What Size Body Section Ranks Highest?

This is another one of the controversial questions in many of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) forums, yet it is very easy to answer for any particular search engine. While popular belief seems to be that pages should be very short (less than 10K) to rank well with the leading search engine, this article conclusively answers that question? with a completely different answer.

The methodology is really quite simple for this question. I gathered the results of the queries naturally performed last month by myself and three associates using Yahoo and Google. I then visited each page and wrote down the size of the body section of the page. Those sizes were then tabulated for the top 20 rankings and converted into a normalized "ranking correlation".

The resulting number shows each group of body section sizes normalizing into a number between ?100 and +100 showing the likelihood of being ranked higher/lower. A value of +100 shows that all 10 rankings were in the proper order to show that pages of the studied size ALWAYS rank HIGHER than pages of another size. A value of ?100 shows that all 10 rankings were in the proper order to show that pages of the studied size ALWAYS rank LOWER than pages of another size. Numbers in between show the varying likelihood of rankings proportionally between ?100 and +100.

That is the number you see on the Y-axis. On the X-axis, we have groups of page sizes varying from 0 to >100K bytes. Here are the graphs for Yahoo and Google:

http://www.searchenginegeek.com/graphs/dey02.gif

http://www.searchenginegeek.com/graphs/deg02.gif

(Note to Webmasters: Feel free to hot link to the above graphs or even copy them to your own site. Also feel free to delete this note.)

There is an obvious correlation on Google, which shows that body sections of a size between 50K and 60K generally rank much higher than shorter or longer bodies. The Yahoo graph is a bit more erratic, but also shows a nice peak at 60-70K (and another one at 20-30K). This goes against the popular belief that states that shorter pages rank highest. The popular belief is shown to be completely inaccurate with this study.

Notes:

1. For the purposes of this test, the actual body section size in bytes was used. The page was saved to disk and then everything before the body tag and after the end body tag were deleted. The resulting size of the file as reported by the operating system was used. Graphics and any other external references were completely ignored.

2. Over 1,000 queries and over 10,000 sites were examined for this study.

3. There was no exercise to attempt to isolate different keywords. I merely took a random sampling of the queries performed by myself and three associated during the prior month.

Conclusion:

Pages with a body section size between 50K and 70K rank best on the two leading search engines!

This is merely a correlation study, so it cannot be determined from this study whether the leading search engine purposefully entertains this factor or not. The actual factors used may be far distant from the factor we studied, but the end result is that this search engine does, in fact, rank pages between 50K and 60K higher than pages of other sizes.

Copyright 2004 Jon Ricerca

About The Author

Jon Ricerca is the lead researcher and author of the Search Engine Ranking Factor reports at Search Engine Geek. For more information, please visit: http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com

---

The Myth of Rankings - Beyond Search Engine Optimization

What follows is a condensed version of a conversation that... Read More

Increase Your Link Popularity for Free

Among the many things you need to worry about for... Read More

DIY SEO - Part 2 Tags n Things

Part 2 Tips 4 tagsMeta tags are the descriptive tags... Read More

SEO Expert Guide - Conclusions (part 10/10)

As you have seen throughout the guide, search engine optimization... Read More

What is Google Pagerank?

PageRank is one of the factors that Google uses to... Read More

The Google Strategy

Webmasters across the Internet were totally floored by what happened... Read More

Link Building for Hilltop

Hilltop is one of the major concepts underpinning Google's search... Read More

Do It Yourself SEO

Internet surfers use search engines more than any other tool... Read More

Part I : Getting Free Hits Using These Simple Tips & Tricks

Search Engine OptimizationSearch engines still remain the #1 tool to... Read More

Goofy Mistakes that Hurt Your Search Engine Rankings

One thing is for sure, you don't want to spend... Read More

SEO and Directories

If you are a webmaster, then you've probably submitted your... Read More

SEO for CEOs ? Search Engine Optimization Unmasked for CEOs

If you're like most other CEOs, the term "search engine... Read More

Marketing to Search Engines AND Humans

When you were just a young and precocious student of... Read More

Searching The Internet Without Search Engines

The World Wide Web contains more than ten million websites... Read More

When SEO Takes the Value out of a Website

Every webmaster would like to see his/her website to be... Read More

Microsofts New Search Engine

I tried out Microsoft's new search engine (beta version) the... Read More

How to Improve Your Search Engine Positioning and Increase Traffic Today

Every website has times when traffic is higher than others.... Read More

How to Choose Keywords to Theme Your Pages and Boost Your Traffic

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is... Read More

What You Can Expect From Search Engine

Search engines will be a way for you to generate... Read More

Search Engine Algorithm Quandaries

Before you make drastic changes to your website after a... Read More

The Smart Way To Get Listed On Google!

So you want to get listed on Google? And you... Read More

Search Engine Visibility - The Mantra of Corporate Profitability

The corporate fundamentals are par excellence! The product is unsurpassable... Read More

Keywords, Choose Them Wisely

By now you have likely heard that keywords and keyword... Read More

Search Engine Optimization: Creative Ways To Acquire Natural Back Links

Search engines use algorithms calculate the order in which the... Read More

DIY SEO

Part 1. Wordtracker for keywords.A problem for all new webmasters... Read More

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step 4: Content Optimization

Welcome to part four in this search engine positioning series.... Read More

Its Not Just All About Google Anymore

Those webmasters that stick to the old ways and focus... Read More

Torpedo and Sink the Ship SS Search Engine Ranking

I was recently contacted by one of my best clients... Read More

Search Engine Strategies for Affiliate Websites

The major search engines are always on the lookout to... Read More

HTML and Search Engine Optimization - What You Dont Know Can Kill You

When it comes to search engine optimization there is a... Read More

10 Things to Expect from Your SEO Copywriter

From the perspective of a business owner, webmaster, or marketing... Read More

Search Engine Metrics: Organic Search vs. Paid Placement

Let me preface this report by citing advertisers in 2004... Read More

SEO #6: How TO GET Banned by Google!

Yesterday you should have read the fifth course out of... Read More