How much content length matters

50 replies
  • SEO
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the title says it all. How much content length matters to google. Sometimes my articles are of 200 to 250 words and I can't make it big because it will look spam.

It is ok if I use 200 words unique article. And I have also seen sites which are ranking on google with 100 words article.
#content #length #matters
  • Profile picture of the author sovereignn
    Don't over think it or you're just holding yourself back.

    If you've said all you have to say and projected your point in 200 words then 200 words is perfectly okay

    I'd worry more about quality than length
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  • Profile picture of the author Pravir
    After the recent google updation a lot of blog with a thin content has been penalized. One of my blog was affected by the updation, the reason might be I had a low quality short post around 300-400 words in that blog and that blog lost a big chunk of traffic from google . I worked on that blog by rewriting those most of the posts and put original content, on an average most of the rewritten post were more than 800 words, Slowly I got my rankings back, so that the traffic. So after gone through this I can advice you that you should put original content and atleast more than 500-600 words. Just my thought.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nelapsi
      As a general rule of thumb I aim for 500, I have found once you get the hang of writing articles it is fairly easy to do. There are times a subject matter will go well beyond the 500 and in those cases I tend to do supporting articles and for those I just try to never go below 300.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnben1444
    If you are using it for SEO, 200+ word content is ok.

    Don't just mention your keywords in the content more than 2 to 3 times because the content is not much, too much keyword will only lead to over optimization.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    The amount of text on a page has nothing to do with ranking a page in the SERPs.

    I have 2,500+ pages spread out over 3 same niche sites, all with an average of 1 sentence/description (per page) & still rank for my keywords, & multiple SERP listings (per keyword) for a lot of the keywords.

    Now If your trying to rank a single page for multiple keywords, that's a whole other thing as far as SEO goes.

    The problem here on Warrior Forum is people got caught up in spamming article directories for links (EZA, etc...) now they think they have to have a lot of text on a page to rank in the SERPs (wrong).
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    • Profile picture of the author Nick Garcia
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      I have 2,500+ pages spread out over 3 same niche sites, all with an average of 1 sentence/description (per page) & still rank for my keywords, & multiple SERP listings (per keyword) for a lot of the keywords.
      Do you mean that each page has an average of 1 sentence of content? Or that the descriptions for the pages is 1 sentence?

      I think amount of content matters in a sense that more content gives you more stuff to make the bots and humans read. More content isn't necessarily better or worse.

      If you make good use of that extra content it could benefit you, but tons of content doesn't seem to be a requirement.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Nick Garcia View Post

        Do you mean that each page has an average of 1 sentence of content? Or that the descriptions for the pages is 1 sentence?

        I think amount of content matters in a sense that more content gives you more stuff to make the bots and humans read. More content isn't necessarily better or worse.

        If you make good use of that extra content it could benefit you, but tons of content doesn't seem to be a requirement.
        I'm talking about on-page content.

        My traffic isn't on my page to read articles, I don't do articles, I do downloads that I create. Just like a Youtube page doesn't need much text for traffic, my pages don't need more than a short description & a link to download the file. Each page also includes 1 image (per page).
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        Originally Posted by Nick Garcia View Post


        I think amount of content matters in a sense that more content gives you more stuff to make the bots and humans read. More content isn't necessarily better or worse.
        Humans have a very low level of sustained reading ability. They get
        bored quick. Short attention span.

        And bots? What are they reading? Botspeak? Bots don't read a
        thing. That's what confuses people. They think bots read and judge
        quality of content. Nothing could be further from the truth.

        The bots, and I'm talking the ones from google here, look for clues
        in the code as to what a site is about. They have to do it that
        way. They can't read, and if they actually tried, there are so
        many extemporaneous words they would get mixed up. Same
        reason they don't count keywords, nor care about density.

