Writing quality content is more than a 500-word rule

When Einstein Medical solicited a couple of our clients, they sent them lengthy reports criticizing their websites. The first major point they addressed in the reports was the use of meta tags. I addressed this point in an earlier blog post titled Sleazy SEO Sales Tactics. The second major point was whether or not the site used the Google Authorship tag. The third major point was content quality, which is what I want to address in this third and final post about these reports by Einstein.

In this report, Einstein breaks up the concept of the content quality of each page into two components–whether or not there is duplicate content on the page, and the word count of the page. Duplicate content is clearly a ranking killer, so we don’t need to say anything more about that. But we need to address this word count issue. Here’s how Einstein puts it:

In order to find favor with Google, a page must contain in-depth content. In simple terms, a page with 50 words of original content is not considered as substantial as a page containing 500 words.

Then they introduced their formula. Optimal content is 500+ words. Sufficient is 250-500 words. Insufficient is <250 words. This is followed by a chart labeled “Content Quality Results.” In the chart, they list the page name in one column, and then have one column where they list “Duplicate Status,” and another where they list “Word Count.”

Let me repeat here what I said in each of the two earlier posts about Einstein Medical. I respect the company as a quality competitor that does good work. I am not criticizing the company here, only the sales team and their sales tactics. Anyway, I shake my head at this contention that after 17 years of trying to figure out what constitutes quality content so they can deliver quality search results, Google has finally figured it out. Five hundred or more words–that’s the answer!

I started doing SEO back when there actually were simple tricks like that. What happened was that webmasters quickly figured out the tricks and then gamed the system. That was precisely the impetus that propelled Google into its dominant market position. They used metrics that were much harder to manipulate in order to figure out which sites were high quality and which weren’t.

There used to be SEO people who believed that there was some threshhold of word count that would boost the ranking of a page. I was never one of them, by the way. But there are very few SEO people any more who are so naive as to believe in word count. And I kind of believe that Einstein knows this, because in the introduction of this report they say “There is no secret to developing a great SEO strategy . . . . If you build a great website, Google will recognize it, and reward you with a prominent ranking that simply cannot be achieved with shortcuts.”

Interestingly, for the two clients of ours for which I got these Einstein reports, there are several pages that Einstein has labeled as having insufficient word count that actually rank #1 for their targeted search term.

What Really Constitutes Quality Content

So let’s get into quality content. Back in February, 2011, Google rolled out its first edition of what is called the Panda update. This was a major step forward in its sophistication in detecting quality content. With Panda, Google attempted to answer such penetrating questions as, “Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?” and “Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?”

Page length has an impact here, but it’s more sophisticated than just a certain word count. Google says that it penalizes what it calls “thin content.” Yes, if a page is too short to cover the subject, it won’t rank well. But some subjects can be covered in a couple of hundred words, while others would take maybe 600 or 700 or more.

Google is also plugged into what it calls “user experience,” which goes beyond the written word. Navigability, visual appeal, appropriate use of graphics, and the absence of annoying pop-ups all go into creating a quality site that provides a good user experience and ranks well in Google.

And Google is looking at the entire site. In other words, if there are pages in the site with duplicate, thin, or otherwise low-quality content, those pages will drag down the entire site.

A good checklist for evaluating a website has been published by Google under the title of “More guidance on building high-quality sites.” Here is a partial list of those Google quality content guidelines:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?

Summary

Back before Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, a lot of search engine optimization was a bag of tricks. If you knew them, you could get a site to rank well without a lot of effort. But that is no longer the case. Google has made great strides in recognizing quality content. There is no word-count formula or any other formula other than simple quality writing and providing a quality experience for the visitor on your website.