On the internet being found organically (or free) is what the internet game is about. Sure, you can pay the search engines to rank but that puts you into always paying. Why not pay on your own terms rather than on the terms of the search engines? Successful websites are ones that are found organically (and paid if you want a wider audience). Your marketing shouldn’t be solely paid as that is a plan for failure. We’re going to look at one of the biggest factors I continue to see when moving a website up in the search engines organically. That is pages with low word counts.
Low word counts are is any web page with less than 200 words on the page. This is an easily fixed problem yet we run into it with every site we takeover. When we see this, we are often told that it is because there is no reason to write more. I love the concept of “less is more” when it comes to ranking on the search engines you need more.
The amount of text placed on your webpage is a quality signal to search engines. Search engines prefer pages with more content that can help your visitors answer the question they are presently having. This doesn’t mean to be long-winded and not answer questions. In fact, short, concise, and accurate information that is around 500 words can perform as well, or better, as a page that is several thousand words. It is a balancing act and depends on the subject of what you are covering.
If you are describing a product on an eCommerce site you will want to be between 250-500 words. Some may require more information if you are writing a technical page or something that requires lots of detail. Most people are on the Internet to answer their question and then get on with their lives.
When we see a new client come onboard with short content the first thing we do is read over the content, develop a plan to better explain the content that answers the question the visitor might have and then we work on re-writing to solve the visitor’s questions. This will almost always increase the user’s SEO over time.
Read over your pages, make them complete and accurate. Don’t settle on a page built and never changing it. Change shows the search engines that you care enough to revise and improve. It shows your readers there is new information when they come back. When you have new users come to your site they will see information that has been updated over time which improves the potential for more sales.
If you take anything away from this please take away that you are writing for your site visitor and not the search engines. When you write for the user the search engines will love you. When you write for the search engines your site visitors will often leave as you are not focused on solving their problems.