        So many people misquote google all the time. Google does not
        care about quality, length, or any of that BS. They like pages
        that answer the queries people have. Wikipedia is full of junk.
        Amazon? You call that content? Yahoo answers? Like those
        boneheads write great content? People need to step into
        reality. These threads at the WF are indexed ASAP and get
        ranked instantly. And this stuff is "quality content"? You
        call the one line responses that are just wrong "great content"?
        Look at all the misspelled words, bad grammar, one liners,...

        When google talks about quality, unique content, they are
        talking about idiots who are trying to shmooze their search
        engines with EMDs, junk review articles, scraped crap, etc.
        They want sites to be built to enhance human searches, not
        just another tired site built for nothing than plastering ads
        or selling CB products. That's what they are talking about.
        They are trying to get people off that kick. But look around the WF.
        We could start a failure club with the same old tired stuff being
        done and promoted. Putting what you think is unique, fresh, and
        fantastic content on a junk site, is like putting lipstick on a pig.
        That's what google is talking about. Stop putting lipstick
        on your pigs. Sell the pigs. Start making unicorns and rainbows.

        Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author Charley Brown
    My biggest name clients request content anywhere from 100-1500 words. It really all depends on the page you are building.
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    • Profile picture of the author skjoldby
      Thin content is not the same as few words. You can show an infographic with just a title in <h1> and it would not be considered thin, as long it provides values to users.

      Your strategy should rather be how can I show Google that my users like my stuff. Social proff is one way. Google will read your +1's and facebook likes. Interaction is another.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mosa
    My partner and I ranked a page before it ever had any content on it. After adding content and doing a few links we hit #1. Then shortly after we saw another site starting to rank with barely any content on it other than titles and one sentence on the page. That site has been sitting at #5 for 4 months...with NOTHING!

    Anyway just thought i'd share that. From experience our sites with more content are doing a little better, but I can't assume that the word quantity that's causing this - there's a lot of factors at play here.
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  • Profile picture of the author sham2
    In my Opinion quality of article matter then length of content. Always share best quality and unique content.
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    • Profile picture of the author Aarav
      Obviously, content length is matters but quality of content is much matter. I think 350 to 450 words are best for article content because mostly genuine sites have take minimum 300 words content with high quality of content.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Aarav View Post

        Obviously, content length is matters but quality of content is much matter. I think 350 to 450 words are best for article content because mostly genuine sites have take minimum 300 words content with high quality of content.
        That's just wrong.

        Most people here on Warrior Forum assume the rest of the world cares about articles, which is wrong.
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  • Profile picture of the author lovboa
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  • Profile picture of the author sav
    Just focus on quality, but you have to do a little better than 200. Try for 400-500 and you'll be set.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by sav View Post

      Just focus on quality, but you have to do a little better than 200. Try for 400-500 and you'll be set.
      Based on that logic 4,000-5,000 words on a page would trump your 400-500 pages, right?

      Eventually the first ranked page will have 10 million words, lol.
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  • Profile picture of the author vinzsama
    Try to write at least 300 to 500 words.. But the quality of the contents is still the king!
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  • Profile picture of the author aadi144
    It depends on what you are providing.Making a content long enough is waste of time.Instead make your content Qualitative and brief.200+ words are enough to describe.

    But if you have a long content to share you can make points from it and then write different content from the same quantitative one.
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  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    "The amount of text on a page has nothing to do with ranking a page in the SERPs."

    Actually that is competely untrue.

    Google's "Page Quality Guidelines" explicitly state a word count for their "EWOQ" manual rating teams.

    Google lies to you.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by jazbo View Post

      "The amount of text on a page has nothing to do with ranking a page in the SERPs."

      Actually that is competely untrue.

      Google's "Page Quality Guidelines" explicitly state a word count for their "EWOQ" manual rating teams.

      Google lies to you.
      I've been running the same setup on my sites for years & nothing has changed in regards to word count for SEO.

      You don't have to believe me, but I'm serious when I say word count is irrelevant to SEO.

      You claiming my comment is wrong, is based on you not testing things for yourself, otherwise you would know that counting words is silly.

