Least Text for Home Page

[Kingalan1]

We are rebranding our web site and intend to create more visual pages with less text on the assumption that no one want to read anymore.

What is the least amount of text that we can include in a home page without damaging out ability to rank on Google?  Google recently increased the permitted amount of text on description tags. Can we shift text to the description tax and place more on ALT tags that are not immediately visible to visitors.

Any thoughts, comments, advice??

I am adding image of the old home page and new home page (text to be written, 3 columns of dummy text) so the change in the amount of text is visible.

Thanks, 
Alan

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[martinxm]

Hi Kingalan1.

I'm going to copy and paste this text from John Müller, Webmaster Trend- Analyst, Google Schweiz:

"There is no minimum extension and there is not a minimum number of articles per day that you have to publish, not even a minimum number of pages on a website. In most cases, quality is better than quantity. Our algorithms explicitly try to find a recommended website that offers content that is high quality, unique and attractive to users. Do not fill your page with low quality content, instead it works to make sure that your website is absolutely the best of its kind."

So, I use this tips:

1. Good keywords analysis

2. Good URL with keywords

3. Good Title (keep in mind the H1, H2.. tags)

4. Good Description

In conclusion, be the best. If after analyzing the competition you think there is room to improve the present, do it. A simple way is to use the skyscrapper technique . It basically consists in detecting what is working for the competition and multiplying it by a thousand .

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Kingalan

I can understand you not wishing to fill your home page with spurious content but you need something to tell the user what the website is all about. It's OK adding a great title but that is only a maximum of 70 characters, depending on the width of the letters. So you really can't convey the full meaning of the page with so few words. (The user rarely sees the title anyway)

Similarly, the description only allows 315 characters but is not used as a ranking factor, so that is not considered as home page content. (And is rarely seen by the user)

The alt text on the images on the page will be read as part of the content so I would recommend one major feature image with a strong key phrase for the alt. (Wordpress calls this the 'focus keyword' but I would simply call it your 'primary keyword' or phrase). Other images can use semantically related keywords and phrases.

My advice is to write around 300+ words of contextually rich content designed to be read by the website visitor whether you believe it will be read or not. This is headed by an H1 which echoes the title using semantically connected keywords. I'd consider this to be the minimum to convey the meaning of the page and be able to use keyword rich content to rank it for the satisfaction of user intent.

If you need more than 300 words then separate into blocks with H2 headers.

The important thing to remember is to make the writing compelling and relevant - people do read homepage content, so rather than thinking how few words you can write, think about 'what can I write that is great for the user and shows Google the theme of the page'

I hope that helps,

Regards

Nigel