Homepage SEO: Does Text Content Help Traffic?

[Diderino]

Hi Mozzers!

My employers homepage (www.swarovski.com) is - amongst other problems we're about to fix - very thin (not to say empty!) in text content. If we were to put relevant text on the next version of the page, would that be beneficial in terms of traffic to that page?

Thanks and cheers,

Chris

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Chris,

It's way to hard say that adding text to your homepage would directly increase traffic. It probably will help to make it easier for Google to know what your page is all about. As it's still pretty hard for Google to decide on what's in an image. For example I got a picture of Miranda Kerr and roses on the homepage. The text in that picture could easily been provided as text.

Cheers.

[zeroabove]

As long as it's relevant, targeted and with the user in mind (ie, non-spammy and stuffing) then absolutely. Remember that search engines want to deliver high quality results to users, so the more likely it is your site is going to deliver that the higher you'll get.

Try to bear in mind placement of the text to (beyond folds etc) and along with the whole UX of it.

Alex

[TheeDigital]

Text content would be great but it's not an end-all be-all solution.

It might be worth your time to take a look at browseo.net. It's a cool little tool and gives you an idea of how Google sees your website.

[johnny122]

Quick fact : an average first result in Google = 2 400 words.

http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/20/the-science-behind-long-copy-how-more-content-increases-rankings-and-conversions/

It you can do a great relevant text, just do it :).

[JaneCopland]

Hi Christoph,

It's certainly true that there's a lot of room for improvement, even given the page you're working with right now. As Martijn notes, this image includes text that could be incorporated as HTML - whether you use image replacement, HTML 5, etc., a basic like this means that Google understands nothing about what the image is about / says.

In general, creating a page with more "text" on it (or, more specifically, a page set up in a way that makes it easier for Google to understand all of its content) is beneficial. It may not make a marked, noticeable difference to traffic straight away, but the site / page has the likelihood to rank for more terms if you include all its terms as readable text.