Is There A Minimum Amount Of Content That Should Appear On Your Web Page?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, April 16, 2009 Comments (4)

The content creation business is ever growing. And changing. One question that pops up, not every day but often enough, as I’m talking to new webmasters is “How much content should I include on my pages?” There is no definitive answer, but what you need to understand about the search engines is that they love content. The more the merrier.

So does that mean there is a minimum amount of content that should appear on every page in order to rank? No. In fact, you can have just a single line of content and have it rank, but will it rank for an important and competitive keyword?

The search engine algorithms are trained to analyze content from a variety of perspectives. There are over 150 ranking factors and not all of them are on-page search engine optimization factors. You could theoretically write one line of content on a web page, build thousands of solid links to it from a variety of other websites using a variety of diverse anchor texts and have that page rank in the search engines (not suggesting you should try this). Now whether that page would be beneficial to any readers or not is another question.

Content is what it is. Don’t make it out to be some magical pill. Just because the search engines like content doesn’t mean that you should slap as much of it on your page as possible. The more optimized your web pages the more likely you are to rank for your important keywords. Optimization comes in different packages. One measure of it is more content. But that’s just one measure, and not the most important one!

While more content might make it easier to rank for your keywords, better content should be your goal. You don’t want to write two extra paragraphs just to be sure you rank. That will likely turn off your readers. Say what you need to say to satisfy your readers and get the sale. Then shut up.

Comments (4) Category: Content Development

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4 Comments

Comment by Claire

Made Friday, 17 of April , 2009 at 3:54 am

It all depends on how many keywords you are optimising on the page. Also if you have excellent external links to your site, this will reduce the amount of content you need to write on the page, although optimising onsite and offsite to the highest potential is recommended. Why put all the effort into offsite SEO, just to keep the text down on the actual page? I think a decent amount is equivalent to a good 500 hundred words, with good density of your keywords.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Friday, 17 of April , 2009 at 5:32 am

@Claire – Thanks for your comments, as I mentioned in the post, striving to enhance the user experience with good quality content and that’s it )

Comment by Thomas

Made Friday, 17 of April , 2009 at 5:49 pm

You should always write content for the customer. If it take 1 paragraph to get your point across….great…if it take 500-1000 words then so be it. I have had much success writing for the consumer and not the spiders.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Friday, 17 of April , 2009 at 10:46 pm

@Thomas – This is so very true, writing for your audience will always help in the long run!