100 Words per category
-
These are the numbers of words I have heard mentioned as being "good enough" for the categories of ecommerce pages. Even at a stretch 50 words maximum.
What are peoples opinions on the volume of words required ?
-
this is why I'm glad EGOL is around when I'm not. Not only does he really know what he's doing from an SEO perspective, he runs his own site - proof from real world stuff.
Myopic SEO says "how little can I get away with". Sustainable SEO says "What can I do to eventually dominate in this niche, and not have to play the games other sites do."
100 words? Sorry - My recommendation to clients is 400 words on category pages, 1000 on information pages.
400 too much for you to swallow? Start with 200 each. Do other best practices SEO tasking - if you still find you're not getting the visits and conversions you want, write more high quality content.
-
I don't think it's the quantity so much as the quality. EGOL alluded to this. Semantic processing of keywords in relation to other keywords in a context relevant to the search term is key. We have examples of this where our site beats much larger and authoritative sites on long tail keyword phrases even with their brand name included. This is as a direct result of the number of ways the keyword is used in relation to other keywords.
-
....comparing to other sites with less content ranking higher than them...
A lot more goes into rankings than the number of words on a page.
If I wanted to save money on content I could find a lot of examples of short copy sites that rank ahead of me.... but my attitude on this is..."The hungry person usually eats the other guy's lunch."
-
I was looking at the site sportsdirect.com as an example .
and comparing to other sites with less content ranking higher than them ?
search arsenal home shorts
-
If you were google and you had a choice between two pages... one with 50 words and one with a few hundred. Which would you think is higher quality?
We have pages with short content on our site.... but we are working to improve them. When we improve a page from 50 words to a few hundred words that usually results in two things... 1) a ranking increase... and, 2) a lot more long tail traffic from the greater diversity of words on the page.
Time well spent.
-
Is it really needed though I know examples of sites with 50 words doing really well ?
granted the factors of link building are probably coming into play
-
Sure... 100 words... that's probably "good enough".... but in a competitive space don't you want "kickass"?
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
-
Theme create category page stuffed with Keyword
Hi All, Quick question and I think I already know the answer but wanted to get a second opinion. We have a ecom site running woo commerce and the theme is coded to insert the product category name under the product name on the category page. This has resulted in the category page being stuffed with my keyword 'sofa beds'. Am I right in thinking that in the eyes of Google this page will be penalised for over use of my keyword or does Google view category pages differently? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-S0 -
Word count and ranking/traffic
Hello All, Recently, a client of ours enlisted another firm to redesign their website, www.thepodhotel.com. The new site went live on February 20th. Since that date, we have seen a 30% drop in Google Organic traffic, year-over-year. Even a cursory glance at the site will tell you that there was quite a bit left on the table, from an SEO point of view. However, my question pertains to word count. The word count on the new site is quite a bit lower than the old site. How much value do you feel this has on rankings? Do you feel that, among the many other items that need to be addressed, we should be focusing on creating more copy? I appreciate all of your input. Frank
On-Page Optimization | | FrankSweeney0 -
Category Advice
Hello, Our website is http://crazymikesapps.com and it is approximately 4 3/4 years old. Ths app review and app video blog started out as a hobby and since 02/2011 it has been our full-time business. However, we have been plagued with poor SEO decisions made in the early years as well as horrible webmaster and blog management. We have been working very hard to correct all issues and started with a Yoast website audit 1 year ago. We implemented a site redesign and we are mostly happy with this for now. However, we experience a 70% to 75% bounce rate daily and we have just begun using best SEO practices for blog post creation and I feel like our category taxonomy is horrible. About 8 months ago I had 34,000 tags, which I deleted and now I believe we have around 34. I think we have gone the other way in using categories too much and we are under utilizing tags. The problem is we have 2 different operating systems iOS and Android for App Categories that are extensive, we have added numerous sub categories per our Yoast report, but for starters we are not all about games apps and have 40 to 50 game sub categories. My question is, looking at our Categories, would you suggest converting some into tags. Also we have a problem with iPhone Apps, iPad Apps, Android Apps, Kindle Fire Apps because we use these as tags for a filter feature for our app category pages. But, we also have Mobile Apps iPhone Apps, etc. as categories. Any advice would be great and sorry for the bloviating. thank you Mike
On-Page Optimization | | crazymikesapps10 -
Should stop words be used in titles? I'm aiming for natural title structure.
I have fully optimized on-page SEO for the following keyword (not really the one I use, but it can serve as an example): -personal driver in los angeles Even though "in" is a stop word, I prefer to have a natural (non-robotic) structure for the title - I do this by including "in". I believe that "personal driver los angeles" is too spammy and too robotic. Is this a good or a bad thing?
On-Page Optimization | | zorsto0 -
Category Anchor Text - all the same - should I worry?
I have analyzed several websites and have come across sites that have many backlinks from their category pages and those all have the anchor text of the blog title. Should I worry that categories in WordPress can have different Titles and Descriptions and there are plugins to help with the variation. I haven't found any good recommendations regarding if the anchor text should be changed for categories or how to accomplish that. (I have scoured SEOMOZ for answers but may have missed the answer.) Thanks, Linda
On-Page Optimization | | LindaJo0 -
Keywords Qty per page.
I have a website http://www.versaillesdentalclinic.com with 20 pages in Total, but i need it to be on the top page of Google by 65 keywords and may be more. How many keywords per page shall I use? Currently I am promoting around 12 keywords high competitive for main page? Is it ok? I will appreciate a good answer 😉 Thanks, Russel
On-Page Optimization | | smokin_ace0 -
Title tag for category page
I'd like to know your views on the best approach for title tags for category pages for ecommerce sites. 3 examples A) Category name | Free delivery on $50 purchase | Brand name B) Discover best "category name" on brand name C) Category Name | 1st Keyword, 2nd keyword | Brand name Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | walidalsaqqaf0 -
How woud you deal with Blog TAGS & CATEGORY listings that are marked a 'duplicate content' in SEOmoz campaign reports?
We're seeing "Duplicate Content" warnings / errors in some of our clients' sites for blog / event calendar tags and category listings. For example the link to http://www.aavawhistlerhotel.com/news/?category=1098 provides all event listings tagged to the category "Whistler Events". The Meta Title and Meta Description for the "Whistler Events" category is the same as another other category listing. We use Umbraco, a .NET CMS, and we're working on adding some custom programming within Umbraco to develop a unique Meta Title and Meta Description for each page using the tag and/or category and post date in each Meta field to make it more "unique". But my question is .... in the REAL WORLD will taking the time to create this programming really positively impact our overall site performance? I understand that while Google, BING, etc are constantly tweaking their algorithms as of now having duplicate content primarily means that this content won't get indexed and there won't be any really 'fatal' penalties for having this content on our site. If we don't find a way to generate unique Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions we could 'no-follow' these links (for tag and category pages) or just not use these within our blogs. I am confused about this. Any insight others have about this and recommendations on what action you would take is greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | RoyMcClean0