How much content is needed to be competitive and rank well?
-
When considering on page / on site seo what process do you use / take to evaluate how much content is needed to be competitive and rank well?
-
Content needs to be good enough to share, and to be shared in the first place you need to be aggregating that content through social channels relevant to your target audience.
Try - Wow, Why and How
Content to "Wow" and stop them in their tracks - A big enough "why" to stay - A big enough "how" to meet their immediate need.
I agree with much of what has already been said here, however quality is not always engaging! Its nice, but it has to be attractive enough that it wows your visitors in the right way, and this is not easy, but definitely worthwhile.
Another problem with content that answers questions to quickly is bounce rate - if the answer arrives to quickly your audience will leave too quickly. finding content that slows down a visitor and holds their interest is important, but its a fine wire to walk.
-
I think if you are looking entirely just to rank you will have to look at the competition in the space. Be sure to consider quality of the content just as much, if not more, than the quantity of the content.
Additionally, you should be focusing on creating content that serves your target audience. Can you produce enough valuable content to serve the market as an authority? Or, will people find your site and go elsewhere to find what they are looking for?
You should also focus on creating your content for multiple readership paths, i.e. - headings, subheadings, images, and links. Not only does this provide value to your audience, but will help in your rankings as well, contributing again to the quality rather than the necessary quantity.
-
When considering on page / on site seo what process do you use / take to evaluate how much content is needed to be competitive and rank well?
I go out to the SERPs where I want to rank and look at the quality of their content. Then I make a page that is better, a page that blows them out of the water.
The answer is not in the number of pages. Instead it is the quality of the single page for that search term. It usually requires a very substantive page to defeat what is at the top of the SERPs. Lots of easy-to-understand text, photos, tables of data, graphs, mabye a video. You can beat tough competition for difficult keywords with one page like that.
A nice gem is more interesting to people than a ton of crap.
-
This is a very subjective question Mark.
For example, if you work in a highly technical market, it could be assumed that you are going to need more content than normal to explain processes, technical features and research. However, if you are writing a sales page, you would need less content as you want to get your messages across with big call-to-action type messages and supporting content.
I would certainly also look at competition in the market and see what those who rank well, do. This can only really be used as a guide, but it can give you an idea.
Some say that the average page should be no less than 250 characters - others say no more than 750. There is no right or wrong answer, but you do need to focus on making it as comprehensive as possible.
I hope this helps a little.
-Andy
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My site is not ranking at all.
Can anybody check it what is the main culprit behind my website's growth?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anshu14320 -
Content suggestions and topics
Hello, In the list of topics that moz recommends, how many of the topics that are recommend should I cover just 2 or 3 or 10 of them ? is the more the better ? Then let's say one of the topic recommended is tennis should I just add the topic tennis once in my content or do I need to cover this topic multiple times ? meaning write the topic tennis 3 times across my content ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
How recovering the ranking after an hacking
Hello, I'm Alexia and a few months ago (end of March) my site has been hacked: hackers have created more than 30.000 links in Japanese to sell tires. I've successfully removed the hack and after 14 days of struggle even decided to change the domain to Siteground as they've been really keen to help. I still have some problems and I desperately need your tips. In search console, Google is informing about the +30.000 404 errors due to the content created by hackers which is not available anymore. I've been advised to redirect those links to 410 as they might have penalty effects in the SERP I have 50 503 server errors recognised by Google back in April but still there. What should I do to solve them? I still have a lot of traffic from Japan, even if I've removed all the content and ask Googled to disavow spamming backlinks. Do you think I have on page keywords? I don't understand how they can still find me. Those KWs are indexed in analytics, but not effective clicks, as the content is not there anymore. I also asked Google to remove links in search console with the tool removing links but not all of my requests have been accepted. My site disappeared from the organic results even if it hasn't been recognised as hacked in Google (there wasn't any manual actions on the Search Console). What can I do to gain the organic positioning once again? I've just tried to use the “Fetch as Google” option on search console for the entire website. Thank you all and I look forward to your replies. Thanks! Alessia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlessiaCamera0 -
How are these sites ranking!?!
One of our clients is in the insurance industry and over the last 12 months we have seen an increasing number of low quality, newly registered, spammy sites achieving top 5 rankings for major keywords, which in turn is having an adverse effect on the rankings for our client. Does anyone have any idea how the following sites have managed to do this: http://www.multiquotetaxi.co.uk/ - 2nd for taxi insurance http://www.motortradefast.co.uk/ - 1st for motor trade insurance http://www.traders-insurance.com/ - 3rd for motor trade insurance http://www.multiquotefleet.co.uk/ - 1st for fleet insurance We have tried reporting the above sites, tried holding out to see if they get penalised and tried figuring out what they have done ourselves but cannot see how they have managed it. Any ideas at all?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | instinctive0 -
Blog content - what to do, and what to avoid in terms of links, when you're paying for blog content
Hi, I've just been looking at a restaurant site which is paying food writers to put food news and blogs on their website. I checked the backlink profile of the site and the various bloggers in question usually link from their blogs / company websites to the said restaurant to help promote any new blogs that appear on the restaurant site. That got me wondering about whether this might cause problems with Google. I guess they've been putting about one blog live per month for 2 years, from 12/13 bloggers who have been linking to their website. What would you advise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Ranking
Hi All, I have been working on a car insurance site which targets US market. we have been doing all types of links to the site like - good related directory links, related blogpost and reviews. the site is updated daily with a fresh unique content. what more is needed to get it to the first page. we are currently ranking in the range of 40 - 50 on the page 4 or page 5. we have also recently done a redesign with a new cms, done a good press release but not seeing much of changes. please if anyone in the same industry or with some experience can suggest us. we are using all white hat seo & I can understand the amount of competition in this niche. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Markyseo0 -
Pages that were ranking now are not?
Hi Folks Noticed something strange just now pages that were ranking on position 10 on Google for searches such as 'ufc trainer kinect best price' at the start of this week are no longer ranking? Is what has happened to the site the famous google dance or sandbox effect as the site only officially went live on Monday If this is the case what is the recommended course of action to get back ranking competitively again? as I have no idea on what has gone wrong as I has always tried to follow best practice from these forums and the SEOMOZ and YOUMOZ articles My site is www.cheapfindergames.com Many Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ocelot0 -
Content Focus
I have a particular Page which shows primary contact details as well as "additional" contact details for the client. GIven I do not believe I want Google to misinterpret the focus of the page from the primary contact details which of the following three options would be best? Place the "additional" contact details (w/maps) in Javascript, Ajax or similar to suppress them from being crawled. Leave "additional" contact details alone but emphasize the Primary contact details by placing the Primary contact details in Rich Snippets/Microformats. Do nothing and allow Google to Crawl the pages with all contact details Thanks, Phil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AU-SEO0