporting & Analytics | | pauledwards0 -
Best use of Keyword Rankings report
is there a guide for getting the most out of the keyword ranking tool? I currently have 250 or so keywords, some move up, some move down on a weekly basis but generally trend up. That's about as much info as I gain from it though. anyone got any good tips? thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | benj450 -
Campaign tracking and duplicate content
Hi all, When you set up campaign tracking in Google Analytics you get something like this "?variable=value parameters" in the URL. If you place such a link on your site as an internal link, will it be considered as a different URL and will have its own link value? The question I have is, since Google knows it's a Google link and knows the original URL (by stripping the tags), does it pass link value to the original URL? If not, what can be done to pass link value? Thanks in advance. Henry
Reporting & Analytics | | hnydnn0