How Many Words To Make Content 'unique?'
-
Hi All,
I'm currently working on creating a variety of new pages for my website.
These pages are based upon different keyword searches for cars, for example used BMW in London, Used BMW in Edinburgh and many many more similar kinds of variations. I'm writing some content for each page so that they're completely unique to each other (the cars displayed on each page will also be different so this would not be duplicated either).
My question is really, how much content do you think that I'll need on each page? or what is optimal? What would be the minimum you might need?
Thank for your help!
-
Great question, and great answers from some of the other commenters. I've struggled with this question myself in building landing pages. The 20% rule is a good one, and makes sense, especially as Google gets better at semantic search and "keywords" become a bit less important in favor of query meaning. In a perfect world (one where search engines could understand queries the way your friend would when you told him what you searched for), if you cannot come up with 20% of a landing page that is entirely unique to that page, it's not something you should be building a landing page for. In the world we operate in, it's a nice guideline. My method for long tail landing page creation is: figure out what the head keyword that this long tail landing page is most related to (if you are trying to reuse the same value prop), and just rewrite every sentence. You should alter your word choice, sentence structure, and page organization (it's a nice opportunity to test those things as well, a long tail page that does unexpectedly well may give you some insight into a better converting format). At this point, I add the unique content. For keywords that aren't different enough to have true unique content, I'll generally write a section summarizing a few of the others all together, or add a different customer testimonial. To the commenter who mentioned that you can create unique content to search engines, but humans would laugh - a landing page for long tail keywords really shouldn't be something a customer can get to without coming to it from an external referrer. The root domain shouldn't link out to both domain.com/landing-page-head-kw and domain.com/landing-page-long-tail-kw.
-
Good Morning.
I am going to come at this from a slightly different viewpoint. There is a difference between rewriting an article to suit your needs by adding/cutting/modifying an article to suit your website, and simply spinning an article.
I'm being slightly presumptuous simply for the sake of discussion and from personal experience cleaning up a website full of this sort of content. EGOL, a Samauri Mozzer said a long time ago on another SEO board far far away that one day search engines will rate websites on content alone, and nothing else. It seems like that statement is coming true.
The recent updates, and even dating as far back as updates like Hummingbird have all pointed toward the importance of relevant, powerful, new content. Google new EAT standards even supported that more; expertise, authoritative, and trustworthiness. In my opinion, Google is trying to emulate how a human would search for things, the days of tricking Google into thinking your website is something that it isn't are close to being over.
Right now I am cleaning up a website that has content that is different enough to satisfy Google (at least to the point of not getting manual actions), but similar enough that any person who reads it laughs. We were getting plenty of traffic, but people were leaving once the noticed the similarity in the content.
It's tough to truly advise tactics without looking at a website, and again I am not suggesting you are spinning articles, trying to pull the wool over Googles eyes. I merely bring up another point.
I have learned that getting to the top of Google really is only half the battle. You still have to convert the people once the get there. You have an opportunity here to not ONLY satisfy Google, but also convert customers. Writing unique content that not only meets the needs of Google, yet ALSO convinces someone to purchase a car, in that moment.... well that's a win win! I would suggest spending the extra time writing individual content. It will help in the long run. And in the event that Google gets even better at determining duplicate content somehow, you are protected!
If shortcuts were easy, they would just be the way. This may be faster, but in the long run, it probably won't help as much as spending the time to write them all out.
I need a new car....
-
Do you have dealerships in each of those locations?
Usually content written exclusively for the search engines and not for users is not the best type of content.
-
The easiest and quickest answer to there is there is no word count limit but I would suggest you to look in to your competitors, see how they are writing and what kind of content they are producing on this pages.
If mostly people are writing long content pieces then you probably have to go with more words but if they are writing short, you have a margin.
Plus you should use creativity in your content that convince potential customer to convert. Like use of images, infographics, testimonials and more will help to a greater extent.
Hope this helps!
-
Thank you for your response.
this is really helpful, so essentially 20% is the minimum, but more than this would help?
-
HI There,
Thank you for your response.
THe purpose of the text is not as such to sell the car to the user (in this instance), we do have text on each individual car about its perks, technical specs etc. This page is simply for displaying lists of cars, with the content only really needing to introduce the cars as to appease search engines.
So essentially the content is for the search engines benefit in the sense that it will differentiate it from other pages and is hopefully therefore more likely to get indexed and bring us traffic for the long tail keywords that are being targeted.
Lots of content might definitely overwhelm users so really im trying to find the right balance of uniqueness and quantity!
-
This totally depends on too many variables for me to say (I think anyway).
Personally, I wouldn't overwhelm your visitors with too much wordy text - they're interested in test driving your cars and possibly buying one, NOT reading a load of gumph on the cars. Either they like the cars or they don't, obviously you need to include the benefits and features of each vehicle, but really I wouldn't write huge volumes of text because that'll put people off.
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 when working with makes and models?
