One thing to note – the more text you add to the page, as long as it is unique, keyword rich and relevant to the topic, the more that page will be rewarded with more visitors from Google. Well, as in so much of theory and strategy, there isno optimal amount of text per page, and it is going to differ, based on the topic, and content type, and SERP you are competing in. Google is better at working out what a page is about, and what itshouldbe about to satisfy the intent of a searcher, and it isn’t relyingonlyonkeyword phrases on a pageto do that anymore. Optimisation must not get in the way of the main content of a page or negatively impact user experience. Google does not work only the way it used to work, and as a result, this impacts a lot of websites built a certain way to rank high in Google – and Google is a lot less forgiving these days. We are dealing with new algorithms designed to target old style tactics and that focus around the truism that DOMAIN ‘REPUTATION’ plus LOTS of PAGES equals LOTS of KEYWORDS equals LOTS of Google traffic. Google is going to present users with sites that are recognisable to them.
A safer route with a guaranteed ROI, for a real business who can’t risk spamming Google, is to focus on satisfying user satisfaction signals Google might be rating favourably. Google has successfully made that way forward a minefield for smaller businesses. marketing 4pss have understood user search intent to fall broadly into the following categories and there is an excellent post on Moz, 2016about this. User search intentis a way marketers describewhat a user wants to accomplishwhen they perform a Google search.
Humans do care, of course, so at some point, you will need to produce that content on your pages. In one respect, Google doesn’t even CARE what content you have on your site (although it’s better these days at hiding this). Google has many human quality raters rating your offering, as well as algorithms targeting old-style SEO techniques and engineers specifically looking for sites that do not meet technical guidelines. Google is on record as saying their algorithms are looking for signals of low quality when it comes to rating pages on Content Quality. Google’s looking for original text on a subject matter that explores the concept that the page is about, rather than meets keyword relevance standards of yesteryear. You need to balance conversions with user satisfaction unless you don’t want to rank high in Google.
There are too many competing pages targeting the top spots not to optimise your content. Every website – every page – is different from what I can see. Don’t worry too much about word count if your content is original and informative. Google will probably reward you on some level – at some point – if there is lots of unique text on all your pages.
GET RELEVANT. GET REPUTABLE. Aim for a healthy, satisfying visitor experience. If you are just starting out – you may as well learn how to do it within Google’s Webmaster Guidelines first. Make a decision, early, if you are going to follow Google’s guidelines, or not, and stick to it.
Do people stay and interact with your page or do they go back to Google and click on other results? A page should be explicit in its purpose and focus on the user. The only focus with any certainty is whatever you do, stay high-quality with content, and avoid creating doorway pages. You want a user to click your result in Google, and not need to go back to Google to do the same search that ends with the user pogo-sticking to another result, apparently unsatisfied with your page. However you are trying to satisfy users, many think this is about terminating searches via your site or on your site or satisfying the long-click. Google Knowledge Graph offers another exciting opportunity – and indicates the next stage in organic search. rewording sentences to take out sales or marketing fluff and focusing more on the USER INTENT (e.g. give them the facts first including pros and cons – for instance – through reviews) and purpose of the page.
If you are focused on delivering high quality information, you can avoid the worst of these algorithms. For more on this, I recommend this article on the time to long click. Naturally, how much text you need to write, how much you need to work into it, and where you ultimately rank, is going to depend on the domain reputation of the site you are publishing the article on.
That is – pages that help users first and foremost complete WHY they are on the page . The longer a page is, the more you can dilute it for a specific keyword phrase, and it’s sometimes a challenge to keep it updated. Google didn’t kill the long tail of traffic, though since 2010 they have been reducing the amount of such traffic they will send to certain sites. While there might be something at fault with the ‘optimised’ 5000-word page I have overlooked, the main difference between the two pages was time spent on the page and task completion ‘rate’. Luckily – you do not need lots of text to rank in Google. Offering high-quality content is a great place to start on your site.
High-quality copywriting is not an easy ‘ask’ for every business, but it is a tremendous leveller. Why and Where froma user searches are going to be numerous and ambiguous and this is an advantage for the page that balances this out better than competing pages in SERPs.