Word Count & SEO: What Content Marketers Need To Consider - Search Engine Journal

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If you’ve ever written a blog post or online article, you’ve asked the question before: How long should this be?

In other words, what’s the optimal length of web content for SEO purposes?

Depending on the year and the source, you might hear the ideal word count for SEO is anywhere from 250 to more than 2,000 words per piece.

Proponents of lower word counts will argue it’s not the number of words but the quality of the information and the number of backlinks that matter most.

Those who advocate for higher word counts claim that too few words will be scored as “thin” content by search engines and, thus, not rank as highly as more verbose counterparts.

So, what’s the truth? Does word count really matter that much to search engines? And if so, what’s the best length for pieces of content?

According to Google’s John Mueller, the fount from which so much search engine knowledge flows, the number of articles is not included in Google’s quality scores.

So, that’s it, right? Case closed, the shortest article in the history of Search Engine Journal has confirmed that you don’t need to worry about word counts.

Not quite.

Word count is not a direct SEO ranking factor, but it’s still something you need to keep in mind.

In the course of this piece, we’re going to discuss why it matters, how the length of your pieces can both...

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