In a hangout, one SEO professional asked John Mueller about the optimal content length.
Their question was:
They have encountered many blog posts that discuss – perhaps they need to have around 100 or 1,000 words per page of content.
What is the best, most optimal content length they should aim for?
John explained that there really isn’t one. Some pages could be very short, and some pages are kind of long.
It just depends on the amount and type of information you want to give users.
The SEO pro explained that there is a term propagating called “thin content.” Is this applicable to Google?
John answered that this usually applies to the website on an overall basis.
It’s not that one page doesn’t have enough content, it’s more that the website overall is very light on actual information.
John would not use word count as a way to recognize this. He believes that word count is useful for an SEO pro to look at larger websites overall, and try to find areas where perhaps you could be doing better, but John would not use it as a metric for specific things you can do on the website.
This happens at approximately the 17:26 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 4 17:26
Okay, another question about the optimal content length on a page. You know, we have encountered many blog posts that talk about, let’s say, we need to have around 100 or 1,000 words per page. So what’s the optimal content length?
John 17:45
I don’t think there is one. So some pages are very short, some pages are very long. It kind of depends on the amount of information that you want to give users.
SEO Professional 4 17:56
There is this term propagating aow, “the thin content.” Is it applicable by Google or not?
John 18:04
Usually, that applies more to the overall website. So it’s not so much that one page doesn’t have enough content, it’s more that the website overall is very light on actual information. So I wouldn’t like use the word count as a way to recognize that. I think sometimes the word count is useful for you to look at a larger website overall, and to try to find areas where maybe you could be doing better, but I wouldn’t use it as a metric to guide kind of like the specific things that you do on the website.