Calm nature image in green presenting our basic course in SEO

Body text – SEO

In Google’s eyes, the text on your webpage is your site. That’s not entirely true anymore – search engines have become somewhat better at interpreting and understanding other types of content – but they are still far better at understanding text than anything else.

Text is often an area where websites fall short. Many CMS platforms handle the technical details well enough to achieve some rankings, but when it comes to the written content, the responsibility lies entirely with you – and it’s almost always time-consuming. When search engines were younger, the amount of text on a page was a key factor in how well it ranked. Having more pages also mattered, since it meant more opportunities to rank for different keywords. Interestingly, that correlation still exists today. In general, more content still seems to be better, with some exceptions.

image that visualizes what the body text looks like on a landing page

We’ve tested it in practice

We’ve run numerous experiments simply by increasing the amount of content on a specific page and then measuring how it climbed in the rankings. The page that has climbed the fastest in recent months for the keyword “sökmotoroptimering” (search engine optimization) – soekmotoroptimering.se, run by Håkan Persson – currently contains no less than 5,553 words. It’s no coincidence that he chose to include such a large amount of text.

Of course, text is not just text. The words used to describe good SEO content are relevant and comprehensive. Simply stuffing a page with meaningless or repetitive content can actively harm your SEO. Your goal should be to create valuable, relevant information for your visitors that matches the keywords you want to rank for. This means explicitly including the target keyword – not stuffing it, but mentioning it naturally.

Write for the user

Our general advice is to write for the user. Make sure the content you add provides value. You know your customers and visitors best, so ask yourself what they might need or want to know.

Google often talks about how well it understands text, and while it can recognize many synonyms and interpret some context, it still doesn’t truly understand text. That’s why you need to be explicit about what keyword your page should rank for. It’s not enough to imply it – you need to state it clearly. If you want a page to rank for “really good hammers,” then the phrase “really good hammers” needs to appear in the text.

Stick to the topic

Another important aspect is that search engines struggle to accept that a page can be about more than one subject. As mentioned in the section on landing pages, each page should focus on a single topic for maximum impact. This often comes down to clear boundaries.

In the past, Google couldn’t handle singular and plural forms as the same word. The best strategy was to have one page for “nut” and another for “nuts.” The same applied to word order – “online games” and “games online” were treated as different. That has changed, and our current recommendation is not to separate those variations but to rank both with the same page whenever possible. It doesn’t always work, but it’s a good starting point. Another factor to consider here is Google’s Panda filter, which we’ll discuss later.

How to optimize body text per landing page

Let’s reuse the example from the landing page section. Suppose you have three pages: one about bicycles, one about mountain bikes, and one about the Scott Spark 900 SL (a specific mountain bike model). This is a fairly common structure for an online store. The homepage should target “bicycle” and “bicycles,” the category page should target “mountain bike” and “mountain bikes,” and the product pages at the bottom should target each product name and its variants, such as “Scott Spark 900 SL“.

Body text on category pages

It can be tricky to define exactly how to divide body text between these levels. The first page should focus on bicycles – not on mountain bikes or the Scott Spark 900 SL. However, it’s perfectly fine if it mentions different types of bicycles, including mountain bikes. To make it clearer, here are a few examples of what might be included in such a text:

🔵 The different types of bicycles available
🔵 Things to consider when buying a bicycle
🔵 The history of the bicycle
🔵 What makes our bicycles unique

What, then, differentiates the bicycle page from the mountain bike page? Simply replacing “bicycle” with “mountain bike” in those topics turns it into a mountain bike page:

🔵 The different types of mountain bikes available
🔵 Things to consider when buying a mountain bike
🔵 The history of the mountain bike
🔵 What makes our mountain bikes unique

This will result in completely different texts. The history of the mountain bike is very different from that of the bicycle, and so on. It’s not a problem if “mountain bike” appears on the bicycle page or vice versa. What matters is that the main focus aligns with what the page is meant to rank for. Aim for a natural, well-written text that stays true to the main topic.

Body text on product pages

Product pages require special consideration. A product page usually contains descriptive text, product data, and price information. Many e-commerce sites import this information from suppliers. While product data is fine to reuse, the descriptive body text should ideally be rewritten — and here’s why.

For e-commerce sites, product pages are often the hardest part of the site to optimize. For someone selling 10,000 products, writing unique text for each one is a massive task. The benefits are significant, but it’s a question of balancing effort versus reward. In our own online stores, we often start by publishing supplier text, then rewrite it gradually over time. It takes effort, but it pays off.

The reason is simple: your text needs to be unique for Google to value it. No search engine wants to show multiple copies of the same text in its results, and algorithms are designed to prevent that. Duplicate content performs poorly in rankings. Read more about duplicate content.

Also optimize for synonyms

Using synonyms, plural forms, and related terms strengthens your page. While it’s important to mention the primary keyword, including semantically related words helps too. For example, if you’re writing about “search engine optimization,” it’s beneficial to also use terms like “SEO” and “digital marketing” within the same text.