Okay, so I am running a store on Shopify at the address https://www.rhinox-group.com. This store is reasonably new, so being updated constantly! The thing that is really annoying me at the moment though, is I am getting errors in the form of duplicate content. This seems to be because we work using the machine make and model, which is obviously imperative, but then we have various products for each machine make and model. Have we got any suggestions on how I can cut down on these errors, as the last thing I want is being penalised by Google for this! Thanks in advance, Josh
Technical SEO | | josh.sprakes1 -
Adding content into an iframe
I want to buy an app/program that will help me create unique content but the content will be inserted to the page via an iframe. I have heard that iframes are problematic. I know that there will not be a lot of indexable content from this but I think that it will make people want to link to me. I would like to hear from someone's experience if I should go ahead or not.
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
Index.php duplicate content
Hi, new here. Im looking for some help with htaccess file. index.php is showing duplicate content errors with: mysite.com/index.php mysite.com/ mysite.com ive managed to use the following code to remove the www part of the url: IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Technical SEO | | klsdnflksdnvl
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] but how can i redirect the mysite.com/index.php and mysite.com/ to mysite.com. Please help0 -
Tips and duplicate content
Hello, we have a search site that offers tips to help with search/find. These tips are organized on the site in xml format with commas... of course the search parameters are duplicated in the xml so that we have a number of tips for each search parameter. For example if the parameter is "dining room" we might have 35 pieces of advice - all less than a tweet long. My question - will I be penalized for keyword stuffing - how can I avoid this?
Technical SEO | | acraigi0 -
As a wholesale website can our independent retailer's website use (copy) our content?
As a wholesaler of villa rentals, we have descriptions, images, prices etc can our agents (independent retailers) use the content from our website for their site or will this penalize us or them in Google rankings?
Technical SEO | | ewanTHH0 -
Duplicate Page Content
I've got several pages of similar products that google has listed as duplicate content. I have them all set up with rel="prev" and rel="next tags telling google that they are part of a group but they've still got them listed as duplicates. Is there something else I should do for these pages or is that just a short falling of googles webmaster tools? One of the pages: http://www.jaaronwoodcountertops.com/wood-countertop-gallery/walnut-countertop-9.html
Technical SEO | | JAARON0 -
Duplicate Content on Multinational Sites?
Hi SEOmozers Tried finding a solution to this all morning but can't, so just going to spell it out and hope someone can help me! Pretty simple, my client has one site www.domain.com. UK-hosted and targeting the UK market. They want to launch www.domain.us, US-hosted and targeting the US market. They don't want to set up a simple redirect because a) the .com is UK-hosted b) there's a number of regional spelling changes that need to be made However, most of the content on domain.com applies to the US market and they want to copy it onto the new website. Are there ways to get around any duplicate content issues that will arise here? Or is the only answer to simply create completely unique content for the new site? Any help much appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Coolpink0 -
Site 'filtered' by Google in early July.... and still filtered!
Hi, Our site got demoted by Google all of a sudden back in early July. You can view the site here: http://alturl.com/4pfrj and you may read the discussions I posted in Google's forums here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6e8f9aab7e384d88&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=276dc6687317641b&hl=en Those discussions chronicle what happened, and what we've done since. I don't want to make this a long post by retyping it all here, hence the links. However, we've made various changes (as detailed), such as getting rid of duplicate content (use of noindex on various pages etc), and ensuring there is no hidden text (we made an unintentional blunder there through use of a 3rd party control which used CSS hidden text to store certain data). We have also filed reconsideration requests with Google and been told that no manual penalty has been applied. So the problem is down to algorithmic filters which are being applied. So... my reason for posting here is simply to see if anyone here can help us discover if there is anything we have missed? I'd hope that we've addressed the main issues and that eventually our Google ranking will recover (ie. filter removed.... it isn't that we 'rank' poorly, but that a filter is bumping us down, to, for example, page 50).... but after three months it sure is taking a while! It appears that a 30 day penalty was originally applied, as our ranking recovered in early August. But a few days later it dived down again (so presumably Google analysed the site again, found a problem and applied another penalty/filter). I'd hope that might have been 30 or 60 days, but 60 days have now passed.... so perhaps we have a 90 day penalty now. OR.... perhaps there is no time frame this time, simply the need to 'fix' whatever is constantly triggering the filter (that said, I 'feel' like a time frame is there, especially given what happened after 30 days). Of course the other aspect that can always be worked on (and oft-mentioned) is the need for more and more original content. However, we've done a lot to increase this and think our Guide pages are pretty useful now. I've looked at many competitive sites which list in Google and they really don't offer anything more than we do..... so if that is the issue it sure is puzzling if we're filtered and they aren't. Anyway, I'm getting wordy now, so I'll pause. I'm just asking if anyone would like to have a quick look at the site and see what they can deduce? We have of course run it through SEOMoz's tools and made use of the suggestions. Our target pages generally rate as an A for SEO in the reports. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Go2Holidays0