Google: Stop With The Tin Foil Hat SEO

Jun 28, 2011 - 8:44 am 28 by

cat-with-tin-foil-hatI love it when I see Googlers go off on SEO advice.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has Googler Susan Moskwa replying to one webmaster about them wanting to remove content from their own web site. The webmaster was thinking because they don't have a certain number of words on some of their content, they are better off removing the content because it can hurt the rankings of the rest of the web site. Yes, a lot of this comes from the Panda update and SEO theories around that.

So Susan replied, Dude, it sounds like you've read too many tin foil hat "SEO" articles.

Here is Susan's full response:

Dude, it sounds like you've read too many tin foil hat "SEO" articles. As long as your site has worthwhile, original content on it (i.e. it's not just made to put AdSense on it), there's not a golden "text-to-ads ratio" or a word limit for ranking. I worry that you're just looking at the trees and not seeing the forest. Optimizing your site for search isn't about counting the words on a page, it's about making sure that you have useful, usable content, and then making that content accessible to search engines.

To put this another way: I have never ever seen a site where everything was great and it would have ranked well except its articles were only 200 words long. That's just... not the way the algorithm looks at stuff. If your site isn't ranking well, the cause must be elsewhere.

Got good content? Some thing useful, unique and quality? It doesn't mean it has to be long for it to rank well in Google.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help

Image credit from Jeff Hall on Flickr.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 18, 2025

Jul 18, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google June Core Update Done, Local Ranking Update, AI Mode Updates & AI Calling Businesses

Jul 18, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

New Google Business Profile Check Edit Status

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Login Service Pages Are Hard To Rank In Search

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google AI Overviews For Movie Queries

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Rolling Out Smart Bidding Exploration To Some Advertisers

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Google Search By Image Thinks I'm A Porn Star