Great Web Strategies

To start off let me begin with this…  In the words of Matt Cutts “Don’t build websites for the search engines, build them for people.” Which of course is very good advice. That being said, if you are publishing good content and want users to find your “stuff” you need to get found.  This is likely how you came to hear about this thing called SEO (search engine optimization). The question of how much content do you want to publish is quite simple. As much content as is needed to appropriately cover your topic well.

There is no set number of words or paragraphs, however, I’m guessing you want some actionable information now right?

Ok, so if we’re going to get into this topic then we need to get specific on what we’re talking about.  Here are some of the various types of content you can be publishing:

1. Text content
2. Video content
3. Audio content

Each of these are great mediums in which to publish from however for the purpose of this article we’re going to talk about text and ‘page building’ or ‘page additions’ onto a website, as that is generally what people are asking about.

In general if you are publishing blog posts anything in the 250-400 word range is fine as they are generally casual in nature and sometimes just quick updates on this or that with a link to a resource, article, etc.   That being said, the more the better in regards to content, but be sure to use the ‘post splitting’ feature in your Wordpress admin panel (if you are publishing from this type of platform) so you can avoid some potential on-site duplicate content issues.  You’ll see this “Read more…” function being used on a number of professional blogs for good reason.

With articles, keeping them in the 500-800 word range seems to be the ingredient list most people like to stick to.  Again let me reiterate and paraphrase what Matt mentioned…do not get hung up on these details.   There is no exact measuring stick used on how much content you should create and publish.  Keep it real, be authentic, and cover the topic well.

Now another element of content publishing on your website that some people ask about is…

How many pages should I add to my site?

A lot of them at once, or slowly over time?

Again, do what’s natural and makes sense.  Google DOES love active sites that update with quality content regularly so if you can put out a piece of publishing daily…go for it.  That being said if you go into robot mode and produce exactly one article every day of exactly 700 words, do you think that looks and smells real?  Mix it up, have fun, and do what would seem like natural growth.

Ok, so there are some cases where it would be somewhat normal to need to mount a volume of pages quickly.  Example being a very large product based website where you have a huge inventory of products.  How is this best handled?  Let me show you a video where The Horses Mouth (yeh, you guess it – Matt again) gives his take on the topic at about 2:08min into this video:

So, in summary I think you should now know that publishing often (daily if possible) with great content is a perfect scenario.  However don’t be a robot, don’t stick to imaginary number/requirements and be authentic with your publishing methods and schedule.

That’s it for now.