Word Count is a Vanity Metric (Fight Me)

I added word count to Black SEO Analyzer because people kept asking for it. Not because it matters. It’s the SEO equivalent of checking how many pages are in a book before deciding if it’s any good.

If you’re still chasing “2,000+ words for top rankings,” you’re running a playbook from 2012. Google was dumber back then. Long content correlated with thorough content, so the machine used length as a proxy for quality. Those days are gone. A 300-word page that actually answers the query will smoke a 2,000-word ramble every time.

Why word count stuck around

It’s measurable. That’s the whole reason. Humans love metrics we can count on one hand, and SEO tools love metrics they can stick in a dashboard. Word count is the website traffic of on-page SEO - easy to report, easy to celebrate, mostly useless by itself.

I’d put it in the same bucket as social media likes and raw session counts. It shows up on status reports, looks like traction, and usually means someone is about to make a bad decision.

What actually matters

Here’s what I actually check when a page is doing nothing and it has no obvious reason to be doing nothing:

• Does it answer the query? Read the page out loud. If someone searched for the keyword, would they leave satisfied or annoyed?
• Readability. Short sentences. Plain words. I target around a 6th-grade reading level for most content, and I don’t apologize for it. When readability scores actually move the needle is more nuanced than most tools let on, so treat the score as a nudge, not a target.
• Keyword presence in the right spots. Title, H1, first paragraph, a natural sprinkle throughout. Not stuffed. Not hidden. Just there, where a human would expect it.
• Internal linking. A page with zero internal links is a page Google has to guess about. Help the crawler. Help the reader.
• EEAT signals. Author name, source citations, a publish date, something that proves a real person with actual knowledge wrote it - not a bio that says “industry thought leader” and links to a LinkedIn profile with 500+ connections.
• Page structure. Headings that describe what’s below them. Lists where lists make sense. No giant wall of gray text.

Notice what’s not on that list.

The 2,000-word trap

I’ve watched teams pad pages to hit a word count target and tank their rankings in the process. You write 400 words of useful content. Then you add 1,600 words of filler to hit the magic number. Google reads the whole thing. The filler dilutes the relevance. The page gets worse, not better.

I did the same kind of thing early in my career. I spent three weeks writing a custom reporting layer in C++ for a client who could have used Crystal Reports and been done by Wednesday. The complicated answer felt more impressive. The simple answer wins.

What to do instead

Write until you’ve answered the question. Stop. Read it back. Cut the parts that don’t earn their spot. If the page is 280 words and covers the topic cleanly, ship it. If it needs 3,000 words because the topic is genuinely deep, write 3,000 words. Let the subject dictate the length.

Then go look at things that actually move the needle. Fix your internal linking. Clean up your title tags. Check whether your content matches search intent. Make sure your pages load fast. Add real information that a real person with expertise would add.

Word count tells you how long the page is. That’s it. Google doesn’t give out trophies for length.

Yes, Black SEO Analyzer still shows you word count. I’m not going to pretend people don’t want to see it. Just don’t treat it like it’s telling you something important. It isn’t.

Want to run this audit on your own site? Free 14-day BSA trial — no credit card.

-Sethers