How Important Is Text Content To Your Ranking?

This is the question of questions. If you pick up any SEO book, let’s say search engine optimization for dummies, you’ll find out that almost every SEO author gives a huge importance to the text content on your page. So it’s true that you will have trouble getting ranked if your site is only in Flash or other non-textual formats. However, some SEOs recommend having at least 200 words of text on each page to get ranked well on search engines. That is certainly not true. 200 is a nice number, but you can’t tell me that there is an If/Else statement in search engine algorithms that bumps you up if you have more than 200 words on your page. Following a formula is exactly what kills you in a highly competitive SEO environment. Just think about it. If you and your competitors are all doing the same things, then what’s to say that they are not going to be ranked above you. So If your page has only 100 words, it doesn’t mean that you are definitely going to get outranked by others with more text. I have personally helped rank sites that have less than 100 words of text on them. I guess I could’ve achieved the same result with 200 words, but why add unnecessary words when I don’t need them. Here is my rule: if it doesn’t add value, don’t write it.