      I also know for a fact that my non-article sites have on average of 45,000-90,000 traffic hits per month, roughly half that traffic is from the SERPs. That's on my 3 largest Adsense sites, around 6-years old.

      My traffic could care less about reading articles & I could care less about publishing articles.

      The day people on this forum realize the majority of the web traffic has an attention span of a cricket will be the day they stop creating useless content that most people will never read. Anyone creating bogus articles for the sake of SEO, well good luck with that.

      Know your traffics needs/wants, it's less work long term.
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    • Profile picture of the author danparks
      Originally Posted by jazbo View Post

      "The amount of text on a page has nothing to do with ranking a page in the SERPs."

      Actually that is competely untrue.

      Google's "Page Quality Guidelines" explicitly state a word count for their "EWOQ" manual rating teams.

      Google lies to you.
      Like others have stated, through real-world experience I have seen that as far as ranking, the word count doesn't matter (I'm talking about ranking, not holding a visitor's attention and converting). Pages with very little content rank all the time.

      And by the way, your strong opinion that content length is important wouldn't be jaded by what you do to make money - would it?

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      • Profile picture of the author DABK
        Writers, don't you know, don't have biases. Especially biases that favors them.

        ALL PEOPLE WHO THINK CONTENT LENGTH AND/OR QUALITY MATTERS:

        I just Googled
        lose weight fast fads

        and, in the first position, I get a page from more.com.

        The content is an image of a cup of cabbage soup, 30-40 words about cabbage soup, a title for the recipe, a title and subtitle for the page, a bunch of images that link to other articles, a bunch of links that go to other articles, a bunch of ads.

        This is both short and pointless (unless you own more.com) content.

        So, every now and again, do some research. Look at what ranks in various niches for various keywords. And shut up already!
        Originally Posted by danparks View Post

        Like others have stated, through real-world experience I have seen that as far as ranking, the word count doesn't matter (I'm talking about ranking, not holding a visitor's attention and converting). Pages with very little content rank all the time.

        And by the way, your strong opinion that content length is important wouldn't be jaded by what you do to make money - would it?

        Your signature:

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        • Profile picture of the author Enfusia
          Originally Posted by DABK View Post

          Writers, don't you know, don't have biases. Especially biases that favors them.

          ALL PEOPLE WHO THINK CONTENT LENGTH AND/OR QUALITY MATTERS:

          I just Googled
          lose weight fast fads

          and, in the first position, I get a page from more.com.

          The content is an image of a cup of cabbage soup, 30-40 words about cabbage soup, a title for the recipe, a title and subtitle for the page, a bunch of images that link to other articles, a bunch of links that go to other articles, a bunch of ads.

          This is both short and pointless (unless you own more.com) content.

          So, every now and again, do some research. Look at what ranks in various niches for various keywords. And shut up already!
          Hi, the ranking for: lose weight fast fads is a little different than you lead on.

          There are 20 slides each with a paragraph on them each having an average of 73 words for a total content of 1,460 words.

          Google is not stupid, they know that the content is in a slide deck and count all of it.

          I'm sorry to have to break it to you but content length does too matter. Below I'll give my findings but here's what Neil Patel has to say (who is by the way making 2.5 million per month): How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions

          I strongly suggest you read the article.

          Now, I have built in excess of 500 websites as well as 2 international concerns.

          My web pages are 3,000 words long in 3 niches and I'm spanking my competitors with zero back links.

          I'm outranking big name sites. There is a formula that I've found that Google just loves, and I mean loves. No, sorry I'm not sharing it. My wife's site is also killing it with the same formula.
          It's more than just content length but it's not back links, we don't need any.

          Yes, our niches are competitive. They are 4 of the big niches.

          I know that someone will come back on here and refute what I've said and that's cool. This is a forum. But, that's what's working for myself and it looks like for Neil too.

