Content length for your dental website and blog
Does the quantity of text on your blog posts or web pages influence SEO?
A questions we are regularly asked by dentists concerns the length of content needed for their websites and blogs and if more words on a page equals better opportunity for SEO.
The answer is….. it depends. Contrary to what you may have been told, the number of words on a page is not the primary driving factor for SEO, rather that the page is compelling and useful for your users. There is no golden rule which says 100 words is bad, 200 – 500 words is adequate and 1000 words is great. Google doesn’t work like that these days.
You have to remember that Google is now extremely adept at measuring how users interact with your web page or blog article and consequently if they find it useful or not. So a page with 200 words or maybe even just a short paragraph and compelling video, can rank much better than a page with 1500 words which users find boring and bounce off straight away.
Rules of thumb for content length
Whilst what has been described above, i.e. how well a page engages and compels, will always take precedence, there are still some useful guidelines when it comes to determining the amount of content you need for each page on your dental website or blog. These are not hard and fast rules but they work on the principle that for most dental websites, a page with relatively little content is likely to fall into the “not compelling” category and hence very unlikely to engage users at all. So a treatment page with just a 100 words is typically not going to work as well as a page which has 350 words of carefully crafted, interesting copy appropriately supported by a few images and perhaps a patient testimonial video clip.
So we would always recommend that a web page has sensible content length and is not skimped. Unfortunately you see too many sites these days where the dental web designer has offered free text writing with their design but the result is 150 words of generic and boring text which falls way short of the mark. So please make time for writing your own copy or budget a little to have high-quality copy written for you.
The same guidance goes for blog articles. Whilst it’s absolutely fine to have some articles which are quite short e.g. perhaps a couple of paragraphs and a photograph recording how the practice team attended an event or similar, it also pays to have some articles which are longer and potentially better for holding the users interest. So for example a detailed piece on a specific aspect of dental implants or perhaps how a certain type of orthodontics works. Of course, it’s not just the length of article – you also need to make sure that the style of writing is appropriate for the audience else they will simply get bored, click and go elsewhere.
We often see dental blogs which are being managed by a third party marketing company which is working to a strict time limit and simply churning out 200 word, poorly written “mini” blogs in the vain hope that they will help search engine ranking. Chances are that these articles will be seen as “thin” content by Google and not ranked; in fact they could be doing more harm than good. So if your marketing company includes blogging in their strategy, it pays to take a look at what they are actually contributing. Short can be good – but only if there are aspects of the content which will engage the users and hold their attention. Without that “hook”, too short can be very bad.
Summary
There are no precise rules for content length when it comes to populating your dental practice website and blog with text. Google will prioritise pages in search results which are popular and engaging for users, not simply the ones which have lots of content. That said, it is also clear that pages which have minimal content *usually* have minimal chance of being useful and hence should be avoided. Consequently it pays to avoid web pages which have very limited, generic text and blog articles of a couple of hundred words thrown together by your marketer. These can actually be more harmful than useful. It is also fair to say that long blog articles which are very useful and engaging do tend to work very well for SEO – so try to put some time and thought into what you write and how you write it.
If you need copy writing advice or perhaps a skilled copy writer for your blog or web pages, Dental Media can help. Our content team create compelling websites and write blog content for dentists on a daily basis and will be pleased to assist. You can get in touch on 01332 672548.