Is It True Low Word Count = High Negative Impact on SEO

[Mike_Marzio]

I just did automatic SEO site audits with several SEO sites. The top audit warned that MANY of my pages have "Low Word Counts" having High Negative Impact on my site. But it's perfectly normal for most of my pages to have few words because 97% of my pages contain Interactive Exercises for foreigners learning English as a Second Language (ESL), all with 1) Video, 2) Pictures, 3) Audio, and 4) the Quiz itself. There's text of course in the quizzes, but not very much, not enough to satisfy the analyses, one of which which says that Google wants to see at least 2 thousand words on each page. This seems completely meaningless in my context, and yet it also seems very important.

Thanks very much if anyone has the time and inclination to reply.

[Mike_Marzio]

I try to improve the text of my question:

Subject: Low Word Count= High Negative Impact on SEO= Seems Ridiculous in MY Context


I just did automatic SEO site audits. The most popular audit tool warned that MANY of my pages have "Low Word Counts". But this is perfectly normal because 97% of my pages contain Interactive Exercises for foreigners learning English as a Second Language, all with 1) Video, 2) Pictures, 3) Audio, and 4) the Quiz itself.

There's text of course, but not very much. Lots of text in an interactive exercise would be a negative dustraction and would not help the learner. So the rule seems completely meaningless when the context is taken into account. Doesn't Google make exceptions for special content like this?

Thanks very much if anyone has the time and inclination to reply.

[not2easy]

Hi Mike and Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

So the rule seems completely meaningless when the context is taken into account. Doesn't Google make exceptions for special content like this?

I am not aware of any official rule concerning word count. I highly doubt that there is some penalty related to having more or less words per page or paragraph or sentence. "Automatic SEO site audits" sounds like some 3rd party tool that offers generic suggestions but nothing to get excited about.

You can see what others think about the topic here: [webmasterworld.com...] ;)

[Jeff_Byer]

I have plenty of pages with "low word count" flags that rank #1 over competitors longer form pages. Google doesn't penalize for word count, they reward the better page for the user according to several factors.

Wordcount is not a ranking factor - but - a better, more complete search result will usually contain more words. This is why word count and SEO audits are correlated.

[Mike_Marzio]

Thanks a lot not2easy and Jeff Byer +!

I guess I have been fooled by a free site audit/analysis tool which I found online. I chose this one because it was the first result in Google search for "seo audit tool".
My results were not too bad. These were the 3 worse items I found:
"664 pages have a low word count: High negative impact" - the subject of this entry.
and
"948 pages with duplicate meta descriptions: High negative impact" - This is probably true, right? It's because I stupidly used a meta description INCLUDE FILE where one description covered the entire site.

[edited by: not2easy at 4:13 pm (utc) on Sep 13, 2019]
[edit reason] see Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Mike_Marzio]

And thanks for the Welcome, not2easy + !

[not2easy]

You're welcome Mike and you're right about the duplicate meta descriptions. Duplicate descriptions is definitely something you want to deal with and correct as soon as possible. The meta description text should accurately reflect the content of the page. It may be used in search results listings to let people know what they will find on the page. Accuracy is important for that to help.