There are several search engine ranking factors that affect your website and one of the biggest (and most important) is content!
My students are always asking me how much content do you actually need on your websites homepage to rank well in search engines.
How much content do I really need?
As a rule of thumb, I like to see at least 500 words on the homepage of your website.
That may sound like a lot, but it won’t be overwhelming when you break things down into well-designed sub sections.
The more content you have on your homepage, the more likely you are to rank for specific keywords.
For example, you can’t include the keyword “wedding photography” one time on your website and think Google is satisfied.
That’s like writing a thesis statement for a high-school essay without any supporting evidence. There’s nothing to show that you know what you’re talking about.
You also don’t want to include the same keyword over and over again because that will make you sound like a robot, deterring your readers.
Adding more content and expanding on your services and brand values will help your keyword placement sound more natural.
How do you format your content without sacrificing design?
I know some of you are thinking that 500 words is going to ruin the visual appeal of your website.
How can you include that much written text without boring your site visitors to death?
Great question!
Design and SEO can work together in harmony.
Good design means functionality as well as aesthetics. Instead of including all 500 words in one giant block of text (hint: no one wants to read that!), split things up.
When it comes to writing on the internet, forget everything you learned in school.
Paragraphs should be no more than a line or two and headings are your friend. Separate chunks of text with images and empty space.
This makes your site easy to navigate and easy to skim. People have short attention spans, and your content should cater to that.
By having a lot of text that’s broken up into sections, you’re making it easier for people to find the information they are looking for and you’re telling Google what your business is all about.
Improve “dwell time” to improve rankings
Dwell time has become a big ranking factor in the last year.
The longer someone stays on your website, the more likely your site is going to rank well in Google.
Time spent on your website is a key indicator to Google that your content is high quality.
If your homepage is missing key information about your business or there’s not enough there for site visitors to browse, they are hitting that back button and fast.
More content means people are spending time on your site scrolling and consuming what you’ve written. This is something we want to encourage!
Looking for help with SEO? Did you know you can hop on a call with me to get my eyes on your website with a one hour collaborative consultation. Together we’ll work on your website one-on-one and come up with a strategy you can use moving forward. Book your SEO Power Hour here.
Are you convinced?
I hope this post has convinced you to take a serious look at the content on your homepage and think about what you can add to expand the content you already have and improve your search engine rankings.
If you’re interested in one of our copywriting + design services, head over to our contact page.
So, how many words of content do you have on your own homepage localcreative.co? It doesn’t look like 500 which means you don’t practice what you write about.
Hi Torsten- Thanks for commenting. You’re 100% right. We recently redid the design of the website and I haven’t had a chance to finish copy. Also my target audience is mainly small local businesses and for them, the homepage matters much more than a predominately online business that relies mostly on blog traffic.