We often get the question: How many words do I need on my website to rank at the top of Google?
First, word count is only one of MANY ranking factors and it is NOT one of the big ones, but it still is something to consider.
Here is what we find works best:
For Local City Websites its best to have 250 to 700 words on your web page.
For National or International Websites you need 600 to 2000 words on your web page.
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/revisiting-word-count/316335/#close
What is more important than Word Count?
Unique Quality Content!
But please don’t take my word for it. Do some quick and easy research for yourself.
In this video I dispel the myths. I show you exactly how to research your service in your city and determine what really works when it comes to Word Count.
Google’s Stance: https://seocopywriting.com/whats-the-best-word-count-for-seo-copywriting/
Not a Ranking Factor: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-word-count-is-not-a-ranking-factor-27994.html
Who is right?
Let’s do our own test
“Roofing in Dallas Texas”
Maps and Organic using chrome extension: Word Counter
Video Transcript
Hi, my name is Joe Burnich with bigwestmarketing.com we empower small businesses, small local businesses to take it to the next level. And we do that using internet marketing. So I’m trying to simplify all this stuff for you. In this short video, what I’m going to talk about is how many words you need to rank your website on Google for local SEO. Local search engine optimization. Ranking in a local service area, specifically primarily in the map section. How many words do you really need on your page? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Let’s get started right now.
Okay, so you noticed in the intro there I referred to how many words on your page for local SEO, not just SEO in general. SEO in general refers to national, or international rankings. Okay? If you’re a local business, which if you’re watching this, you need to be a local business, this applies to you, then we’re talking about local SEO. So what I want to do real quick, is I want to do a little search on Google. How many words on page for local SEO? Let’s search this and see what Google says. Okay, so we’ve got 600 to 700 words is what they’re saying. No less than 300 words. This is from 2018 and there’s nothing about local SEO here. Let’s go down to the next one. Okay, this one, not local here, not local here. This one says 1,890 words. This one was not giving a specific word count there.
I saw one article from Search Engine Journal, which is a reputable website. They’re saying, go with 2000 words, but nothing about local SEO. This is written for content marketers. So as you’re searching around for SEO advice, please always listen to the advice that comes from local SEO, okay? Not just SEO in general. Content Marketing is a big news website, big international news website, or national website that’s trying to get news out to people like a big blog or something like that. It’s not a local business, so don’t take the advice. It’s a different game, different set of rules when you’re ranking a local business versus a international, or national business. Okay?
Basically what I’m trying to show you here, there’s no information that I can find specifically on local SEO and word count per page. Okay. And then what I want to do is ask the question, what does Google really say? What does Google, the people that that make the rules, what do they actually say? So there’s this website here where they actually quote Google and John Muller from Google said in August 2019 that word count is not a ranking factor, and there’s no magical word fairy who reviews your word count, positions your page accordingly. Okay? In fact, Google has also said that word count does not indicate quality content. So quality content, let’s pay attention to that word. What is quality content?
Quality content means you’re putting something on a page that people actually like to read. Okay? So for years I’ve been saying, put unique content. Don’t copy and paste from somebody else and then change the words a little bit and think that you’re done. That’s bad. That’s bad for local SEO. It’s bad for any SEO. You want unique content. You want to either write it yourself or hire a writing service. Whenever we do web design for somebody, we hire out writers to write that content. We don’t expect you to start with a blank canvas and we definitely don’t regurgitate content over and over. It’s all 100% unique, very, very important for Google rankings.
But let’s get back to the idea of word count. Since we’re not finding any good information for local SEO on Google, what I like to do, is do my own research. And this is what you should do as well. Do this in your local area. So let’s go back to google.com and I want something very competitive. I want a very competitive city. I want a very competitive service. So we work with a lot of service-based businesses and I know that roofing is one of the most cutthroat, competitive industries out there, especially when it comes to Google. And I know Dallas, one of the biggest cities in the United States is one of the most competitive when it comes to Google rankings.
