Number of Words for Original Content

As long as you write a minimum of 500 words you should be fine. But don't just focus on length, focus on quality

Yeah as the post above says, 500 is normally the bottom-limit.

Although remember, you could write 3000 words, and if it's not written well (with both SE and user considered) then you ain't not going no where!

I would say 3500 words, minimum. But the article has to be full of quality content. Search engine algorithms these days are smart enough to pick up on keyword stuffing, repetitive nonsense, and so on. If you look at magazines and the like, you can see that articles are frequently thousands of words long, containing a lot of information, including background information sprinkled throughout the length of the article. Professional writers have no problem creating quality articles of this length that will appeal to human readers, and that's what the search engines are trying to identify and prioritize in the rankings.

People will, of course, present all kinds of arguments in favor of short articles. Frequently among those arguments is the supposed fact that people's attention spans are short. Well, that may be true, but typically those attention spans are short when what is being read is boring and fails to engage the reader from start to finish. Even marketers who recognize that long sales letters work, despite cries to the contrary, will fall victim to believing that short articles are better.

Well, if a quality copywriter can hold a prospect's attention throughout a long sales letter, it should not be hard to accept that a quality article writer can do the same with an article. But, while there are marketers willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a copywriter to do their sales letter, many will balk at paying more than $5 for an article. So, they tend not to get long, quality articles. And, if you try paying a $5 article writer $30 to get a long article, that's not going to cut it. Someone accustomed to holding a reader's attention for only 500 words likely does not have the chops to hold a reader's attention for 3,000 words.

In the long run, that kind of attitude can be more costly. I have seen people buying countless $5 articles, valuing a quantity of articles on their site over quality articles on their site. Then, when Google comes out with a new algorithm change, these webmasters are frequently scrambling to adjust and buy more $5 articles to compensate for this or that. Meanwhile, I have had articles on some of my sites consistently on the first page of Google (and other search engines) for years. I haven't had to scramble to adjust to Penguin or Panda or Pachyderm or whatever else comes down the pipe. So, one quality article is worth how many of those short $5 articles? Lots, I would imagine. What marketers will spend on lots of $5 articles could have been spent on one quality article of over three thousand words in length, and could have gotten the same bang for their dollars.

What your competitors are doing is irrelevant. I don't favor longer articles because my competitors don't; I prefer them because they provide my readers with more value. Mind you, this doesn't mean that every article I put on my sites is several thousand words in length. I wish they were. But, the thing to bear in mind is that an authority on a subject should have little problem writing at length about it. As well, those who wish to be an authority on a subject would research it fully and be able to write at length about it, even though it may take longer to do. Sometimes, we may fail at doing these things because of our self-imposed rush to put something on our sites. It is to our own detriment that we do this, because, as I mentioned, an authority on a topic should have no problem writing a lengthy article about it and the search engines know this. The search engines will be looking for it.

So, if your competitors have articles that weigh in around 500 words in length, that doesn't mean you should put up 600 word articles and call it a day. You should challenge yourself to do better than your competitor and yourself. You wrote 600 words? Good, now go back and flesh it out some more. Got it up to 750 words? Great. Now go back and flesh it out some more. Made it to 1500 words? Very good, now go back and flesh it out some more. And so on. You hit 3,000 words? Excellent. Now go back and cut out any nonsense you tossed in there to pad your word count. Down to 2500 words? Nice. Now go back and flesh it out some more to get it to 3,500 words or more. Rinse and repeat, you know?

But, few people do any of those things. They just focus on getting by with little 300, 500 or maybe even 800 word articles. That's fine. It's very good actually. I hope my competitors keep doing that. In fact, on second thought, ignore everything I've said. Just focus on doing articles around five hundred words in length. Stuff them with your keywords too, please. Thanks!

Yes, 800 sounds about right to me, I've heard similar things from several people who seem to know what they're doing. The only real way to know if it works for you, is to split-test, but yes, I'd suggest going with around 800 these days.

Chris

The more words you have the more chances to get picked up for different keyword phrases including ones you never even imagined people would be searching for and ones that no keyword tool will tell you about.

But, forget about words. What message do you want to convey on the homepage? Focus on that and use however many words it takes to get that across.

It was pulled from somebody's ass.

Personally, I use 903 word articles. No more words, no less. And you should too because I'm a purported authority on such matters.

Your blog post should have a minimum post length of 300 words. 500-800 is a good target to shoot for

Ezinearticles put out a newsletter recently that said to stick to shorter articles in the 500 to 700 word range because if you present articles that are too long, it will be daunting to the reader and they may skip over it and move on to something else.

I think it depends on certain personality types. I don't like long articles, long books, long conversations, long posts, long videos, or long anything! Well, almost anything.

Remember, most people are lazy and probably will skip over a really long article without reading it but I think it depends on the niche. They say more women are readers so if you have a niche that caters to women, perhaps longer articles are better.

Like they always say... test and see!

Yep 800 is good and don't re-spin the content, never re-spin, because it's not a viable solution for the future. So yes write in your own words and then go back and see where you can make the keyword you target rich and dense without overloading. It's a balancing act and takes time to master.

I assume you are referring to... "HP" as the Homepage of your website.

I'm still doing what I have been doing for years and my articles and websites have not suffered from... Panda or Penguin.

For article directories and parasites I usually keep the average around 500 (+ or -) words. 1 main keyword phrase sprinkled with 2 to 4 sub-keywords. The subs usually have at least 1 word from the main keyword phrase in it.

For total 100% whitehat sites... I usually keep it between 800 and 1200 words.

But.... on HP's... I use the main keyword phrase @ at least 2% and more subs (than... article directories - parasites) all through it.

As Cashcow stated... you will start ranking for keywords YOU have NO idea you are ranking for.... unless you know how to and have proper tracking.

Still working for me.


Darryl

I have pages with between 150 and 8500 words.

I also have videos which don't have any "text". I also use infographics that can be pinned and/or shared that don't have any "text", but can still communicate a message and/or data.

Both videos and infographics can and do go viral on sites like Twitter and Pinterest and should also be considered as "content" too.

800 sounds like a random number

Hey, Word Count, Formal, Length are nothing to do with SEO. Most important is the quality and information you provide in your article. Content should be well-written, highly informative and grammatically correct. Most of the directories expect 450-500 words, but if you are posting for blogs you don't need more than 250-300.

I think you can not say the exact number of words. From an article 500 must be indexed well. Since then articles with 3000 words is too much, nobody will read. I focus on more than 500 and give them fresh and original content and I assure you it works.

I have heard rumblings that Google is favoring longer articles since the algorithm change(s). And for certain niches, that is all well and good.

However, for numerous niches, readers really don't have that kind of attention span (no matter how good your copywriting is). It doesn't matter how good an article or site content is if people aren't taking the time to read it.

I'd personally try between 750 & 1,000 -- and break it up into chunks with lots of keyword-rich (but not stuffed - there's a difference!) subheadings to guide your readers along through the article.

But don't worry - by the time marketers have this algorithm down, it will be sure to change again.

I would say the minimum is 500 words.

Tons and tons of information. No need to add any of my thoughts. But It all depends. If it is a page that I'm attempting to rank, then I try to develop it until I have between 750 and 2500 words. Having titles, sub-titles, and bullet points is also a good idea. If it's a blog post, then I try to have between 150 and 500 words. These are just general rules-of-thumb.