          Patrick
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          • Profile picture of the author danparks
            Originally Posted by Enfusia View Post

            I strongly suggest you read the article.
            I've read a lot of Neil's writing. Neil certainly does know how to make money on the web. He writes a lot. Sometimes even contradicting himself:

            "Obsolete tactic #6: You need a lot of text to rank well"

            There he says you don't need much content to rank. As in the #1 result for "tattoos in a new light" and several other "tattoo" related keywords. The page has a just a couple of sentences of text.

            I don't think anyone is saying avoid text. You'll want text that covers many keywords to better your chance to rank for those many keywords (if your goal is to rank a page for many keywords). You'll want good, engaging text to help keep visitors on your page and convert to sales (though sometimes little or no text will work (a great infographic, a great video). It's all these people focusing on the magic word count number ("must be 300 to 400 words," "500 words is best," "at least 1000 words is best," "the more words the better.").

            Get great backlinks and you'll rank with minimal text. Or have good internal linking and you'll rank with minimal text (for example, a PR5 home page linking directly to an inner page will almost certainly rank that inner page for some keyword). By all means if you can fill your page with interesting, creative, useful text, fill 'er up. But quit focusing on a word count number. If you come up with a short and sweet paragraph that gets a visitor to laugh, or say "yes, exactly!" or some such, then you're done - you don't need to tack on 800 more words to reach that 1000 word goal.

            Answer the reader's question. In an engaging way. Whether that's 100 words of text, 1000 words of text, a great embedded video, or a series of pictures with very little text. Then toss some great backlinks at the page, and you'll be fine.
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          • Profile picture of the author DABK
            The post I wrote had 4 examples... Don't know how I cropped it in the final version.

            But, I had examples of sites in #1 with hugely different content length.

            Also had there about me ranking pages with 3 words of content and pages with over 1000 words on them.

            Concluded that, since there's such variation in content but not in results, content length ain't it.

            You have long content, but you don't say you rank just because of long content. You say it's content + your secret formula. I'd venture to say, it's the secret formula that does it.

            I can get on page 1 with only content, long content... + my secret formula... I've never managed to make it to page 1 with long content, for keywords people actually use, except with content + something else.



            Originally Posted by Enfusia View Post

            Hi, the ranking for: lose weight fast fads is a little different than you lead on.

            There are 20 slides each with a paragraph on them each having an average of 73 words for a total content of 1,460 words.

            Google is not stupid, they know that the content is in a slide deck and count all of it.

            I'm sorry to have to break it to you but content length does too matter. Below I'll give my findings but here's what Neil Patel has to say (who is by the way making 2.5 million per month): How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions

            I strongly suggest you read the article.

            Now, I have built in excess of 500 websites as well as 2 international concerns.

            My web pages are 3,000 words long in 3 niches and I'm spanking my competitors with zero back links.

            I'm outranking big name sites. There is a formula that I've found that Google just loves, and I mean loves. No, sorry I'm not sharing it. My wife's site is also killing it with the same formula.
            It's more than just content length but it's not back links, we don't need any.

            Yes, our niches are competitive. They are 4 of the big niches.

            I know that someone will come back on here and refute what I've said and that's cool. This is a forum. But, that's what's working for myself and it looks like for Neil too.

            Patrick
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            • Profile picture of the author paulgl
              I can only assume with the shtuff being added to an old thread,
              one is trying to trump another thread/page by piling on replies.
              Thus adding to the amount of content.

              With each reply we must be upping the odds this thread will rank.

              If that sounds nuts, well, we could have ended this thread a month
              ago.

              Paul
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by Enfusia View Post

            Hi, the ranking for: lose weight fast fads is a little different than you lead on.

            There are 20 slides each with a paragraph on them each having an average of 73 words for a total content of 1,460 words.

            Google is not stupid, they know that the content is in a slide deck and count all of it.

            I'm sorry to have to break it to you but content length does too matter. Below I'll give my findings but here's what Neil Patel has to say (who is by the way making 2.5 million per month): How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions

            I strongly suggest you read the article.

            Now, I have built in excess of 500 websites as well as 2 international concerns.

            My web pages are 3,000 words long in 3 niches and I'm spanking my competitors with zero back links.

