Number of Words per Page

killua · 10-20-2004, 03:38 AM

In regards with SEO especially Google, what do you think is the best number of words in a page? how about in an index page? Is my site's index page number of words suitable? (see my sig)

I read an article (many of them) that says very words per page do not rank high? Is this true or obsolete?

Johan007 · 10-20-2004, 05:02 AM

Some one ales may have the exact character limit but your not even close to reaching a fraction of it. It’s a clean well optimised page... however as a designer I don’t like the use of UPPERCASE text because it looks less profetional and this includes the 4 bullet points/arrows. ... For the main text consider italic or bold instead of the uppercase and this will help SEO a little bit as well looking more professional if you use italic.

Ajeet · 10-20-2004, 08:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johan007

Some one ales may have the exact character limit but your not even close to reaching a fraction of it.

I have been planning a site which would have 4000 odd words per page. Am I going to be shooting myself in the foot?
Thanks
Ajeet

awall19 · 10-20-2004, 10:42 AM

I think how you structure the page and how focused it is on a topic will determine how well it ranks.

a large percentage of searches are unique (~50%)

so longer pages will show up well for lots of random unique queries. where shorter pages win out is that instead of having a single 4000 word page you can have 10 400 word pages each focused on more targeted topics... each page has its own chance to rank well.

Papadoc · 10-20-2004, 12:51 PM

Each site as well as the target audience will vary what you should do, but there are some constants as well.

If your text has multiple topics, you will benefit (below) from splitting it up by topic as far as the SE is concerned. The only thing you have to watch for is that the reader doesnt' get annoyed at having to click time after time. Also, if you do this, you should include some kind of hierachy menu or link to the topic index page so that if a reader comes in on page 3, they can then navigate to the top of the topic.

Breaking your topic up into subtopics on separate pages lets you get more specific with regard to title and description and will also generally increase your keyword density on a given page. I do recommend however though that from your topic index page, you link to all pages on that topic. If the SE has to go through link after link after link, you lose relevance and your page PR will continue to fall.

If you choose to keep it all on one page, you do need to break it up a lot and use subtopic titles under the H2 tag. People will scan pages and try to find areas of interest and they will use these titles to generate interest.

What many forget, is that regardless of which way you go, you need to keep in mind whitespace and short paragraphs. Look at your newspaper for examples. People get tired of reading paragraphs where they have to move their eyes from side to side or where there are more than several sentences per paragraph.

Many sites that are designed by people under age 40 are also designed only for that crowd, even if they also want to target an older audience. Believe it or not, just because you can read your text doesn't mean that others can.

Design elements should always include high contrast and a reasonable font of decent size. I just saw a page that had every bit of all the worst things that you can do on it, using 8pt Arial light blue font on a darker blue background and running from border to border and including about 10 sentences per paragraph. At 45, I still have pretty good eyes compared to my contemporaries, but I found it work to get through it.

Other sites try to adopt the Y2K techie look of using 8pt silver type on an off-white background. If you do it, you stand good chances that you will alienate some of us over-the-hillers.