Word Count: Why Length Matters in SEO (and the Way It Doesn’t)
Google has said many times that there’s no minimum word count, yet pages ranking for competitive informational queries are reliably longer and more comprehensive than the rest. The relationship is correlative, not causal — long content ranks because depth signals authority, not because Google rewards length.
Match length to intent
For deep informational queries (“how does X work”), top results are commonly 2,000–4,000 words. For transactional queries (“buy size 10 sneakers”), a tight 300-word product page outranks a 2,000-word essay. For local queries, concise wins. Write to satisfy the user’s task, not to hit a word target.
Readability matters as much as length
Flesch Reading Ease scores text from 0 (very hard) to 100 (very easy). Most general-audience web copy targets 60–70. The Flesch–Kincaid grade level estimates the U.S. school grade required to understand the text — most consumer content is best at grade 7–9. We compute both above so you can spot pages that are accidentally academic.
How to use this tool
Paste your draft for live counts as you type, or fetch any live URL to see how many words your published page actually has — because what your CMS shows in the editor is rarely what gets rendered to crawlers after templates, navigation, and footers strip in.