How Much Text Is Needed? Options

[lasvegascom]

Is there a certain minimum amount of text that you should have on each page that you plan to optimize? I know this may be different depending on the type of website but is there a general rule of thumb say like 250 words on each page.

[rmccarley]

Not really. You just want to be as complete as posible and make sure your keywrods (and ideas) aren't "hidden" in an image, flash, a frame (or iframe) or a script. Look at what your competition has and then do better.

[bragadocchio]

Not sure if it makes a tremendous amount of difference these days.

I've had a fair amount of success on one site with some very long, and some very short pages on that same site.

[cre8pc]

You need enough content so that the people you hope will use the site will understand it and know what to do. That's usually enough to satisfy search engines too.

However, if you are thinking only in terms of only optimizing for engines, there's a tendency to go overboard with content and your visitors may leave in frustration.

[joedolson]

The most important thing is (and this may sound trite) that the words which need to be there are on the page. If you've buried everything in images, or you've just written empty words, then there's no optimization going to happen.

For example, writing this:

In an article recently, a friend of mine talks a lot about some pretty cool stuff. You should definitely take a look at it and see what you think! This guy really knows his stuff!

is really not doing yourself any good - although a perfectly reasonable set of sentences, there are no valuable terms contained in it. Replace it with:

In his article "The Pillsbury Doughboy meets Godzilla," my friend John Smith covers a lot of interesting points about horror films from the early 20th century. You should definitely take a look at it and see what you think - John really knows about early film history and has some cool ideas about their social impact!

The key difference is obvious: proper nouns and functional descriptions. Granted, this specific example may not bear on anything you need for your site, but the principle holds true. The number of words is pretty much irrelevant: it's what you've said and whether anybody might be interested in reading it.

That said, if you've only got 10 words on a page you're really restricting your options. The long tail of search queries is only going to have an impact if you've provided a tail.

[Ruud]

Even the "general rule of thumb" has never been "general": one search engine isn't the other.

Of course every phrase and sentence can be optimized but I think that content optimization asks for a body of text.

My take is that if you write clear and knowledgable so that both the uninformed and informed get and know what you're talking about, you're doing a good job "explaining" to the search engines what the page is about.

Maybe helpful:

• Long Copy vs Short Copy tested
• Long Pages Or Short?, Finaly an answer!

[lasvegascom]

Thank you guys for the wonderful information as always. We always write for the user with the search engines in mind. I use 250 as the guideline because I felt that it provided the users with the right amount of information to get our point across for each page (except eCommerce which was usually less) and not overwhelm them. For some sites we did more because that is what the user needed but I felt that if you did too little it did not give the users enough to give them what they were looking for and made the search engines happy at the same time.

This post has been edited by lasvegascom: Jan 11 2007, 08:39 PM

[Respree]

I think the question here becomes, "What the 'right' amount of information?"

The answer, as with almost anything else, is "It depends."

What is the goal of the page? Who is your audience? What is the intent of your content? These are all reasonable questions one should consider in determining what and how much to write.

If I were mildly curious, for example, about "heart transplants," 250 words might do the trick. "First you slice the chest open, get a bone saw, stop the heart, cut these arteries, ..." That would be a high level overview of the procedure, giving the layman some basic knowledge. For me, that's all I would want to know.

If, however, I were a medical student studying cardiology and writing a research paper, I would hope the 'right' amount of information would differ significantly from the example above -- perhaps in the neighborhood of a hundred or thousand fold.

Write the length of copy that accomplishes your goal.

[ogletree]

If you are going to use the word "need" then the answer is zero. I have seen sites at the top of hard searches that have no text (flash sites). Like others say just design the site for the user. On page SEO is not rocket science there is no magic formula. It cracks me up when people talk about their secret on page formula.