            I'm outranking big name sites. There is a formula that I've found that Google just loves, and I mean loves. No, sorry I'm not sharing it. My wife's site is also killing it with the same formula.
            It's more than just content length but it's not back links, we don't need any.

            Yes, our niches are competitive. They are 4 of the big niches.

            I know that someone will come back on here and refute what I've said and that's cool. This is a forum. But, that's what's working for myself and it looks like for Neil too.

            Patrick
            If you are going to quote Neil to back up your argument, your argument has serious holes.

            He even contradicts himself on this topic all the time.

            He is a marketer. His SEO ideas leave something to be desired.
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  • Profile picture of the author Xempes
    I think that the basic length people go for is 500 words
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Douglas
    I will go against the theory that word count is irrelevant to any requirement set by google. In fact According to the new Panda algorithm used by google an article below 150 word is considered a spam and effectively does not help in generating traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Douglas
    However is your are looking for a success criteria rather than a requirement then the number of words have nothing to do with traffic generation. Quality is the key word here.

    A well written 200 word article is worth more than a 2000 word sloppy written, low quality article.
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  • Profile picture of the author engagedotscrm
    Have a unique content with words around 300 - 350.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Classic WF, a 3 year old forum thread about shit that doesn't even matter.

    None of you ever ranked a page because of the amount of text on a webpage.

    See ya'll in 3 years.
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    • Profile picture of the author DABK
      Yukon, tell me, please, what is so hard about Googling several products/services/ideas and check the content on whoever comes up in the top 3 positions and draw your own conclusions?

      I mean, you check your competition while doing your research. By the time you're done with a handful of keywords, you'll have the answer to this question and so many other questions.

      So, Yukon, why don't they do it? Why do they, instead, post pointless post after pointless post?

      I know you know the answer. And that you'll tell me that answer. So that I may sleep like a baby tonight.

      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Classic WF, a 3 year old forum thread about shit that doesn't even matter.

      None of you ever ranked a page because of the amount of text on a webpage.

      See ya'll in 3 years.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        Originally Posted by DABK View Post

        Yukon, tell me, please, what is so hard about Googling several products/services/ideas and check the content on whoever comes up in the top 3 positions and draw your own conclusions?

        I mean, you check your competition while doing your research. By the time you're done with a handful of keywords, you'll have the answer to this question and so many other questions.

        So, Yukon, why don't they do it? Why do they, instead, post pointless post after pointless post?

        I know you know the answer. And that you'll tell me that answer. So that I may sleep like a baby tonight.
        I'll do it for him. Because people do not want to run with the big dogs.
        They do not study big dogs.
        They ignore big dogs.

        I have been telling people for years to emulate what the big dogs do.

        But what the big dogs do, flies in the face of SEO wannabes.

        They hear a guy who knew a guy who saw a guy who farted something
        about SEO. Then they got it mixed up 6 ways from Sunday.

        You won't see these people in three years.

        Paul
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        • Profile picture of the author Enfusia
          I've read what people have to say and here's my take.

          If I can tale a 3k word piece of content and put in 6 really long tail keywords that would freak most SEO people out, we're talking 8 to 14 words long. Then use variations of them throughout the page and end up getting thousands to a page per month then I'm happy with that.

          One of my sites is then translated into Russian and German and is doing really well in those countries as well.

          Here's what I HAVE done. I have written a great 550 word article. Extremely valuable. The thing didn't rank. I wrote a 3,000 word article about that exact same subject on the same site and it ranked.

          So, say what you will, it's working for me.

          Patrick
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  • Profile picture of the author ahmansoor
    Its more about proportion - its fine to have some small percentage of short articles - but higher percentage of 'thin' articles can be spammy in the eyes of Google.
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  • Profile picture of the author itos
    In my blog, I have been doing 2000 words in average articles. Sometimes a little bit more and a little bit less.I like extensive content that goes deeply about a topic. Also your average time in the site will increase a lot with this. I use this strategy for any authority site I want to build.

