We keep seeing how much wrong information there is on this subject among people working in SEO. How many words should it be? We get asked constantly. Here we will set out carefully what the soundest approach is, and why there is no single right number. Read to the end and you will have learned the subject people are most misinformed about in SEO.
The general view among the leading SEO specialists is that content over 1,000 words tends to perform better. A quality 300 word article that delivers what the reader wanted can still beat a poor 2,000 word one.
Defining the Question, and Answering It
What matters more than the word count is covering the full scope of the “word or phrase” in question. The important thing here is giving the person the information they wanted, with the scope complete. That is usually too complicated a matter to answer with a number. The soundest approach is to get the scope exactly right and give the answer people came for.
Is There No Ideal Word Count? Numbers That Move With the Search
No, there is not. The right approach here is to set the word count by search intent. For a user searching for the license plate code of the province of Aksaray in Turkey, “the Aksaray plate code is 68” is answer enough. What would be wrong here is telling the history of the plate code, explaining what a plate code is and only handing over the number at the end. Keeping people on the site matters, of course, but; if you do not give the visitor a decent experience they may never come back.
Short and Sharp, or Long and Detailed? Both Have Their Advantages
The audience for the page in question matters a great deal here. If you want to rank for “metal pipe”, users generally want to see the types of metal pipe and the prices. But; that is not all of it. There will be users curious about where metal pipe gets used, what varieties exist and so on. You can complete the whole scope by ordering it around what people ask for most.
But; if the user is aiming straight at something specific, say a search like “the leading metal pipe manufacturers in Turkey”, listing the company details of those manufacturers is enough. So the intent behind those 2 searches differs, and so do their word counts.
How Reader Experience Relates to Word Count
If you are reading this you already know that user experience is one of the most basic factors in SEO. Trap the user inside too much content and it will not work in your favor. Your site ends up exposed to pogo sticking, which can cost you rankings. Thinking about user experience constantly and making it better always pays you back. Think about it: you want the answer to one question, and how much do you enjoy the pages that pile content in front of you? You only want to know when the exam is; you are not curious about the history of the exam.
What Are Your Rivals Doing? Analyzing Word Counts
To find the right scope, and with it the right amount of content, look at what your 3 most serious rivals published on the same subject. What scope did they take on and what answer did they give? That data gives you a general picture while you build your own piece.
Quality Content Always Comes First, Word Count Is a Tool
Succeeding at SEO rests on serving content good enough to bring your visitors back. Good content can be very long or very short as the subject demands, but it always has to be good. If you have a piece titled types of digital marketing, you have to define every one of those types properly.
What Do the Main SEO Authorities Think?
American Marketing Association (AMA): the AMA generally focuses on marketing research and academic publishing. The submission guidelines for its journals may carry page or word limits. That is not a general rule for blog posts or SEO content, though. The AMA’s emphasis is on the rigor of the research, the depth of the analysis and what it contributes to marketing practice. Word count is treated as a tool for reaching those aims, not an aim in itself.
SEO authorities like Search Engine Journal, Moz and HubSpot: these platforms and their specialists generally say that longer, more comprehensive content tends to perform better for SEO. The reasons include:
- Room to target more keywords.
- The ability to answer users’ questions in more detail.
- Building authority and credibility by supplying more information.
- More potential to earn backlinks.
Those same authorities stress that quality always comes first, and that producing poor content purely to push the word count up is useless and can even do damage. HubSpot’s own analysis of its data suggests blog posts in the 2,100 to 2,400 word range may be ideal for SEO, while making clear that this is not a general rule and shifts with the subject.
Yoast: known for its SEO plugin, Yoast sets a minimum threshold for text length in its content analysis tools (over 300 words for a blog post, for instance). The point is to give search engines enough context to understand the content. Yoast also stresses that quality, informative content is the most important factor and that you should not focus on raising the word count alone.
Conclusion: Finding the Word Count That Fits Your Purpose
Our view at Türk SEM is that this is less about the word count and more about whether the subject has been covered properly. Some subjects get there in 300 words, while for others 5,000 will not be enough. Handing over a number is hard, but we can say every page is likely to need at least 300 words of content.
Note: the Turkish original of this article runs to 847 words.
