+39 votes
by (1.4k points)
If there's no correlation between word count and ranking what causes pages with more words to consistently rank highly? Thoughts?  
https://www.searchenginejournal.com...HTNX4
If there's no correlation between word count and ranking what causes pages with more words to consis

25 Answers

+43 votes
by (10.9k points)
 
Best answer
Ive done some testing around this and from what Ive seen its clear that higher word count matters
by (670 points)
But it depends on the nature of content if it is about a product like a shoe what word count will you give there
by (1.9k points)
by (3.7k points)
@catnip1 Depends on which type of shoe and what people searching for that type of shoe are looking for when they search. Are you writing an article about "dental assistant shoes" for "dental hygienists", an article about "water shoes" for "men, kids, and hiking" or "comfortable white nursing shoes" for "nurses" to wear?  
by (670 points)
@phenothiazine tell me one thing what is better 1- if a write more word count for a page or 2- I link more relevant content to the same page
by (10.9k points)
You shouldn't be jamming more words on a page expecting it to perform better in search - you should be providing value. Thing is though, Ive tested the whole long form thing using shitty spun content and every time the longer stuff won out. Google really need to invest more towards flagging/downgrading shit content full of broken English. Right now they obviously dont. The whole Lipsum thing proved that.  
by (3.7k points)
@catnip1 There is no "one size fits all" response I can give. "it depends on the nature of content if it is about a product like a shoe what word count will you give there" It doesn't depend on the nature of the content, but the nature and intent of the search. Based on the things people are looking for when they search for "nursing shoes" or "water shoes", what are the 5 most important segments of search demand within each topic? When someone searches for "nursing shoes", what are the 5 most common things they're looking for? When someone searches for "water shoes", what are the 5 most common things they're looking for?  
by (3.7k points)
@catnip1 "tell me one thing what is better 1- if a write more word count for a page or 2- I link more relevant content to the same page" If the page has been written to satisfy the search intent of the keywords it's meant to target, what other relevant content would there be to link to the page and how would that help rankings for the primary page without cannibalizing each other?  
+42 votes
by (550 points)
Higher word count leads to more opportunities for topical keyword density. Adding words for words sake is just silly.  
by (4.5k points)
"keyword density" - eh?  
by (840 points)
@deathless maybe 'more opportunities to rank for sub-queries' wouldn't give you the shivers?  
by (4.5k points)
Yea thank you. much more appropriate LOL. SEO'ing like it's 1999 there.  
by (550 points)
Call it what you want @deathless. Nice super uber-duper scarf you got there.  
by (4.5k points)
All about the fashion baby
+28 votes
by (4.2k points)
I would think it’s a matter of people who wrote longer content are more likely invested in the process and willing to write better content that matches search intent.  
+46 votes
by (6.8k points)
More words equals more chances to rank for different terms which will help and of course the more words you have (of good copy) the easier it is for an algorithm to understand the entire meaning of the page as a whole. It isn't the numeric number of words making you rank as in 'if character number is greater than 10, 000 then have yourself a 3% boost' etc, it is the fact that the larger number of words gives better results to the algorithm, as in sample sizes and accuracy, the larger the sample the more accurate the result. Cause and effect have to be careful not to mix them up
+19 votes
by (3.3k points)
Are we still taking the snippets Google lets out as absolute gospel? I'm not saying John's not wrong here. I've seen websites with very little content rank. But having content is good for SEO. Having more content means you're likely to be considering SEO in general. You're probably building links, producing blogs etc. With more content, you'll rank for more phrases, more phrases potentially means lower bounce rates, more traffic, more social media sharing more rankings etc. So it might not be direct but more words (as long as they're good) is good for your SEO
+34 votes
by (1.6k points)
10k all day :O
by (8.3k points)
You write 10, 000 word blog posts?  
by (1.6k points)
We did some pretty long pages last week, biggest one was 9k words. one thing that a lot of folks don't realize, is backlinko was turning out 1000s of visitors a day when he had just 18 posts on his blog
by (1.1k points)
My latest talk ( not that you need to watch it) analyzes a Wikipedia page that is 27, 000 words long.  
by (120 points)
@petro Hi, is that talk uploaded somewhere?  
by (1.1k points)
@stokehold could be. hang on.  
by (1.6k points)
Thanks for sharing!  
+47 votes
by (2k points)
Analysis of Google organic SERP listing > Whatever Jon or any google employee says. (With due respect)
+40 votes
by (630 points)
Latent Drichlet Allocation.  
+31 votes
by (970 points)
I ranked with one sentence once.  
by (2.2k points)
@basir it was probably in 1997  
by (2.2k points)
@shamanism Thanksler pm the link
+30 votes
by (610 points)
We've all seen the studies that look at large swaths of SERPs showing a very clear correlation between word count and ranking, traffic, links, and social shares. Has anyone had success dong the opposite? Publishing a bunch of 500-word articles? Testing if what @meretricious says to be truth is possible?  
by (1.6k points)
Yes I did this pre 2012 and it got my affiliate sites penalized by Panda LOL
by (610 points)
Yeah been there done that too. Let me re-frame: has anyone built out a site without giving a single thought to content length? Meaning a spread of word count. could very well range from 200-2, 000 post averages. Because Google says satisfy the user, and for many instances, that can be done in under 500 words. Recipes are the perfect example, yet I still have to scroll through 1, 000 words of some ladies personal backstory every time I want to find out at what temperature should I cook my beef brisket.  
by (2.5k points)