    It also depends on what type of blog do you have. If it's more on the news side then you can make 200 words articles and make around 10 of those per day and you will be fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author tomkidotiptrick
    I think at least for a 500+ word article content is the most nice
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  • Profile picture of the author marketingismine
    Between 400 and 1200 words is an average article
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    • Profile picture of the author DABK
      Come back. You forgot to finish your post. Why do you think 500+ is 'the most nice?'

      Originally Posted by tomkidotiptrick View Post

      I think at least for a 500+ word article content is the most nice
      That covers most articles, so it's not average. Plus, it doesn't address the OP's question: "How much content length matters."

      Originally Posted by marketingismine View Post

      Between 400 and 1200 words is an average article
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  • Profile picture of the author netgeek
    A survey revealed that the top 10 ranking website for various websites have an average of at least 1000 words of content.

    And serpiq analyzed 20,000 keywords and they found the top 10 websites ranking had an average of over 2000 words content. ( Ref :How Important is Content Length? Why Data-Driven SEO Trumps Guru Opinions - The serpIQ Blog )

    The best way is to analyze your top 10 competitors for that particular targeted keyword.

    Cheers,
    Tarun
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    • Profile picture of the author DABK
      It also revealed that content length had little to do with ranking. They found that in highly competitive niches, the top spots had content in the 400's words (including content in sidebars). They came up with this:

      "Our hypothesis is that pages that rank for extremely competitive keywords are getting there with massive amounts of backlinks, social signals, and other factors. In essence, in the aggregate, pages ranking for SERPs with a CI of 75 or higher are well branded and have a lot of other signals going for them, so content length is just not playing a very significant factor in their ranking whatsoever."

      They also revealed that the reasoning behind the survey is highly flawed and that they're good at marketing and blogging and at presenting specious arguments in a good way.

      And they conclude with: adjust your content length to your niche (do your own research, ours is not revelvant?) and with this:

      "it’s likely the case that focusing on your branding, quality linkbuilding and social engagement will pay off more in the long run, especially if you’re targeting some competitive terms."

      Originally Posted by netgeek View Post

      A survey revealed that the top 10 ranking website for various websites have an average of at least 1000 words of content.

      And serpiq analyzed 20,000 keywords and they found the top 10 websites ranking had an average of over 2000 words content. ( Ref :How Important is Content Length? Why Data-Driven SEO Trumps Guru Opinions - The serpIQ Blog )

      The best way is to analyze your top 10 competitors for that particular targeted keyword.

      Cheers,
      Tarun
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  • Profile picture of the author mentat47
    In addition to the content length, Content quality is also important and its structure as well. Think about one with having a meta title and a structure like H1,H2,H3 etc
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  • Profile picture of the author rajeshhome
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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  • Profile picture of the author SnackMemory
    Originally Posted by solemanali View Post

    the title says it all. How much content length matters to google. Sometimes my articles are of 200 to 250 words and I can't make it big because it will look spam.

    It is ok if I use 200 words unique article. And I have also seen sites which are ranking on google with 100 words article.
    Content length does seem to matter to google to some degree, but no need to go crazy at it if it is a good resource already, but yes It is often a sign of a high quality webpage if its a bit chunky with the content.
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  • Profile picture of the author vanished
    Content length doesn't matter much!
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  • Profile picture of the author jessegilbert
    Banned
    Don't write for google...write for the end user.

    If the blog post can convey something of value in 20 words, that could be enough I think.


    Originally Posted by solemanali View Post

    the title says it all. How much content length matters to google. Sometimes my articles are of 200 to 250 words and I can't make it big because it will look spam.

    It is ok if I use 200 words unique article. And I have also seen sites which are ranking on google with 100 words article.
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  • Profile picture of the author flyingeagle
    20 words for commenting i think its just enough..
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  • Profile picture of the author megakits
    Banned
    Do keyword research and write engaging contents that will grab the attention of your visitors which in turn will reduce your bounce rate. The length is not necessarily a ranking factor.
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