People are Funny

I always get a kick out of the SEO experts who decide how long articles should be for optimum results. Go on their sites and you can find long-winded explanations how they came to this revelation and often hundreds of comments debating the issue. But, I really had to chuckle today when on another site someone asked for an article that is 530 words long. I realize they have to put something and most put either a range or something like 300, 500 or 1,000. But 530? really? What if it's 529? Will they not accept the article? Will they demand rewrites until it reaches 530?

I so glad most of my clients take the same approach I do. Word count should be left for high school essays and web content should be as long, or as short, as needed to make the point.

 

That inflation, YMC. I remember when it was 527 words exactly. Blame Bernanke.

 

Never did like that dude. lol

 

I agree about giving a range, but sometimes these companies pay the writers by the number of words and they need to stick to their budget. But usually in such cases then, these companies end up getting crappy written articles.

 

A word count range is always nice, but any exact amount is blasphemy! I hate when I see anyone give an exact amount. The writing is going to suffer when you set an specific amount.

 

I say that as long as it's between 350 - 1000 words it's ok.
If it's below there's a chance that you don't get much in ther, and if it's above most people wont read the full article.

I have done some testing on my website and found out that about 800 words works best for me.
Articles with 3000+ words tend to rank well in search engines, but few people really reads them.

 

That's the trick of it right there. Most of the time I don't read past the first two paragraphs because it doesn't hold my attention long enough. I think that if you can personalize the article and make it sound real with adding some humor in it that it might work out better but most people just make the article sound generic and therefore, boring.

 

Personally I think bounce rate has a lot of weight these days. I usually try to stick to 500 words but a lot of times I will have articles that have 1000+ words but doesn’t really matter how many words it has if it has a 90%+ bounce rate the SEs are not going to keep dishing it up over something with the same keywords that has a 40% bounce rate.

Most of the generic crap "I specialize in 30 different subjects" = rewritten wiki paragraph with filler on top and bottom=85%-90%+ bounce rate. No matter how many words you have.

 

Bounce rate doesn't really matter.
Bounce rate can mean 2 things.
1. The user found what he/she was looking for and didn't need to search any further.
2. The user didn't find what he/she was looking for.

Search engines can't tell the difference and that's why it's not important for rankings.

However I do advice people to get as low bounce rate as possible so that you
can get more ad impressions and so on. =)

 

lol. believe what you want.

 

So you mean that if a site has a bounce rate of 90%, but the visitors stays and reads it for 7 minutes it's
a bad page and should be ranking lower in the search engine?

No, if a visitor stays for 7 minutes on a page it means that it is interesting and the visitor probably
got what he/she was looking for.

I have several pages across all my websites ranking on first page of google for competitive keywords
that at the same time has a very high bounce rate. That's why I don't think it really matters that much.

Also, do you think that websites recieving thousands of visits form websites such as stumbleupon, digg and so on
gets lower rankings because of bounces? I don't think so.

 

I would hope to think that if Google does use bounce rate as a ranking criteria that it is an extremely small percentage of the overall score. Like Wulkanen said, there are plenty of reasons why a page would be the first, last and only page visited. While it is often due to weak content, to assume that is the only reason someone would not delve further into a site is downright silly.

 

"a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy."
http://www.google.com/support/analytics

From Google Support "generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors" in more general terms- your content sucks.

 

Don't you think I have already read that page?

 

dono seems like you haven't or are you just posting to drop your links on a forum?

Some people sit around and collect traffic and customers from Google others have to collect traffic from forums. I would say by looking at your site you get traffic from forums.

 

Sorry, but 75% of my traffic is from search engines. DigitalPoint barely plays a part of my websites traffic.
And by the way, what does that have to do with anything?

 

"generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors" A search engines job is to return relevant results. Do you think google is just going to bring up pages they think are not relevant?

with what keywords? "Make Money" don't think think so.. keep dreaming. What does that have to do with anything? because I get tired of SEO "experts" making BS posts they can make posts and drop links to trafficless sites.

 

What are you going on about?
You're making claims without even knowing anything about my websites.
Below is a screenshot of the last 30 days of traffic to the site in my signature.


I NEVER said I was a SEO expert. That's just ridiculous.


Also, are you not going to argue with YMC as well for agreeing with me?
"Like Wulkanen said, there are plenty of reasons why a page would be the first, last and only page visited. While it is often due to weak content, to assume that is the only reason someone would not delve further into a site is downright silly."

 

Photoshop does magic. lol - Keywords? -

I'll get back to YMC.. I just have to backtrack, I don't have time right now. (really it is because YMC owns this thread and I am scared)

 

O, you think it's photoshopped, I can take that.
But do you honestly think I just photoshopped this?


If you do then I don't know if you've ever used photoshop at all.

What do you mean with "lol - keywords?"
Google the page names and you'll see my website.
I'm on the first page for "how to make money on youtube" on Google.com for example.


Now stop going of topic. I won't post any more in-depth info about my website.
This thread is not about me having to explain to someone like you where I get my traffic from.
It's about writing articles of a certain length.