Page Length Really Does Matter

It's a dilemma that many web site owners face. They don't want to have too little words, but they don't want to have too many words, either. It's a delicate balance that every web site owner has to know in order to have a site that is search engine optimized and visitor friendly.

What is a good length for pages?

Ideally, each page should have at least 700 words, but no more than 1500 words. Anything less than 700 words and search engine spiders might just skip over your site entirely; anything more than 1500 and spiders won't take the time to search through the content for keywords.

When I write the content, what should I strive to do?

You should strive to write content that is entertaining and easy to read. Don't drone on and on just to meet the 700 word requirement. Find things to talk about that are relevant to your site and come up with ways to say them in a concise manner. Remember that search engine bots aren't the only thing to come to your site — people are also coming to your site and they will want to read content that makes them want to visit again. Aim to please them first, then the search engine bots.

How do I please search engine bots?

Pleasing search engine bots is as simple as having 700+ words of content and some keywords sprinkled into your content. Keywords are words that the search engine bots immediately spot and use to figure out how to rank your site. In a document of 700 words, you'll want to have at least 7 keywords, but preferably around 21, throughout your content. When using keywords, make sure to sprinkle them naturally throughout the document so that you do not distract your reader from what the content is about.

Why should I have pages with content between 700 and 1500 words?

The reasons for this are simple. Having pages with content of 700-1500 words will please visitors and search engine spiders. Pleasing both will help your site attract more traffic and become successful.

Visitors who come to your site want to see useful content. If your content is short, chances are, it's not very useful to visitors. Good content is content that is worthwhile to read and tells the visitor something they don't already know. It must be packed with information and details. Few can accomplish this in less than 700 words, which is why it is often necessary to use that many words. However, it is also important not to be too wordy with your content. People want to be able to quickly get the content they need. They don't want to read through hundreds of words of fluff in order to get what they came for. So be concise and try to make sure your content doesn't go over 1500 words.

Spiders who come to your site want to have a good amount of content to "chew" on. That is, they want to have enough content to report back to the search engine database. Less than 700 words really isn't enough content for a spider to bring back to a search engine database, so spiders tend to ignore pages with under 700 words.

Spiders, much like human visitors, also don't like pages with excessive amounts of words. Pages with 1500 words are usually a big turnoff to spiders, and even if a spider does visit the page, chances are they won't report the contents of the page back to the search engine database for which they work. That is why you must strive to be concise not just for human visitors, but for the robot(spider) visitors as well.

If you are able to limit your pages to between 700 and 1500 words, you will do well with human visitors and search engine spiders. That's the goal of every web site owner and should be your goal as well.

Writing content between 700-1500 words is easy as long as you come up with good content to write about and try to be as concise as possible. It's just that easy!