How long should your web content be? Now this is a good question. Short and sweet or extended and jam packed full of detail—which is it?
Well, let’s start from a reader’s perspective…
While it always depends on the niche you’re covering and how badly the reader really wants to seek and absorb the information you provide through your written content, it’s safe to say that most web readers have a very short span of attention. Allow the average visitor to blink twice and they’re as good as gone.
So from a reader’s perspective, shorter is almost always better as long as you can provide the information they are looking for in that quick time span. Another way to ease the reader’s perception is to keep plenty of space in your writing—especially for longer pieces. This makes staring at a page jammed from corner to corner of the screen much less intimidating.
But what about the search engines—what do they want to see when it comes web content length?
It would seem that everyone has their own proven scientific formula when it comes to how long content should be when it comes to pleasing the search engines. Most of it is pure baloney. Here is what we do know for certain:
Search engines particularly look at the first 1,500 written characters of a web page—this includes meta data like the page title and so on. So once that info is taken into account, the search engines are really only closely scrutinizing the first 200-250 words (approximately) of your written webpage content. For example purposes, if you’ve been reading this blog post from the very beginning, we’re already well beyond the 250 word barrier.
This isn’t to say that search engines just ignore the rest of the page though. If it’s really good and relevant, the chances are good that they’ll take that into account. The same holds true if it’s really bad—or if it uses any spammy optimization techniques that go beyond what is naturally and reader-friendly. Basically, the first 250 words are used to take an average sample and the remaining written content serves a bonus or as a deterrent to the search engines.
So how do you strike the perfect balance?
Trial and error is one good way. Repeated testing always pays off when trying to tweak web content for maximum performance. Another rule of thumb says that about 400-500 words per page keeps visitors happy and provides enough depth for the search engines too.
Sure, if you’ve got a good reason to go long with your content—go for it. But if it’s just going to ramble and repeat after the first 300 words, it’s probably best to keep your website’s written content short and sweet.
