How Many Words Should A Page Have For High SEO Rankings?
Is There A ‘Best Length’ SEO Guideline When Writing Content?
Do The Spiders Run Around Counting Up The Words On Your Page?
I have had more than one SEO client ask me how many words there must be for each page of content they write for their site. I do understand their concern that providing informative content is part of building a successful website or blog, but quite honestly there really isn’t a specific number of words that determines good or poor search engine rankings.
As a matter of fact, I’ve seen it advised in more than one place that for top rankings, page length really should be between 400 and 600 words (give or take a little, depending on whose erroneous information you read). Or, I’ve seen it stated to never ever write less than 250 words. None of this information is correct!
The Search Engine Spiders Don’t Give A Hoot About The Number Of Words On Your Page
You can absolutely positively 100% trust that there are not a specific number of words that your pages or blog posts need to contain in order for your site to have the ability to rank highly and to obtain high quality targeted search engine traffic.
The search engines get smarter and smarter every month, and with that comes the understanding that the number of words on a page does NOT determine it’s value from a ranking standpoint. But, the number of words you write does matter to your visitors. Are you providing the information they came to your site hoping to find?
If you are addressing the topic at hand, and provide a thorough, well written page of content pertaining to the topic, then whether you’ve written 200 words or 1,200 words is totally OK as long as what … ? Right … as long as you provide targeted, keyword focused information. Your visitors were searching for this information, and you ought to be providing excellent content for those visitors.
How about some free help to narrow down the keywords you ought to be weaving into your content? I suggest this freebie.
Your pages can be as long or as short as you feel appropriate in order to say what you want to convey to your visitor. Every page or post is different, and in that respect each has a different purpose. Quite honestly, the number of words on a page is not a search engine issue at all, but really a marketing issue.
So, do your best to always over-deliver quality content on every page you write. The search engine spiders know that each page is unique unto itself. If I may use a bit of poetic license here, I can tell you that as far as the spiders are concerned … “bean counters they are not!” :-)
