Keywords and content query

[aplnzjune18]

Hi we are in the process of redesigning a web site and I’m looking to ensure each of the pages are correctly optimized. I’m concerned that some of the pages do not allow for text or content . From an optimization perspective is there a general rule around the amount of text a page should have and the amount/ration of keywords they should contain? Any advice would be much appreciated.

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[brettmandoes]

Hello, I think your question can be broken down like this:
1. Is it a problem if I can't add text/content?
2. Is there a certain word count I should aim for?
3. Is there a specific number of keywords on page I should aim for?

So I'll try to answer this as best I can and if you have more questions, just fire back.

1. This could be a problem if the content on page is something you'll need to rank well. It seems counterintuitive to many because "content is king" has been parroted as SEO wisdom for years, but there are times when content is NOT the primary driver of rankings, and the secret is in the intent of the searcher. Think about it like this, if you're searching "best ac repair service near me", you probably just want a short list of the best HVAC companies near you. A 3,000 word article is less helpful here than a short list of the best, and indeed when I run this very search the top 5 results are all lists. The number one result has less than 600 words, but all of them have user generated content in the form of reviews. Another example where content may not matter: "buy golf balls". You're going to get a lot of ecommerce listing style pages that are short on content but allow people to easily buy golf balls. I know this because I just ran this search yesterday to help another Mozzer. But if your page is meant to be informative, you may need the ability to modify, add, or remove content, so this could be a problem. Try to match the searcher's intent with the page and that will help you determine if this is truly an issue.

2. As we just demonstrated in example one, no specific word count is recommended for all queries. However, there was a study performed in September 2016 by Backlinko that analyzed about a million queries and one of their findings was this:

In fact, the average word count of a Google first page result is 1,890 words

This would indicate that longer content is better, but as I discovered early in my career - if you write content just to have the length it will flop. We tried it at scale and wrote the content just to have the length for about 120 websites. It performed the exact same as the content we had before it, which was about 500 words. So don't do that.

3. This one is short and easy. The answer is no. The metric you're referring to is Keyword Density, and it was short lived and shut down back when Matt Cutts was still at Google. The myth lives on but it's a garbage metric that doesn't correlate to success. Avoid using or even referencing this.

Hope that helps, let me know if you need more info.

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[aplnzjune18]

Great answers guys thanks for getting back to me