Word Count is a field used by Screaming Frog that tells you how many words appear on a given URL’s page once it has rendered. 

Word counts are important, as they give you insight into how detailed your content is, and can be used to assess the strength of competitors’ content as well vs. your own.

Search engines want a more thorough, detailed answer to a given query, as they view that is giving the most complete answers back to the user’s query.

If your site is underperforming in organic search compared to the overall marketshare, checking in on how “thin” your content is can be a quick way to start gaining ground back on the SERPs.

Choosing The Perfect Word Count For A New Piece Of Content

Unfortunately, the primary answer to “How long should a piece of content be?” is always going to be “it depends…”.

Most sources will say to have content pieces designed for search to be 200-500 words minimum.

However, it is better to focus on making sure that what you’re trying to convey is described in the most amount of detail that can satisfy the highest number of relevant queries.

When writing a piece of content, you first want to ask yourself what is the main point that you want to discuss, then think about what other questions a reader may have as they go through your page.

Properly structured information architecture should make it easy to read your content, while having easily accessible links to other relevant pieces of content that also go into detail, while describing other elements & attributes of the first piece.

This avoids you having to write 10,000 word essays that people don’t want to read through, while creating an easier to consume experience for your users, which increases their likelihood of completing conversions on your site.

Conversely, it also prevents you from creating an entire page dedicated to one topic, but only publishing a few sentences on it & not providing much of true value.