Word Count Is NOT a Ranking Factor

Holzr

Holzr

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https://www.seroundtable.com/google-word-count-is-not-a-ranking-factor-27994.html

About a week ago John Mueller also dismissed LSI Keywords

It's great how open Google are about some areas of SEO. I follow a few SEOs on Twitter and it's great to learn bits and pieces like this. Staying current with SEO is hard but luckily there are some great people keeping everyone updated. Some sites I follow:

 
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Depends of the correct amount and right keywords not the actual amount of words. You can have 1000 stupid words or 10 good keywords which will success more.
 
They want us so spend more money or articles ?
so 5$/500 word article will perform the same us 30$/3000 word article?
 
Varies from niches to niches. But still its best to be in depth with the article to dominate the whole niche rather than a handful of keywords.
 
Word count is just another myth. I've seen tons of authority sites with 300 - 500-word articles outranking sites with thousands of words articles.
 
Word count doesn't matter. Quality of content is very important.
 
I believe the length of content only matters if it creates engagement and increases the time-on-page. You can increase time on page with video embeds and infographics with much less word count. In my opinion, time-on-page is the real driver in rankings. Proper headings are so important because no one reads a 5,000-word article, they scan the headings to find the section of interest. If your headings suck they won't find what they are looking for and bounce. If your content is unengaging they will bounce. All of which will cause you to drop in the SERP.

One additional advantage of longer content is the ability to rank for more keywords and long-tail keywords.
 
In my opinion and experience, word count never was a priority factor to rank,
the real factor is QUALITY,
and when you have quality articles, your bounce rate will decrease and google will notice that people are loving your articles then you're article will get higher positions in term of ranking.
And from that you'll understand that there are tons of factors:
  • Quality
  • Speed of the website
  • Design
  • Pictures & Videos
  • ....
The objective is lowering the bounce rate to make Google believe that you're providing something useful to the users that visit your website.
Of course there's more to ranking then this, but in my opinion, that's one of the main factors that everyone should work on.
 
Depends on Niche, it doesn't worth s***

But in other niche, its really important ranking factor.
 
Well, that's the same thing as saying LSI keywords are not a ranking factor.

Basically, it is not used to evaluate your rankings directly but it is used by the other parts that evaluates your ranking.

For instance, a longer content can help Google determine which entities/topic your piece of text is about by having well, more examples, words & context that can suppress possible ambiguities.
But that is not always the case because shorter content, when well-written, can be more precise and more clearly focused than a long piece of content with vague filler words that do not convey much meaning, and that is disorganized.
Yet most of the time, texts are not that well written (because there's other things to keep in mind than that, like CRO etc..), so most of the times longer content still "win".


And it does count indirectly in keyword density, which is a ranking factor. So yeah. Google.
 
maybe he means that word count is not a ranking factor by itself. of course not. why would they rank you better if you stuffed more words

But word count still, In my opinion, increases rankability of article

if you write a 3000 word article, then you will naturally insert more LSI words in it that will create more relevancy than if you created 300 word article

YES for:
more words > more relevancy > more ranking

NOT for:
more words > more ranking




I am getting ranked for more long tails and normal keywords with bigger articles. i dont believe what he is saying.
 
It's not that longer content will automatically rank you better, but you still have to match your competitors on the first page. If the first page is full of 1500 word articles and yours is only 400, then you better have a strong backlink profile or a great clickthrough rate.
 
May not be a recognized ranking factor by Google but writing long quality pieces of content definitely help boost a website´s ranking on SERP.

How?

* Increasing visitor´s average time on site
* More opportunities to place more keywords and links both internally and externally
* Longer articles also gives you the opportunity to use more subheadings, images, videos, infographics, bulleted lists, etc.
* Long articles provide more in-depth information about a topic making it more appealing to the average reader increasing its shareability on social media.

In general, long-form content will help boosts your website credibility and trust and that will eventually lead position you as an authority figure in your niche.

There are a lot of research and studies that just confirms this.

My 2cc on the matter.
 
Word count is not a *DIRECT* ranking factor is what you mean.

However, reader engagement IS a ranking factor, and long form content has been proven to IMPROVE engagement scores. Long content that is properly written and formatted will keep users on the page longer, increase the odds of them clicking something on your site, etc.

Saying that word count is not a ranking factor is a red herring statement. Just like I could say:

- having images in your articles is not a ranking factor
- having the current year in your title is not a ranking factor
- using a table of contents to get rich snippets is not a ranking factor

Good intentions with this post but you are ill informed.
 
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