So let’s do that. Let’s do roofers in Dallas, Texas. And then let’s look. Let’s test and see many words that the top three right here, this is SEO. We’re talking about SEO. We’re not talking about ads up here, we’re talking about SEO. This is where the majority of clicks come from. This is where the majority of roofers get their business in Dallas. These guys right now, these three guys, I guarantee are blowing it up. I bet they get calls all day, every day. But let’s look at their websites and see how many words they have. Okay, let’s look at a Roofing Giant first. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to highlight all the words and I got this little plugin card called Word Counter, that’s for a Chrome. If you know how to add a Chrome extension to a search for Word Counter, and you can replicate this.
So I highlight all the words and I right click, and then I click on count these words. 755 words for the top ranking roofer in Dallas, okay? Remember that, 755 I’ve got notes here too. Let’s go to the next one. Bold Roofing. Let’s highlight all his words. Let’s get word count here. 513 words, not a thousand, not 2000. Okay? You’re going to read all this stuff on the internet you need thousands of words on your website. This is the second place in Dallas. Let’s look at this one here. Word count, 881. Now also keep in mind it’s counting all of these extra little menu words, titles, all this extra little stuff. But what Google is really looking at is the content, like this actual stuff here. So you still got to take a hundred, 150 words off there.
So we’re looking at about number one, ranking 700 words. Number two, raking 400 words. Number three, ranking 700 words. So what does that tell you? It tells you that you don’t need thousands of words on your website to rank number one. And we can even go past, let’s get past all these big… HomeAdvisor, Angie’s List, Yelp, BBB. Let’s go down to Bert Roofing here. Okay, so Bert is also ranking organically and he’s the one that had about 700 words. Let’s go down even farther to a Roofing Giant. We got them. Let’s go to this guy, Lon Smith. He’s number one in the organics. Let’s see how many words he has. Okay, 1128, so he does have over a thousand, this guy does.
But let’s go down even farther. CLC Roofing, see how many words CLC has. Ranking at the bottom of the first page in the super competitive… See, back down to 864, you take a hundred of that to take out all the menus and this and that. So you’re looking at about 700 maybe 750 as far as a total words. So even organic and maps SEO ranking in one of the most competitive areas, in one of the most competitive service markets you’re still looking at under a thousand. We had one person that over a thousand there. I had one client that was like, “I want 600 pages on my website and I want 2000 words on each page, because that’s what my competitors doing and I want to beat him.”
Well, that competitor was ranked number six organically, and the guy that was number one only had 500 words. And so we’ve got lots of clients that are ranking number one, or in the top three with 250 to 350 words. So that’s our guideline. We have a writer that does 250 to 350. And then we got all the extra peripheral words on there. So now we’re looking to right around 450. The clients will a lot of times want to add some stuff to that. So then it goes above 500, so now we’re in the 500 to 700 word range for our clients. And we’ve got lots of clients that are ranking at the top of Google.
So that should answer your question. So we have writers go 250 to 350 words and then we add extra stuff of our own, and of yours, if you’re our client. And then that’s how we decide how many words that we’re going to put on a page before we rank it. So I hope that helps. Why don’t you go to your city, your service and do what I did. See how many words are actually on the top three ranking, mass rankings, and then the top three ranking websites down in organic as well. That way you’ll know what it takes in your area with your service to rank number one, when it comes to word count. Now, there’s a caveat. Word count is one of many, many search engine ranking factors, one of many SEO factors. One of many. And it’s definitely not one of the top.
So, the reason I created this video is because we get this question a lot from clients. “How many words do I need to rank?” Or they’ll want to argue with us and tell us how many words we need to put on their website in order to rank, and it all comes down to proof. The proof is in the research, which is what I just showed you. I want you to do this for yourself. Prove it to yourself. Answer this question for yourself. Don’t just take my word for it, or from some article that you read on the internet that’s been regurgitated and doesn’t even apply to local SEO. All right? I’m going to stop ranting and raving and rambling.
My name is Joe Burnich with bigwestmarketing.com. If you’d like us to do an analysis for you, do a consultation for you, we’ll give you a free 30 minute consultation. Click on the link below or just go to bigwestmarketing.com, book the call and we will take care of you. Once again, Joe Burnich, bigwestmarketing.com, talk to you soon.
