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500 or 1000 words...Which one for homepage article?

by mrtrance
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I've read on many threads here and other forums that people advocate that in order to rank well for your homepage or any of your pages on a site you need to have like at least 1000 word of content. Anything less than that and it makes it difficult to rank now even if the offpage is optimized.

But then again I keep seeing sites with probably less than 500 words (more like 300-400 words) and they seem to be ranking fine in the top 3 for their main keyword. So I'm still not convinced if more content is really necessary as long as you give the user enough information that they either click on your Adsense links or other affiliate links you have on that page.

So I'm about to start a bunch of new micro niche sites (if one becomes a good one I'll expand it to more of an authority site) and I wanted to at least get the first content up on the homepage and see if the site will get traffic or not before expanding the site.

Now I'm wondering if I should outsource for 500 word article or 1000 word article? I think if I can get the information across in less words and also use a bunch of LSI keywords I think 500 words is enough plus it won't drag out and become boring for the reader.

So what do you guys think? Anyone really done any good experiments to compare if much longer content really makes that much difference as far as rankings goes or not?
#500 #article #homepage #words #wordswhich
  • Profile picture of the author TuNguyen
    Go with the 1000+ word articles. Larger articles will create more of an opportunity too provide better content as you will have more room to go in to greater depth on the subject matter. It will allow you to become more of an authority compared to a lower would count article, assuming both content values are equal.

    As a result (in theory), this will give you-- on average --a better chance to out rank you competition.

    Google does love longer articles, but it cant just be filler, because at the end of the day Google will also use social bookmarking and bounce rate metrics to determine how good your article really is.

    I've moved away from 500 word articles now and only do 1000+ word articles. Given recent indicators based on Googles updates (e.g relevant high quality content are being ranked, low quality content losing their SERPs), I would say that this is the way forward.

    I could be wrong though, but I doubt it.
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  • Profile picture of the author linkassistant
    I believe that the word count for your home page copy is just one of the many factors that might - or might not - influence your rankings.

    There are sites that are search leaders with little text content on their home pages (have a look at mint.com) and sites that lag behind with miles of copy on their home page.

    Use as many words as you need to produce a natural pitch and engage your users - that's the best criterion.

    Happy ranking!
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    • Profile picture of the author mrtrance
      Originally Posted by linkassistant View Post


      There are sites that are search leaders with little text content on their home pages (have a look at mint.com) and sites that lag behind with miles of copy on their home page.
      Yup I see this all the time where sites are ranking with just 300 words of content. I think if you have a great quality content that can be summed up in 500 words then you don't need to really push that up to say 1000 words if it might just be filler material. Better to target another related keyword for the site (and take that additional words that you would use on the homepage) and do a new article on this keyword to get that page ranking as well.

      I don't think the length of the article for either the homepage or even for internal pages not that big of a factor as many seem to think. If that was the case then so many sites would not be ranking where they are due to lack of content on the homepage and/or internal page that is ranking. I think having good and to the point 500 word article can be just as good as a mediocre 1000 word article.

      I don't I could be wrong, but I've not tested this yet to get an exact answer. What are you guys's feedback?
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Ray
    Honestly, the traffic from internal pages will be higher than for your home page. The home page needs to serve it's purpose of informing the visitor about the site...

    If you're trying to trick Google or build useless information into the home page, just for the sake of ranking, it's kind of hard to do it right. I mean, you CAN get ranked, but in the end, if it's not useful for the visitor, they will just hit the back button and move on to find other results.

    There's no 'right' answer. If it's a micro site, then why would you have a thousand words on the home page? A micro site might only have 5 thousand words on the whole site. (To be fair, we might have different ideas of the whole 'micro site' idea.)

    You mentioned LSI

    That is a good way to make sure you're on track. I'm all about LSI data for sites that are about things which you are not already an expert. That really helps you cover a lot of the bases.

    Are you using any LSI software right now for your keyword research? Or are you just hiring LSI article writers?
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