Webpages with SEO word counts have a greater likelihood of a higher Google ranking
Humans are very visual beings. In recent years, the trend on the internet – fuelled by people not in the know – has been to disregard SEO word counts and populate webpages with bold, dynamic graphics.
We’ve seen a move from longer youtube videos, to six second vines, to quick GIFs.
In a world of beautifully designed Instagram feeds and snazzy animations, it can be tempting to ditch the words in a push for great aesthetics. This is particularly when publishing photo galleries of your work.
However, this can upset Google.
A low word count means that Google won’t understand what your content’s about.
What is an SEO word count?
Google needs to be able to crawl your site and grasp what you are offering your customers. It can then rank you based on how well it believes your content suits what the end user is looking for.
The copy on your site – that’s the words – is the vital foundation of SEO strategies.
It is important that your copy is Search Engine Optimised.
Google understands words. It likes them – perhaps the more of them the better. It likes certain phrases. It wants you to include keywords because it offers its users what it believes to be the best results based on these. And it’s important to bear in mind that it can’t understand images.
How many words are we talking about?
Google is a fickle beast and there is no confirmed consensus as to an SEO word count.
But we have a general idea: Forbes recommends a minimum of 500 words, backlinko.com suggests that as of 2016, the average Google first page result contained 1,890 words and BuzzSumo advocates aiming for at least 2,000 words for a blog post.
Essentially the more words the better.
Your SEO word count may also differ based on several factors:
1) The topic the content is dealing with:
If the content doesn’t lend itself well to being long-form, don’t force it. Padding it out with unnecessary words to help it meet a minimum count may be a needless effort. It should be noted however that is difficult to judge what are extraneous words when it comes to SEO. That’s where the experts come in!
2) The type of business you are:
Ranking high is important, but so is making your content useful to your users.
Say you’re a roofing company with a website for trades.
You may want to explain your process, the materials you use and the types of services you offer.
It is important that your customer is able to look at your pages on each of these topics and understand what you can do for them.
In this scenario, pictures are important too – ensure you are providing a good balance of pictures and words so your customer fully comprehends your services.
Of course, it is not just the quantity of words you put on a page.
3) The quality of your content
Remember your primary school teacher grading your English homework and recommending ‘Quality over quantity’?
Through a process of SEO, key words need to be dropped into your content in order to help it rank as high as possible.
These key words influence Google’s perception of your site, and help it understand what you’re attempting to do.
This is where we come in!
We understand how Google works and what your business needs in order to be fully optimised for search engines.
We can provide everything from the provision of SEO friendly content to keywords analytics analysis.
Want to learn more? Shoot us an email or DM us on Twitter.
(and just before you go – know that we’re always up for a chat, and if you’d like to meet up then consider the beers on us!)
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