Content: How Much and What Kind for top Keyword Rankings?

[HMCOE]

Aside from well optimized meta tags, alt tags, captions I could use some help figuring out:

1. What's the recommended number of words (original of course) on page?
2. What should be the keyword % ?

We've recently engaged an SEO company to provide an audit, and hired another for comparison and guess what ... 2 different viewpoints. I consider this to be the worst $3 grand we've ever spent!

I look forward to your opinions

[EGOL]

What's the recommended number of words (original of course) on page?

As many as it takes to cover the subject completely and in an interesting manner.

What should be the keyword % ?

As many as it takes to tell the story in natural language.

Anybody who gives you fixed numbers for this is full of BS.

I consider this to be the worst $3 grand we've ever spent!

Nah... I bet you are getting an education worth many times that around.   You will make the money back with better decisions down the road.

Some people sign $30,000 contracts and find out later.

[HMCOE]

I disagree with that.

Great marketers can tell a story in a natural language in 800 words, but others can do it in 30 with a smart punch line and an image and perhaps an embedded video.

For example, in my niche, there are super-high-ranked sites with just a title on a wordpress page, a short video and 20 words of content just in the caption (It happens to be a competitor so I'm trying to figure out what the "better" approach would be considering we have everything else at tip top shape)

[EGOL]

**For example, in my niche, there are super-high-ranked sites with just a title on a wordpress page, a short video and 20 words of content just in the caption (It happens to be a competitor so I'm trying to figure out what the "better" approach would be considering we have everything else at tip top shape) **

I'll bet that if you gave me an identical page and allowed me to edit those 20 words into a more complete story I would rank above them.

Great marketers can tell a story in a natural language in 800 words, but others can do it in 30 with a smart punch line and an image and perhaps an embedded video.

There's a difference between marketing and ranking a website.

[HMCOE]

LOL, and how many words (on average) do You tell your story EGOL?

[EGOL]

Between 500 and 5000 words, with 2 to 10 images, maybe a video, and maybe some data.

A few years ago I had a lot of pages with 30 words.  I improved them to 300 and the rankings went up... then improved them to 3000 with media and rankings went up again.

[HMCOE]

Was it a .edu site?

[EGOL]

No, a .com.