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For me, the most important tenets of content and positioning are simple:  make it relevant, make it compelling, make it FAST.  However, some believe that these principles don’t apply to webpage text- that having more words on your webpage is essential for search engine rankings and that having less somehow compromises your visibility on the web.  Personally, I’d gamble on a concise message with small words that hit hard.  Here’s why.

People Read Webpages, Not Machines
People are strange.  They behave in quirky ways.  We’ve all been to weddings where a loud, drunk guest creates a makeshift stripper pole that ruins the whole event.  It’s no different on the web.  At most, your prospects read 28% of the words on your webpage, writes Bill English in a post on The Marketing Technology Blog.  Why wouldn’t someone finish reading all of the copy on the page if they’re already a third of the way there?  Why would a wedding guest steal the spotlight and leave the bride with a bloody nose? 

Reading on the web is difficult. Computer monitors have low screen resolution, and their projected light quickly makes our eyes tired. So you need to make every word count. “Cut your copy in half,” English suggests, “and then cut it in half again.”  Usability expert Jakob Nielsen’s recent study brought even gloomier news- that English’s 28% is actually closer to 20% for pages with over 500 words.  However, Neilsen’s study also found that, on an average visit, users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less. 

 So if the goal is to get the most people to read the most information on your webpage, why would you take 20% over 50%?

But These Machines, They’re Smarter Than You Think!
One of the most important and mysterious parts of the Google algorithm is the concept of “relevance”.  This is the number of incoming links to your content, from other websites, blogs, Facebook pages or Twitter.  Obviously the more of these the better.  If several sites reference your content, it becomes positioned as the most relevant.  No incoming link can have a negative effect on the Google PageRank of the page it points at.  At worst it can simply have no effect at all.  On the flip side, the number of outgoing links on the pages that point to your content can have an adverse effect.  Google hates websites that are nothing more than machine-driven content aggregators that chew up and spit out links all day.  If one of these aggregators is pointing to your content, but also has 500 other outgoing links on their page, it’s not doing you any favors.  This means you, Yahoo News. 

So, given two pages of equal PageRank linking, one with 5 outgoing links and the other with 10, you will get twice the increase in PageRank from the page with only 5 outgoing links.

Relevance Matters Now More Than Ever
Over the past five years, a slew of companies have challenged Google’s central premise: that a single search engine, through technological wizardry and constant refinement, can satisfy any possible query. Facebook launched an early attack with its implication that some people would rather get information from their friends than from an anonymous formula. Twitter’s ability to parse its constant stream of updates introduced the concept of real-time search, a way of tapping into the latest chatter and conversation as it unfolds. Yelp helps people find restaurants, dry cleaners, and babysitters by crowdsourcing the ratings. None of these upstarts individually presents much of a threat, but together they hint at a wide-open, messier future of search — one that isn’t dominated by a single engine but rather incorporates a grab bag of services. 

Best Practices
When it comes down to it, Google isn’t the only show in town anymore.  People are finding data in more ways now than ever before, so your content needs to hit hard and fast.

Here are some Best Practices for writing web content:

• Use clear, direct and conversational language. Avoid the exaggerated, boastful text (“market-ese”) you see in bad advertisements (e.g., “Hot New Product!”). Instead, provide useful, specific information.
• Keep paragraphs short, and limit yourself to one idea per paragraph.  Use bullet lists, especially when describing product or solution features.  Use the inverted-pyramid style of writing, placing your most important information at the top.
• Organize your content in clear sections. Sub-headers help your reader divide pages into manageable sections and quickly determine what each section is about. Limit the main body of your Web page to three styles: page title, sub-header and body copy. Make the contrast between the styles clear.
• Use negative space:  Leave enough space between lines of text and blocks of copy. Doing so improves reading speed and comprehension.

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