How much is 'too much' content?

[Shopclicks]

Hi. For a category page, I have some nice unique, keyword rich content at the top of the page (a H1 and one 5 line paragraph).
I have 8 product listings below that.
At the bottom of the page I have some more general product information in 4 x H2 titles with one solid paragraph for each H2.

Each product accessed from that page has I nice keyword rich description, well written and with enough information to sell the product.

Some of the content on the category page could easily be moved to the FAQ page and/or the product description.

So my question is: Are the bottom 4 paragraphs wasted on that category page wasted from an SEO point of view?

The page ranks mid page one for the keywords we want.
Thanks!

 

[E-Liquid UK Store]

You can never have too much content.

 

[Scott@KarmaContent]

You can never have too much content.

You can, especially when you are not just writing for SEO but for conversion. Too much content can be off-putting. To me, your content needs to be clean, concise, relevant and guiding the user to the action that you want them to do on the page (I presume in the OPs case it is click the Buy Now button). Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[SearchEngineOptimisation]

Hi ShopClicks! Forget SEO being your main focus here, your main focus should be usability and SEO will come as a result. You need to be split-testing your content and designing your page from a UX perspective not from an SEO perspective.

 

[Karl B]

Give the content to someone that has no idea about what you're trying to sell and ask them whether the key points came across. As SEO24/7 said, think about how it helps the user rather than its SEO benefits.

On a category page though, you don't really want more than a few lines because you don't want to distract the user from seeing the actual products.

 

[Paul Featherstone]

I agree that you can have too much content in some cases.

Get the balance right between engaging content and efficient conversion paths. If you have too much content and get more pages indexed then you risk wasting the traffic you have acquired because conversion will be poor ie people may not understand your proposition.

 

[CloudAccountantcouk]

You can make it look neater by using more info type boxes that bring up the hidden text when clicked on. Google doesn't punish you but still indexes it all.

 

[sirearl]

Give the content to someone that has no idea about what you're trying to sell and ask them whether the key points came across. As SEO24/7 said, think about how it helps the user rather than its SEO benefits.
.

Er being on page 2 you ain't going to have many users.

One should concentrate on both.

 

[StevePoster]

So my question is: Are the bottom 4 paragraphs wasted on that category page wasted from an SEO point of view?

Focus on your title because this will be your first step on getting targeted audience because it summarize your entire story. Concentrate on providing the needs of the users and expectations as well as benefits for the people and not for SEO then rankings, traffic, and conversions will follow. Its all about building your reputation for the targeted audience.

 

[Vincentas]

I couldn't say that it is even possible to use such a term. As from my experience even really long texts are read by the visitors just they have to be really analytic and giving some real value. However, if you are trying to concnetrate on SEO but on quality of your site, then texts of 300-400 are the best choice. Also, you shouldn't overcrowd them with keywords. Sometimes, one good keyword will work better than a mass of them and it will also look more natural.

 

[Shopclicks]

Ok, thanks to all. I think the consensus is that 'just enough to create a conversion' is the right amount. The word count is 373 and nobody I've shown it to, thinks it's too much information.
So I won't be changing it any time soon.

 

[sirearl]

Its the relevance of the words used not the quatity.

One writes for both the customer and the search engines,anything else is a waste of time IMHO.

Search engines have no idea what quality is,how can they.?

 

[ronnie7272]

You have too much content when your conversion rates go down

 

[SugarCubeProductions]

More then 500 and it starts to be to much if it's general content. This is mostly because people get bored and leave by this point. If it's a news article, or a subpage with in depth detail of a product, there there's no such thing as to much as the people are interested in your product by this point and won't mind reading it.

Just make sure to space it out with images so that it's easier to read.

 

[Charlotte Barnes]

There is only 'too much' content if it doesn't do anything for your site. If 500 words are required to create relevant, purposeful descriptions then that's how many you need.

To paraphrase what SugarCube said previously, there is no such thing as too much content if it is interesting to the reader. I've written product pages for machinery that had up to 1,000 words for each product description, but it was all relevant and necessary to that particular product. Cutting it down would have left the reader needing more.

The key is keeping it relevant. Waffle doesn't do anyone any favours.

