Word Count of pages

I pulled this from another posting:



How valid is this from a Google viewpoint? For example, say I have a page dedicated to the topic Garage Sale Tips which has a word count of 2000. Is it better to split this page over 4 smaller pages, each accounting for ~500 words?

I've read that Google likes pages with a word count hovering around 500-600 and that Yahoo prefers pages at 1000 words. Sounds weird to me but I did read this just recently - I'll have to find the url.

Thanks Guys

I don't see the point of splitting the page up into 4 pages. If the overall theme of the text is Garage Sale Tips then it makes sense to place all the content into one page. However if the Garage Sale tips are divided up into 4 seperate seactions then I would split it up into 4 pages. Having it split up into 4 pages gives you the luxury of 4 different page titles. You could have 4 tighly themed pages rather than one page with a bunch of themes.

I like to think about page content more in the context of themes anymore because I know that this is the way that the search engines are eventually going to look at pages when they become more clever.

Hope this makes sense.

Hi Gardenstew,

It does make sense.

But this is assuming users in the future will begin to search more specifically, ie "Garage Sale Tips" vs "Garage Sales Tips for dealing with early birds".

And given what keyword tools such as overture and wordtracker tell us, it seems surfers still like to use more generic phrases.

I would recommend breaking up the page for several reasons ...

Smaller pages will load quicker

An additional four (maybe 5 if you use an overview) pages with PR may even help your ranking.

Tighter focus on keywords for each page also helps search engines.

I rarely read "paragraphs" with more that 2 sentences ... do you know anyone who actually finished that page.

I think break your contents/ site into as manyLOGICAL RELATED themes / links as possible.

Whether it has many pages or not, it doesnt really matter. as long as the amount of contents or quality are still there.

Again, but that will mean that you are forcing the user to click one more time onto another page, you may run a risk of losing the interest of visitor. He may shut down the window completely.



again, break your contents/ site into as many LOGICAL RELATED themes / links as possible...

I had a site with real estate listings and they were brokern in to three categories...each category was one page with how ever many listings were in that category....sometimes as many as 100. I changed the format to only allow 5 listings per page and then wound up with about 20 pages per section....this grew my site 10 fold...and provided more pages to fill with keyword rich text links pointing to other pages in my site.....take ozzu for example...wouldn't it be easier to read a thread that was one long page vs. breaking it up into x amount of post per page...yes but it would make the site smaller and the pages topic might be diluted due to all the text being lumped together...I vote for splitting the page.

As for google liking pages with 500-600 words....I think that is being mis-interpreted....google likes (requires) pages that are under 100k...text and code included....it really likes pages that are around 10k...if you use impropper coding techniques then you could use up all 10k just with code and then you text is more labor intensive for the bots to find.

Here's some good resources on the subject:
http://101topranking.com/html_coding.htm

I'm looking for the article that discusses the page size issues and results....hang on

yeah!..so I get to correct myself......

here's the article on what size page ranks the best:
http://www.cmssatellite.com/What.htm

It seems from this research that the 30-60k page is the optimal size.....

Thanks guys - you all gave some really valid and interesting input.


Everyone's pretty much touched on the concept of "themes", "breaking pages up", "pages with logical themes" and "tighter focus on keywords".

Ok, so let's then take this quote from Gardenstew then



and this one from phaugh




My question is - when do themes start to become separate from each other to justify the creation of individual pages for each?

For example, say hypothetically we have a page (word count ~1900, page size ~19K) playing on the keywords car touring, race drivers, motor racing, fa1 and Grand Prix racing. It's page title is something like Car and Motor Racing.


Would you look at this from phaugh's perspective and say that the page topic (ie, title) would be diluted by the large word count? Do we take gardenstew's opinion and break this page up into 4-5 smaller pages each centering on a keyword as the page title (eg F1), with variations of the title for additional keywords (Ferrari racing team, German Grand Prix, Forumla One rules, etc).


Yes, from a surfers perspective it would be nicer to find all this information on one page where you could simply scroll down and read.

But from a SEO perspective it would be nice to split this page up, where we could utilise keyword rich text links between the pages, add to our overall site page count, faster page loading, the chance to employ a lot more keywords.


Then again, who says we just can't stick with the one page having multiple themes and multiple keywords. Why can't we just cram masses of keywords (related of course) on page if they relate to the same type of topics/themes? What would goggle think of this vs breaking the page up into smaller ones (even though the sum of their keywords and content would equal the one page itself!) Make sense?


To me it all seems a much of a muchness. Sure, there are advantages (technically speaking), but where do we put a stop to this SEO madness.

Google, you have a lot to answer for....


My brain's starting to fry.....I've got to go


cya guys

I would start here to figure out what words your page is optimized for: http://www.keyworddensity.com

Let's go back to the real estate example above...for most RE sites I would focus the index page theme/topic on "My Town/My State Real Estate" those will be the most competitive regional terms....then I focused the internal pages on My Town Homes, MT Condos, MT Land...etc......these keywords can usually be obtained by internal linking alone.....since I have many pages pointing to each section using the keyphrase in the link text....

As for the way the pages were created when I limited the display to 5 listings and thus grew the site by 20 pages...these pages were only optimized in the title, keywords, and description areas...the information from the listings is entered by the broker....with no SEO intensions....so the page content is not really helping in this case...but we are still getting results. I have done this on a few sites and it has worked every time.

So how does this affect you: I wouldn't worry about the keyword density of the pages....I would focus more on pointing text rich links at that page from other pages in your site.....that's if you are wanting this page to rank high....once you get in the top twenty then go back to the page and focus on the content....if you even need to....

Hi phaugh,

Yes, I see the positives more clearly now after that post.


The way I see it, breaking your pages up gives you the opportunity to create additional/unique titles, which you could then carry-on through to the keywords and description areas. Whereas this is not really possible with just one huge page. Sure, you could manage to get away with the keyword density thing, but I'm thinking you'd be missing out on the chance to fully untilise the page title and description tag.


In effect, breaking up pages allows for more specific themes/topics and a better chance at increasing your ranking in Google (or Yahoo, etc).


Your RE example makes sense; in fact, it closely mirrors the structure I am currently employing on my site. That is, work around specific regions (ie themes/topics) with the title, keyword and description areas and let the database populate the content relative to these regions.


I do get it now.


Thanks mate. Much appreciated.


I'll all let you know how I go.


I'm off....

Looks like you on your way...cheers!