The other thing is that there’s a palpable difference between real advice and “field of dreams” styled advice. Is the advice so broad as to be meaningless? Is it aphoristic or actionable? A saying like “Content is King” is worth nothing without saying what kind of content converts well for what you do; furthermore, not having any stats seriously removes most beneficial information from advice.

It’s important to make sure that the piece you’re reading isn’t just an ad in information’s clothing.

Hi, Susan!

Once upon a time, about 12 years ago, I used to say that copy should be about 250 words for the search engines. I NEVER meant it to be a hard and fast rule – but people (obviously) took it that way.

There is no “rule” about a content word count. Yes, more copy is better – ASSUMING it makes sense. And granted, a page with 50 words may not position as well as a page with 500 well-written words. But if you feel like you’re writing fluff just to fit some sort of artificial word count, quit writing. :) You’ve done your job.

Thanks!

I’ve paid close attention and have a lot of respect for Brian Clark at Copyblogger (http://www.copyblogger.com) and subscribe to his tool ScribeSEO (http://scribeseo.com/). Are you familiar with it?

One parameter that ScribeSEO suggests is that content should be 300 words, and I’m constantly going back and forth between that advice and feeling like short and sweet when appropriate is better.

What’s your take?