Word Count for SEO: Does It Affect Your Search Rankings?

If you are working on search engine optimization, you have a lot of things to do, including optimizing content. You must ensure that your content is readable for both humans and search engine bots.

But, have you ever wondered how many words count for SEO? Some marketers said that an article must be long to rank better on search results. Some marketers also define the ideal word count for SEO.  Then, does word count matter for SEO? To find the answer, read this guide until the end!

Why Should You Care for Word Count for SEO?

In general, word count for SEO refers to the amount of words you write in a certain SEO article. You can measure it with a word counter planted on your device or even using an online tool. But, why does word count matter? In fact, making sure your writing is lengthy enough aids Google in comprehending it.

Longer texts provide Google with more cues about what to index them for. The likelihood that your focus keyphrase will appear more frequently increases with text length. Yet, it does not mean that you can stuff keywords as you can. To make your article more SEO-friendly, you must incorporate keywords naturally. 

Furthermore, the keyphrase or related terms can be mentioned in more headings, links, and graphics in a longer post. In other words, having more content allows you to give users more insightful and detailed stuff.

Additionally, if your text is lengthier, it will rank higher for more long-tail variations of the keyword for which it was optimized. This is because a longer text gives you more chances to cover a wider range of subjects.

How Many Minimum Word Counts for SEO?

Now that you already know the reason why you should care about word count for SEO, you might wonder about the minimum range of the word counts. Actually, many marketers are defining the ideal length of an article.

For years, marketers have created a standard of 750 words and now develop to 1,500-2,000 words minimum.

This is supported by the fact that articles with 1,000–2,000 words were the best for getting social media shares, and those with 3,000 words or more received the most backlinks.

However, there was no context provided for the SEO article's minimum words. There is also a study of the correlation between word counts and backlinks. The results showed a considerable negative connection for articles longer than 1,000 words.

Is Word Count for SEO a Ranking Factor?

Google has said explicitly that word count is unrelated to search engine rankings. This is emphasized by Google’s John Mueller’s statement: “Word count is not a ranking factor. Save yourself the trouble.”

This is logical since if word count for SEO became one of the ranking factors, there would be much fluff content created for rankings and not for valuable information.

Mueller also added that what webmasters should focus on is the quality of the content because it is the Google ranking factor. Yet, please note that longer passages do not always have quality content and vice versa.

Then, does word count for SEO content still matter? The answer is yes. This is because your content is shallow or contains a lower word count, it is more likely to be viewed as thin content by Google.

Every search engine aims to offer users the best results for their internet queries. Therefore, thin content is less likely to meet the needs of the general audience and provide a comprehensive solution.

Thus, you should create longer content not for the rankings, but for providing high-quality and in-depth information for users. 

How to Produce Top-Notch Content

It is not a sin to create a longer article as long as you write it for quality. In addition, you must optimize the headings, keywords, images, and other elements to make your content not only excellent in information but also structure. Hence, your content will be more likely to appear in the search results.  

Below are some best practices you can adhere to produce high-quality content:

1. See How Your Competitor Makes Content

To determine what content you should create, you can review the competitors’, especially those with higher ranking on search results. During this process, you will probably come across opportunities such as producing an article that is more accurate, concise, or easy to understand.

2. Compose Comprehensible and Original Texts

Creating for your audience is the most crucial aspect of creating lengthy posts, or any kind of post for that matter. This means that you must stay on track and not put irrelevant information to be longer. Your writing must flow logically from start to finish.

This is why creating an SEO content outline is beneficial to work on articles. After that, you can write according to the outline and review the writing. In this process, you might find unimportant sentences that make your piece redundant; thus, you can delete them for more concise results. 

Tips: Try not to utilize the passive voice too often. Also, you can build connections between your paragraphs to make the material easier to read using transition words. 

Not only comprehensible, but you must ensure that your content is unique and original. Regarding this, you can find out what your audience looks for online by conducting some keyword research. In addition, researching beforehand can provide you with a wealth of ideas for writing topics and unique writing strategies. 

3. Incorporate Long-Tail Keywords

Next, you can think about using long-tail keywords as the subjects of your content if you want it to rank better. Long-tail keywords typically draw higher-converting quality traffic and are relevantly easier to rank for.

4. Structure Content with Headings

Within a text, headings have two functions: showing content hierarchy and aiding in scanning the content. Headings can help you observe that a topic perhaps has several subheadings that provide further details about it. 

Moreover, a heading helps readers understand what to expect from the next section of your article.

5. Understand the Search Intent

Last but not least, you must understand the search intent before creating the content. This is because there is a discernible search intent for each term. In general, search intent is the motivation lying before every query users put on the search bar to look for something. 

Search intent shows the top queries that people have about it, the issues they are attempting to resolve with it, and related prospects that they're looking for.

The tactic to finding search intent is quite easy where you can type on a search query in Chrome Incognito and learn what is on the first page. 

Those are the A to Z about word count for SEO you can learn. In conclusion, even though an SEO article's minimum words are not a search ranking factor, you must ensure that your content is not thin but not stuffed with too much information and keywords. 

If you need a hand in creating excellent SEO content, consider SEO Writing by cmlabs. We can help you produce thorough content adhering to the SEO best practices and matching your niche. Set up a meeting to discuss your SEO needs in more detail.