Martin Splitt of Google and Lily Ray of Path Interactive discuss the most common SEO concerns when creating website content.
Together, they break the myth that more content is better, what to do with underperforming content, and whether word count is a ranking factor.
Here’s a quick summary of each question and answer, along with the corresponding time stamps in the video.
Myths about content creation debunked
Create new content instead of updating the same type of content every year (00:00)
Ray’s question: If a publisher routinely writes on the same topic year after year, should they create new articles or update old ones?
If you only want incremental changes from one year to another, Splitt recommends updating existing articles.
Google may show similar articles from the same publisher as duplicate content, which you don’t want.
How much content should I have and how does this help performance? (1:52)
Splitt recommends that you don’t create content for the sake of creating content.
Talking about specific topics is limited. In that case, reading article after article won’t help much.
Creating lots of content on a regular basis is most recommended for industry blogs where new information is constantly coming out.
Can blogging and creating new content help your performance on Google? (03:02)
Publishing new content frequently isn’t a ranking factor for the site as a whole, Splitt said.
However, showing that you update your blog frequently with industry news and more can help build your reputation with your visitors.
Update old content (04:00)
It’s worth updating old content if something important has changed.
If there are no significant changes, Splitt recommends publishing new, separate content and linking old articles to new articles.
This doesn’t affect search performance, but it may help users.
Is there a way for Google to tell me if I have “too much content” or if that content is performing poorly? (04:40)
Ray asked if Googlebot’s crawl stats could be used to determine if a site has too much content.
How often Googlebot crawls content doesn’t indicate how good or bad it is or how much content there is, Splitt said.
Even better, check the performance report in Search Console.
If your reports show that you’re getting a lot of impressions but not a lot of clicks, you might need to change something.
Split specifically states: “There is no such thing as too much content.”
Again, it all comes down to your users and what they want from your site.
Poor Content and Overall Credibility or Authority (05:36)
Poorly performing content doesn’t necessarily make your site less authoritative from Google’s perspective.
It all depends on why your content is performing poorly.
For example, your content may be spammy, which can have a negative impact on your site.
Regardless of why your content is performing poorly, we recommend that you re-evaluate whether to update or remove your content.
Grouping and consolidating content (06:19)
Ray asks about the impact of having a fair amount of very short articles. Just a few sentences he one Q&A etc.
Google may treat such pages as light/thin content, which can negatively affect search rankings.
Splitt recommends grouping short pieces of content into one big article whenever it makes sense.
Having multiple related pieces of information in one place is good for Google Search.
Is word count a ranking factor? (08:07)
No, word count is not a ranking factor.
Whether it takes 50, 100, or 1,000 words to tell your readers what they want to know, it doesn’t matter in Google’s eyes.
What Google focuses most on to meet user intent.
Short content is good when users are looking for questions that require quick answers.
It doesn’t make sense to extend the content length to fit a certain number of words.
Specific keywords and word counts (8:39)
Reyes asks whether publishers should aim to match their competitors’ output when it comes to word count.
“It depends,” says Splitt.
Just because your competitors are all doing the same thing doesn’t mean it’s right.
Even if a competitor’s rankings are currently good, that may not always be the case.
Again, Splitt emphasizes the point of understanding what your users need and creating content accordingly.
Shorter articles are fine, as long as they tell you what they need to know in 500 words instead of 5,000.
Auto-generated content and normalization (9:32)
Ray asks about the impact of having virtually the same content on multiple location pages.
“It either works or it doesn’t,” says Splitt.
These types of pages work as long as each location has at least some unique information associated with it.
content is that too resemble.
If you change just a handful of words and keep the rest of the content the same, Google may deduplicate the page from our index.
How does Google determine duplicate content? (11:35)
Rays asks if Google has a threshold for identifying duplicate content.
I don’t know if Splitt has a threshold. He explains that Google uses content his fingerprints to determine if content has been duplicated.
Each page has its own “fingerprint”, which is used to determine how similar one piece of content is to another.
Splitt said Google also uses a “similarity index,” but didn’t provide details.
See the full video below.
