Google has no favorite word count
Google says it has no preferred word count. Stop padding posts and start finishing the reader’s job.
Somewhere right now, a founder is stretching a 600-word answer to 2,500 words because a blog said longer posts rank better. Google’s own guide to helpful content asks whether you’re writing to a word count because you heard Google prefers one. Then it answers itself in parentheses: “No, we don’t.”
That guide is basically a self-assessment checklist. Good signs: you have an audience that would find the content useful even if they came to you directly, you show first-hand experience, and readers leave knowing enough to reach their goal. Warning signs: content made mainly to attract search visits, summarizing others without adding much value, chasing trends you’d never cover for your audience otherwise, and pages that leave people needing to search again.
For an indie founder this is good news. Your unfair advantage is first-hand experience: real numbers, real screenshots, the thing that broke at 2 a.m. Write the post only you could write, make it as long as the answer needs, and then stop.
The example
- Instead of
- “The Ultimate 3,000-Word Guide to Reducing Churn (a remix of five other ultimate guides)”
- Try
- “How we cut churn in half: the exact cancel-flow survey we used and what it told us”
Before you flush
Open your top blog post and ask: would a reader need to search again after this? Add one first-hand detail and cut one padded paragraph.