How long should my website content be (max and min number of words)?
-
I saw a web site which has been number 1 on Google for a long time, and the home page has 5700 words, but the results show it is not spam, so what would be the recommended word number for a home page?
-
There is no set word count that will help rank. It is the quality and depth of the content you are providing. Keep the searches intent in mind when developing content. Be engaging and educational, answering the searchers query. i have pages on my website that rank with as little as 300 words and as much as a1000. so as you see its not the word count. its the quality.
Thanks,
Don Silvernail
-
There really isn't a right and wrong answer to this, but I will say that the content has to be long enough to answer the question that the page is answering.
In some circumstances, this might mean a short page with just 200 words - other times it might be more. 5000+ sounds a bit insane and like they are trying to over optimise, in which case would make me wonder about the phrase itself - is it low search volume?
There are so many variables that come into play with ranking pages that it would be impossible to say with any degree of certainty what is going on without actually seeing it.
From a usability view, this also sounds very excessive.
Make your pages clear and straight to the point without any waffle - and with 5000+ words, I would be surprised if all of that was really needed.
-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
-
Multilingual site with untranslated content
We are developing a site that will have several languages. There will be several thousand pages, the default language will be English. Several sections of the site will not be translated at first, so the main content will be in English but navigation/boilerplate will be translated. We have hreflang alternate tags set up for each individual page pointing to each of the other languages, eg in the English version we have: etc In the spanish version, we would point to the french version and the english version etc. My question is, is this sufficient to avoid a duplicate content penalty for google for the untranslated pages? I am aware that from a user perspective, having untranslated content is bad, but in this case it is unavoidable at first.
On-Page Optimization | | jorgeapartime0 -
Content Writing for Ecommerce Products
Any idea where I can find content writers / or get content written for my online shop's product descriptions? I need to get a lot of volume done fast. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | bjs20100 -
How do I avoid duplicate content and page title errors when using a single CMS for a website
I am currently hosting a client site on a CMS with both a Canadian and USA version of the website. We have the .com as the primary domain and the .ca is re-directed from the registrar to the Canadian home page. The problem I am having is that my campaign produces errors for duplicate page content and duplicate page titles. Is there a way to setup the two versions on the CMS so that these errors do not get produced? My concern is getting penalized from search engines. Appreciate any help. Mark Palmer
On-Page Optimization | | kpreneur0 -
New website launch - Dupilicate content question
Hi, We are going to be launching a US version of our UK E-commerce web store. The US version will be a standalone site, separate URL/hosting etc. My question is that the US website will carry the same products as the UK site - will the product copy have to be written differently for the US website in order to avoid any SEO duplicate copy? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | WalesDragon0 -
Duplicate content? Not sure.
Good news! I have my first real SEO gig and now I have to be able to actually deliver. I'm up for it but I want to be sure I'm seeing what I think I am before suggesting any changes. I'm working my way throught Danny Dover's excellent book SEO Secrets and learning tons! To see if there is duplicate content on the site, I've taken a sentence from one of the pages on the site and searched for it: i.e., site:storybooksforhealing.com "Some of the most quiet moments are often the most difficult after a loss. Mornings, late nights, time alone." The SERPs show 7 pages that have this text on it. It seems like this is duplicate content, right? This is a Wordpress website so what's happening is the actual page is here: www.storybooksforhealing.com/publish-cup-of-joy/ but there are several archive pages that show excerpts of this text, too. If this is duplicate content (first question) then how would I go about remedying it? Should I set the canonical reference to /publish-cup-of-joy page? Thank you for being patient with my NOOB questions.
On-Page Optimization | | ChristiMc0 -
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 -
Website review needed
Hello, We need advice about seo for website http://www.oluadeonline.com/ The keywords provided are - Make Money Online, Online Services, Work At Home, Online Money, Online Business, Online Work Its seems impossible to rank the site for these keywords as there is too much competition
On-Page Optimization | | seoug_20050 -
Duplicate content on video pages
Hi guys, We have a video section on our site containing about 50 videos, grouped by category/difficulty. On each video page except for the embedded player, a sentence or two describing the video and a list of related video links, there's pretty much nothing else. All of those appear as duplicate content by category. What should we do here? How long a description should be for those pages to appear unique for crawlers? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | lgrozeva0