Word Count Doesn’t Matter

It’s fairly widely known that word count is not part of Google’s algorithm – and that’s 100% fact. So no matter how many clients come to you and say, “I’ve heard that every blog needs to be at least 1,857 words long” (or whatever the number is that week), they are wrong. 

However, SEO is a game of displacement, and whilst I’m not saying that “longer will rank better,” what I am saying is that if you rock up with 300 words, and everyone else on page 1 has over 2,000 words, you have in reality brought a knife to a gunfight (if you get the metaphor). 

So what is it that actually makes content rank? 

Google is fairly explicit when it comes to this because the algo tries to find quantifiable signals within each page to make its comparisons easy and fair. So what are these signals? 

1️⃣   Relevance to user intent – based on the user’s keyword (and the search intent of that keyword), how will your content educate, inform or lead the user to a transaction? 

2️⃣   Quality earned from external sources (i.e. links) – in Google’s eyes, quality content should generate links (and therefore credibility) from external sources. Of course, the authority of the sites bringing the links is also taken into account here.

3️⃣   Usability to the User – what is the experience of the user on this page? Do most visitors bounce, or is there a clear pathway to other content, products, services or a transaction/inquiry? When users who read your content, then engage with you more, this helps your SEO. 

4️⃣   Context to the User – this is based on the user data, their demographic profile, their past search history, etc… As Google puts it, their “systems are designed to match your interests, but they are not designed to infer sensitive characteristics like your race, religion or political party.” This means it needs to be relevant to your/your clients’ demographic, not just algorithm signals. 

Then you need to consider the different structures of content to allow exposure to the different SERP Features, i.e: 

• Featured Snippets → 40-60 word explanations
• People Also Ask → Direct, concise answers
• Knowledge Panels → Key facts and structured data
• Local Pack → NAP and service details 

Typically, content that thoroughly covers all of the above for a particular subject matter will naturally be longer than content that doesn’t – but that doesn’t mean you need to be watching your word counter. Sometimes this will be 500 words. Other times it may be 5,000. The topic, user intent, and SERP opportunities need to guide you. 

Simply put – You need to stop measuring words and start measuring completeness.