Optimum Word Count

Optimum Word Count Per Page

[mosley700]

Wondering if there is a consensus on the optimum word count per page? I've been noticing in my experience that it seems to be a the-more-the-better sort of deal. An index page with 250 words is showing up in the serps below a directory page with 400 words even though the 400 word page mentions the search phrase fewer times.
Any imput appreciated.

[deejay]

I tend to agree, Mosely700.

Google is pretty open about liking content and from my experience meatier pages tend to do a bit better.

The keyword density issue is one of my 'things'.. I have a theory that we've seen a drop in the ideal density level over the last year as Google moves towards giving preference to more natural language... ie, the sort of density you'd find in an article with paragraphs of text, rather than the short choppy dense text of other pages.

<add> duh.. I'm still too busy laughing at that OH article to make much sense. should have said I agree that G prefers more text. As to an ideal size, I'm not sure that there is one, bearing in mind the 100k indexing limit </add>

[Brian]

I have some big pages - 7,000 words plus - and they do pretty well (top 10 etc). But there is an alternative case for subsidiary pages in breaking up such long slugs into a string of shorter pages interlinked and all pointing towards the front. That way you get a big bunch of anchor texted links, which Google unquestionably loves. I can't make up my mind really. One argument for the big page is that people may use search strings that pick up from all over the place, whereas with shorter pages searching is more constrained.

I tell you one thing I'm convinced of, tho. Google is just like the others in weighting massively towards the first word on the page, first on the line, proximity etc. IMO, you just can't do better than have that page which opens: KEYWORD in bold caps.

[mosley700]

Thanks for your replies. I'm thinking of aiming for 700 words per page. 700 should be enough to beat out the competition when it comes to word-count, and if I have considerably more to say, I can add it to another page and target a whole new set of keywords.