Word count

 

My web page must contain 600 words.

My blog posts have to be at least 1000 words in length.

Enough already.

Why are you so hung up about word count?

If you look at websites that rank well in the search results, you’ll soon see there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to word count and rankings.

Some sites are very content rich; others have only a couple of hundred words per page.

Why the disparity?

Because quality will always outperform quantity.

Search has changed a lot over the years. Today, Google is more about natural conversations, which is underpinned by semantic search. Now, Google looks at the words you use and their logic to improve search accuracy by understanding a searcher’s intent through contextual meaning.

One of the benefits of this new breed of search is that it helps Google seek out and disqualify the low-quality content associated with keyword stuffing and article spinning.

The main thing you should be concerned about is the quality of what you are writing.

Is it relevant to your audience?

Does it answer the questions they have?

Does it give them takeaways that they can implement straight away?

ten in a natural and engaging style?

Is the language you are using easy to understand?

Have you concentrated on a single keyword, or have you enriched your content with synonyms and other related terms?

As soon as you allow yourself to get hung up on word count your writing loses its power.

You should use as many words as you need to get your message across.

If that means you end up writing blog posts that are only 300 words long, so be it.

A different post on another subject may well run up to 700 words plus. Variety in the length and type of post you publish will all add to the richness of the content you are publishing.

No one wants to be a one trick pony so it’s good to mix things up now and again.

Long posts, short posts, videos and infographics all add extra depth to your content marketing and should be encouraged.

So next time someone tells you your blogs are too short, or too long, ignore them. You know what your audience wants, so make sure you give it to them.