Just how important is the AMOUNT of content on a page to getting top rankings? I've seen pages with virtually nothing get top spots because they simply had the backlinks. I've been creating 3-4 page websites, each page just has a few paragraphs of text each nothing much, but its optimized for keywords. I know if google is choosing between 2 pages with roughly equal offpage, they will choose the site with more content I'm sure. BUT, the question: How important does google weigh the amount of text on your pages, and the amount of pages on a domain? Or is backlinks, anchor text, domain age, relevancy... all WAY more important then how much actual text you have?
There is no correct "amount" of content. But you really have to think about what you are doing and why. What happens when a user comes to your page? What do they do? An eCommerce site has little content on a page, but ... an explanation about the Swine Flu would contain a lot more. Which should rank higher? The point is create content that matches your intended audience. Ranking for the sake of ranking is useless.
The most important thing is the quality of content that you add in your website. If the content is great, then you will automatically get backlinks. People will link to your content that has useful information in it.
I don't think the amount of content matters , what matter is the usefulness of the content. If the content is useful people will link to you and you will automatically rank high in search engines.
I think this is an excellent question and have been wondering the about this myself. I've been putting much of my effort into writing quality content, but I see so many people worried about backlinks and I'm wondering if I should divert my energy and work more on this instead... looking forward to reading more answers by experienced folks.
A well written, well structured page with a few backlinks will typically rank higher than such a page poorly written, poorly structured with an abundance of back links. My take is make sure the page is focused, well written, has proper headings, titles, keyword usage (repeated). I've worked on pages that have 2 back links - the content well written and the tags and coding all in place take first page for a somewhat competitive term. Backlinks are important, however they're not going to be the lone factor in getting you ranked. As for your question, if you're talking the amount of content on the site - a well-focused, well structured mini-site can get ranked easily. Pay attention to your site's linking structure - ie choose your links and anchor to yourself carefully. If you're talking about the length of relevant, well structured content on a single page - a very long, yet targeted review or article will all but assure you close to top billing and authority on the topic of discussion.
thanks everyone. I think everyone agrees that having good content and good onpage SEO is going to help you. I guess I"m just trying to weigh in how much it matters. For example, I understand basic onpage seo like A) keywords in title B) keywords in H1, H2, H3 Header Tags C) No Hidden Text or Tricks like that D) Keywords in Alt-Tags, Naming Pages and Images similar to your keywords. So if your targeting "beer making" then you could name your images "picture of beer making.gif" "beermakingsupplies.gif" etc. I just have a basic concern that I can do these things, but simply not have enough words of text or literal pages of content to get ranked properly. I recently read that top results tend to have over 1000 words of text.. can't say if thats true or not. But I guess the bottom line is it certainly doesn't hurt. I know google rewards updating your pages right? So steadily building the content overtime is the answer