One of the questions I’ve been asked countless times over the years is how many words a webpage should contain to achieve good rankings in Google. Depending on which SEO expert you speak to, the answer might be 300, 500, 1,000 or even 2,000 words, with some suggesting that longer articles will almost automatically outperform shorter ones. In fact, there are plenty of SEO tools that will analyse the pages currently ranking for a particular keyword and recommend a target word count based on the average length of your competitors’ content. However, there’s a fairly fundamental problem with this approach, and that’s the fact that Google has repeatedly stated that word count isn’t a ranking factor.
Having worked in SEO for the best part of two decades, I’ve seen quite a few supposed rules about content length come and go. At one point, it seemed that every webpage needed at least 300 words to be considered properly optimised, while more recently there’s been an increasing emphasis on producing enormous articles covering every conceivable aspect of a subject. Personally, I think both approaches rather miss the point, because the amount of content a webpage needs should depend entirely on what that page is trying to achieve.
What Does Google Actually Say?
Google has been remarkably consistent about this over the years. In February 2021, Google’s John Mueller explained that the number of words on a page isn’t a quality factor or a ranking factor, and that simply adding more text doesn’t automatically make a page better. This isn’t particularly surprising when you think about it, because there would be very little benefit to Google’s users if the search engine simply rewarded whichever website could produce the longest article.
Imagine searching Google for the opening hours of your local supermarket. You probably want a straightforward answer telling you when the shop opens and closes, rather than a 2,000-word article explaining the history of supermarkets, the development of retail opening hours and why people occasionally need to buy milk on a Sunday.
Conversely, if you’re researching something complicated, such as how to install solar panels or set up an ecommerce website, you’ll probably appreciate a much more detailed explanation. The information required to answer those questions adequately simply won’t fit into a couple of hundred words.
The important thing is providing enough information to satisfy what somebody is actually looking for, rather than attempting to reach an arbitrary number of words.
Why Do SEO Experts Recommend Longer Content?
One of the main reasons is that several studies have identified a correlation between longer content and higher search engine rankings. For example, a Backlinko study published in 2020, which examined 11.8 million Google search results, found that the average first-page result contained approximately 1,447 words.
At first glance, that might suggest aiming for around 1,500 words is a sensible SEO strategy. However, the same research found no direct relationship between word count and ranking position among pages appearing in the top ten results.
This is a fairly important distinction, because correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation. Longer articles might perform well because they provide more comprehensive information, attract more backlinks or cover subjects in greater depth. That doesn’t mean their length is the reason Google ranks them highly.
There’s also the possibility that websites producing longer articles tend to invest more effort in content creation and SEO generally, meaning their rankings could be influenced by numerous other factors.
Simply looking at successful websites, counting their words and assuming that copying their article lengths will produce similar results seems like a rather questionable approach to me.
What About Thin Content?
This is where things can become slightly confusing, because Google has also spent years warning website owners about the problems associated with thin content.
The term generally refers to pages offering little or no meaningful value to visitors, particularly when they’re created primarily to manipulate search rankings. For example, a website might generate hundreds of virtually identical pages targeting different towns, with little more than the location name changed on each page.
However, thin content doesn’t necessarily mean short content. A webpage containing just 150 words could be extremely useful if those words answer the visitor’s question accurately and completely, while a 3,000-word article could provide virtually no value if it’s full of irrelevant information and repetition.
Similarly, a product page containing a photograph, price, specifications and a short description might provide everything a potential customer needs to make a purchase. Adding another 1,000 words simply to satisfy an SEO recommendation could actually make the page less useful, particularly if visitors have to scroll through paragraphs of unnecessary text to find the information they’re looking for.
Should You Look at Your Competitors?
Although I don’t think there’s much value in blindly copying your competitors’ word counts, I do think examining the pages already ranking for your target keywords can be useful.
If the top-ranking results are all detailed articles explaining a subject in considerable depth, that might suggest people searching for that particular phrase are looking for comprehensive information. Conversely, if Google primarily displays product pages, short explanations or comparison tables, writing an enormous article might not be the most appropriate approach.
However, I’d be more interested in understanding what information those pages provide than how many words they contain. Are there important questions they’re answering? Do they include useful examples, technical details or illustrations? Is there anything they’ve overlooked that you could explain more effectively?
These are the sorts of considerations that can help improve your content, rather than simply deciding that your article needs another 500 words because your competitor has written more than you.
Don’t Write for the Sake of Writing
Another problem with setting arbitrary word counts is that it encourages people to add unnecessary content, something I think is particularly common with SEO-focused blog posts.
We’ve probably all encountered articles where the answer to a relatively straightforward question is buried halfway down the page, preceded by several paragraphs explaining things that nobody actually asked about. While I can understand the temptation to produce longer content in the hope of improving search rankings, I’m not convinced that frustrating your visitors is a particularly sensible strategy.
Personally, I’d much rather read a 500-word article that explains something clearly than spend ten minutes working through 2,000 words of largely irrelevant information to reach exactly the same conclusion.
Ultimately, I’d suggest writing enough content to explain your subject properly, making sure it answers the questions your audience is likely to have, and then stopping when there’s nothing useful left to say.
If that takes 300 words, fine. If it takes 3,000, that’s fine too – just don’t add another 500 because somebody told you Google likes long articles.