Is Word Count in SEO a Ranking Factor?

Is Word Count in SEO a Ranking Factor?

by

In a February 8th Twitter post, Google’s Senior Search Analyst and Search Relations team lead John Mueller (JohnMu) said:

The really salient point that John said was just this bit:

“Having the same word-count as a top-ranking article isn’t going to make your pages rank first…”

John is absolutely spot on here. And it’s in a similar vein to the time when there was a discussion about whether bold text was a ranking factor.

So is word count in SEO a ranking factor? The basic answer is simply no.

A Quick History of SEO Word Count

If you use the Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress you’ll be familiar with the text length metric in their SEO analysis of a page. The plugin looks at your page and uses word count to partially score your content. This is a metric from the days were the search engines and white hat SEO specialists saw thin content as an issue.

It all goes back to the days of content farms and poor-quality content. These websites were publishing at scale to try and exploit and manipulate the search engine rankings. And for a while they did. They paid writers peanuts, and produced multiple versions of the same concept just to rank for different keyword variations.

Keyword stuffing was also an issue as was linking from other poor quality sites. Triangulation was a tactic that some websites used to hide the fact that they were supposedly not related to each other.

But then Google’s Eric Schmidt famously called the internet a “cesspool” back in 2008. He called for brands to step up and lead the way with their attitude and their content. The Google Panda update came out a few years later in 2011 and its algorithms directly tackled poor quality content. The Google Penguin update occurred in 2012 and focused on link sand keyword stuffing.

And so, the word count of 300 became the magic number. Anything below this number is very basically considered low quality.

It is really important to note here that the 300 word threshold is not an official standard nor a requirement. It is simply a number that appeared in various places and has been generally accepted as the norm.

Long Form Content

I have to admit that I’m a long-term advocate of longer form content. My reason? When I worked in editing, proofing, and publishing content for a popular business information website, I saw a lot of thin content.

Once I was tasked with parsing XML documents into HTML using a tool I got my website developer to build. The HTML pages were for the news section of the website. Word count was classically around 200-300 words. I published the pieces and saw little to no benefit for the website.

I did everything in my power to make the new pieces work. Adding a news XML sitemap didn’t help. Images didn’t help. The fact that the exact same articles were also sold to other websites and the originator also started trying to benefit from these posts didn’t help either.

Personally I thought the quality of the news articles was poor. The biggest issue was feeling unfulfilled. I read the articles wanting to know more.

So I went about adding external links to documents that were referenced in the stories. In fact, knowing that these docs were often transient, I hosted them myself so that historic users could benefit from their retention. It was like a small scale Way Back Machine for the SME community.

Other things I did for these articles was flesh them out and provide further details. Quick quotes from relevant interviewees were researched further and expanded. One headline stat was supported by additional figures, I provided context, I made these articles comprehensive.

We started to get traction. The news XML sitemap started to work much better, impressions went up, clicks went up, and most importantly, we started to beat the competing websites and the source website. We were winning.

It was all because we realised that we had thin content and we did something about it, making what we had better, more quality, more comprehensive.

But let’s get this straight before we go any further – thin content is not just the word count. Content can be thin on words, thin on facts, thin on originality, thin on providing a pleasant user experience.

In my experience, long form content allows you to get a comprehensive message across, and that is providing quality in my professional opinion.

Is Word Count Still Relevant?

The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress still counts 300 words as the minimum number for your webpages. If you can get over this limit it contributes towards getting that “green light” for your content.

Remember though that “going green” in Yoast SEO does not equal getting a high ranking. The tool is just indicative that you’re going in the right direction.

What I will say about word count is that it needs to be considered in the context of the page that it’s used in.

Ask yourself these questions:

  1. Does the word count of what you’ve written serve the user of your page well?
  2. Does the content match their user intent?
  3. Multiple keyword variations will attract visitors to your page: Are you serving all of them well?
  4. Do you need to split your page out into further versions to better satisfy relevance and provide more focus?
  5. Is the copy the right amount for that type of page? Is it a homepage, section, about, contact, or news/blog page?
  6. Does your page pass the “Goldilocks” test – is there too much, too little, or is it just right?
  7. Also, does your page pass the “so what?” test? You’ve read it as a user with a certain intent (rooted in the search keyword) – was it fulfilling?

There’s a lot to unpack here, but when you practice these daily and are constructively critical in your thinking, you’ll develop a content strategy that provides relevant quality content.

Word Count and Page Type

As mentioned above, some types of page have different word counts.

With a homepage, what is its function? Impress with videos, images, case studies, links, products or services? How much do you really need to say on a homepage? The ultimate aim is to create a wow factor in quick time. Shout your values, then drive interest using strong CTAs.

The contact page can be as simple or as complex as it needs to be. A small organisation may need some copy to pad it out whereas multi-location organisations will inherently provide enough content from the sheer number of places and contacts.

Articles and blogs will need to be longer form. Again, always remember the intent of the user, what they’re looking for, and how you can fulfil their search.

Product pages in an ecommerce website need to be intelligently created to display top requisites “above the fold” before you dive into detail lower down – that’s fir those who are ready to make a buying decision and need the full disclosure (The commercial and transactional user intent)

Look at the Data

Ultimately, what you should be doing is to start with why – why does your webpage exist?

Then ask who is it for? What are they looking for? What are they looking for that you are the expert in providing?

What is the keyword research showing? Did you create a page to fulfil the user intent?

OK, so you published it. Did it rank? Where? Did it get traffic? How much? What were the keywords? What was the engagement rate? What were the dwell times and bounce rates?

You need to look at the data once you’ve designed and built your pages, then you can go back and make informed adjustments. SEO is an ongoing process, so make sure that you iterate and reiterate. It’s a bit like the SMART acronym – it needs to be SMARTER which includes the addition of E and R – evaluate and re-evaluate.

Conclusion: Is Word Count in SEO a Ranking Factor?

Is word count in SEO a ranking factor? Remember that word count is only a small part of your page. Remember also that thin content isn’t just a low word count.

It’s your responsibility as a website creator and publisher of content to provide genuinely useful information. So be responsive, be clever; marketing is a complex game that requires real insight.

If you need help with content creation, ideation, analysis and SEO audits, speak to me. I’m a content, digital marketing, and SEO expert with 25 years of experience so I can help – just call 01252 692 765 or complete the contact form.

Leave a comment