@untaught Some of my articles are 500-1000 words and are ranking first page, some of which bring in 1k visits month. This is all about good kw research though.  
+45 votes
by (4.3k points)
Depends on the serp!  
+18 votes
by (14.3k points)
Again this cold soup, reheated for God knows how many times? JohnMu was very clear: Google doesn't know how to count. Who wants to argue about that?  
by (2.4k points)
@meretricious who? Oh. Google's Chief Disinformation Officer.  
by (14.3k points)
@boule162 the one ;)
+27 votes
by (2.5k points)
I don't think is more words that helps you rank. I think is the right amount of words to cover the topic that actually helps you rank. Keyword density and over optimization also play a crucial role.  
+46 votes
by (750 points)
Our SOP for word count is to replicate the SERP and we go lower rather than higher at the moment. We’re seeing more and more 2000 word or less articles ranking in 3000+ average SERPs and I believe Google is moving towards word count being less of a ranking factor for some SERPs, especially for ‘best’ keywords
+36 votes
by (2.1k points)
Wrote a whole thing on this and it just comes back to copycatting and poorly concluded studies that laud long-form as king. The reality is that the logic doesn’t support it. Not to say it doesn’t work, but understanding why is key to this whole on-going debate. I don’t want to cover old ground again, so if anyone does want to dig deeper into what I’m saying my original post is here -  
https://danielcuttridge.com/long-fo...-seo/
+32 votes
by (610 points)
Oh, Johnny, not again!  
+44 votes
by (1.4k points)
Here's a hot take. It works because SEOs think that long form is more authoritative and thus link to other long form articles as outbound links and create stronger backlink profiles for long form articles. It's cognitive bias turned into reality because of popular opinion rather than anything Google actually wants.  
by (1.4k points)
+41 votes
by (3.7k points)
The number of words doesn't matter. It's which words you use and how you use them that make the difference. They're called KEY-words for a reason.  
by (610 points)
Yeah, sure. Can you target 10 keywords in 200 words?  
by (3.7k points)
@possessed Yes, actually. Happens all the time when you research the keywords you're targeting and write content to satisfy the intent beyond the words. This page has 230 words of content on it and it currently ranks in one of the top 10 positions for 19 of its target keywords. It also ranks in the #11 position for the most searched keyword (5, 200 monthly searches) and another 9 keywords in the same spot just outside of the top 10 placements. In total, the page ranks in one of the top 20 spots for 34 of its 55 target keywords. The 230 words of content were added in April of 2019 and the traffic to the page has 5x since then. Other than the content itself, the only other optimizations made were to the title tag and meta description of the page. Header tags, images, schema and other elements have were not optimized. The only other "improvements" made were those to the on-page metrics (decreased bounce rate, increased average session duration) that were experienced as an indirect results of the optimized content being added to the page in the first place. After carefully researching what people search in Google, the 230 words written for this page were more than enough for Google to understand it satisfies the intent behind the words being searched.  
by (610 points)
Hey, Jason. I was kinda ironic. Yes, depending on keyword or competition you can rank with a sentence (like someone did) or a image. If you ranked with 230 words it doesn't mean you can't rank better with 500.  
by (3.7k points)
@possessed true, but only if the extra 270 words help to better satisfy the search intent of the query and search demand of the target audience. Adding 270 extra words for the sake of adding more content isn't going to do anything to help someone outrank another page. That's exactly the point @meretricious Mueller is trying to make - adding words for the sake of "having more content than your competitors" won't necessarily help your rankings unless they're the same keywords and search patterns Google sees on a daily basis.  
+50 votes
by (1.4k points)
That is an interesting question, with the short attention span people have nowadays, no one has the time to read a 5000 words article, so the bounce rate is going to be high. However we are been told by SEO gurus that longer articles that are well written of course gets better ranking.  
+23 votes
by (2k points)
The people need to stick around to read. 2500 well done words may beat 1000 for a month or two, but who is gonna win if they stay on my site for 3 minutes and yours for 30 seconds? What signals are you sending?  
+50 votes
by (1.5k points)
Lol. he's said that Google algorithm can get confused by longer word counts. yes @meretricious that's exactly what we're trying to do. He just has a different perspective and goal then we do.  
+34 votes
by (2.5k points)
"Our algorithms don't count the words on a page similar to how you wouldn't judge a cookie just by its weight" JohnMu
by (3.7k points)
@standardize Correct, Google does not measure the weight of the cookie, but the amount of each ingredient in the cookie.  
by (2.5k points)
@phenothiazine before or after baking?  
+35 votes
by (530 points)
My articles usually don’t have less then 500 words. Simply cause I need that many to cover a topic well. If I would try to cover it with less I would probably leave important points out that others would cover and therefore the quality for the readers of my article might be less good compared to others.  
+23 votes
by (2.5k points)
It's really simple - longer content is typically more helpful than shorter content. The more you satisfy user intent, the better Google will rank you. The article sums it up in the last paragraph: "Relevance for Google is understanding what users mean when they type a keyword and matching that to a page that answers the question" This is SEO 101!  
+30 votes
by (3k points)
The problem with any of those 'word count' tools is they fail to filter out the template-like content of a page like Google does by 'shingling' out the repeated content sections of a site, so they'll never see it the same way and count words differently. The correlation is always going to be some way off.  
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