 

[SixtyMarketing]

you can never have too much content, within reason. You do not want to put off the visitor with 10,000+ words. Google will generate and meta description, and in some cases a meta title, from your content to match the users search term. Do not focus too much on writing your content for SEO. If you are writing naturally about your products your keywords will flow naturally and therefore improving keyword rankings.

Try internal linking from other category pages, as long as everything all looks natural and not manipulative

 

[PIers Ede]

500 words is a reasonable amount for a page. Much longer doesn't make a difference. But make it shorter and it becomes more difficult to rank. We've tried and tested this.

 

[flanok]

You say the page ranks mid page one for your chosen keywords?
I wouldn't change it.

A experiment was done recently (sorry couldn't find the link), it showed that more relevant content on a page won the day, with word counts up to 2000 words regularly being at position 1, (count the average words on a wikipedia page) not the typical 500 word standard that everyone works too.

Over the last 12 months the average word count of quality pages that rank high had risen.

However, 500 well written words that are fresh useful and informative will always be worth more than 2000 of waffle.

You can still separate detailed information from the headlines that will help you convert with a bit of creative design.

 

[Martina Wade]

As long as the words are relevant and informative to your visitors then keep them. Think about the user experience when it comes to SEO - is the information useful? Is it relevant where it is? And in addition, overall, is your site easy and Logical to navigate? This is long-term SEO - put the user first.

 

[HazelC]

There is research that says website pages should have 300-600 words of content - must be unique, seo friendly and not copied / duplicated.

That's the rule I follow anyway and it works for me!

 

[ADNattan]

I aim for around 600 words for a page as a rule of thumb, but it's really a case of "how long is a piece of string?"

If you need 1,000 words to describe a service, then as long as it's properly structured to that your reader is funnelled to where they need to be, you're laughing.

The search engines index the whole page anyway.

 

[Audrey Wright]

From an SEO point of view there is no such thing like too much content.
From a design, UX and conversion point of view there is.

You need to either balance out the two sides by finding how much content you can put before you start to turn off users and kill conversions, or find a design solutions that puts content out of sight, but still available for users if they so desire.
You can use a JavaScript button that hides and displays the content upon click.
Or, you can use CSS to display content boxes when a certain element is displayed. Second is better for smaller captions. It's also easier to implement, but doesn't work so nice and elegant for something as big as a paragraph or more.

 

[Mayur Mistry]

There is an old saying which says "less is more."

Keep your content short, to the point and highly engaging.

If you are writing a blog, it is good to keep each post between 800 to 1200 words. However that also depends on the nature of your business as well.

 

[Audrey Wright]

From a pure technical SEO POV longer forms of content work better and can often self-optimize in time. There are a few good reasons for why that happens.

When google "reads" your content and "understands" it, it really just establishes a thorough semantic core of words and phrases that model the topic of the page. An example of a semantic core is the following:
cleaning, hygiene, dirt, stains, how to clean your carpet, all purpose cleaner, grimmy oven, descale the sink, chore, domestic cleaners, scrubbing, polished chrome etc. etc.

You see, the semantic core is something of an advanced form of keyword analysis that takes in account all words and phrases that are linked in a given topic, in my case cleaning your home. Some of the words are not directly related to each other e.g. polished chrome vs hygiene, but are both linked within the topic of the page.

The more content you have on the page the more words and phrases you will have associated with the the topic of your content. Enriching your semantic core as much as possible, enables your page to later rank not only for your chosen 5 keywords, but potentially hundreds or even thousands of search queries related to the topic of your page.
People search in all kinds of different ways, some use just keywords, others full sentences, varied words, phrases, etc. By ensuring you rank for a lot of low value, low search long tail keywords, you potentially open the flood gates to immense traffic.

I can give you an example of mine, where I wrote a 4 thousand word article about the top 20 biggest man made disasters. Each disaster had a paragraph of 100-300 words about it. After an year and after linking to it from around 10 other articles throughout time, it currently ranks highly for a lot of related keywords and passively generates close to a thousand view each week.

Check it out bellow and see for yourself.

medium.com / @audrey96928626 / the-top-20-biggest-man-made-disasters-37f7f2a1ed2

 

[tk-hassan]

What you got on your page is almost perfect and you are on page 1 for your targeted keywords which is a clear indication that you have done a great job with your content and tags