I was scrolling through LinkedIn the other day, in that half-productive, half-procrastinating way we all do, when I stumbled upon a post by none other than Google’s John Mueller. Someone had asked him the age-old question: “What’s the ideal content length for SEO?” You know, the kind of question that keeps SEO folks up at night (and has for years). And John, bless his heart, didn’t just give a thumbs-up emoji or a vague platitude. He gave an answer that blew some minds.
To give you a bit of background, people have this idea that Google has some magical formula for ranking content based on its word count. Is 500 words too little? Is 2,000 the golden ticket? Should we all be writing manifestos, or are listicles still holding the fort? It’s almost like people think if they find *the perfect number*, they’ll hack the Google gods and bask in the glorious light of Page One.
But John, in his usual zen, almost “Google Yoda” way, said that there isn’t a “universally ideal” content length. *Gasp*. “Focus on bringing unique value,” he advised, dropping that wisdom bomb like it was nothing. The answer seemed so simple—maybe too simple for some folks in the SEO world who rely on numbers like a kid relies on candy. The conversation spiraled, naturally.
One person, username SEOBot_, piped up with a question that, to be fair, felt like the next logical step. SEOBot_ wanted to know what exactly *unique value* meant, in Google’s eyes. I mean, if Reddit threads can outrank carefully crafted articles, what’s a small publisher supposed to do? Is unique value the same as a bunch of upvotes and snarky comments? Can’t Google give us, you know, some pointers?
But Mueller wasn’t about to hand out a cheat sheet. He responded with a rhetorical question that made me do a mental double-take: “If you’re looking for a mechanical recipe for how to make something useful, that will be futile.” He went on to paint a picture: Think about a real-world business that does well. Do you think they got there by focusing on numbers? Or by actually, you know, offering value? This wasn’t SEO science; it was digital philosophy.
The debate raged on. Some folks clearly didn’t want to hear that there’s no easy button to SEO success, which, to be honest, I get. It’s a tough field! But Mueller dropped another analogy that hit home for me: “If you count the words in best-seller books, average the count, and then write the same number of words in your own book, will it become a best-seller?” In other words, if we all tried to hit the magical 1,500-word mark on our blogs, would we all be dominating the SERPs? Spoiler alert: Probably not.
This conversation reminded me of how much SEO has changed. Gone are the days of shoving keywords into every sentence and hoping for the best. We’re in 2024 now, and we’re supposed to write for humans, not algorithms. Mueller’s point, when you boil it down, was simple: stop obsessing over Google’s invisible “perfect word count” and focus on making something that readers will actually care about.
So, the next time you find yourself wondering if a 700-word blog post is too short or a 3,000-word one is overkill, just ask yourself: would anyone read this if Google wasn’t even a thing? If the answer’s yes, you’re probably on the right track.