There are two "tents" in your website - "intent" and "content." Before you worry about the SEO, think about your site visitors and the reason for the existence of a given page. This is the "intent" part. What is your intent for this page? What information are you trying to convey to your visitor? That should be your first concern. The internet isn't like any other form of marketing you've ever done. The site visitor has very definite and different expectations when they visit your website than they do when they read one of your print ads. The average visitor:
This isn't print: It's clear to the average consumer that what they see in most any print ad is something you're "pushing" at them with a goal of doing business at some point. And most consumers are OK with that, and will still read your ads if they have any interest at all. But, when they visit your website, particularly from a search engine, they arrived with a question or need for information. They're not looking for a sales pitch. They're looking for answers.
What the visitor wants: So, the first decision about content length for a web page should be made with the goal of providing the information that the visitor wants. If 200 words can do it, then that's probably enough. If it takes 600 words, then that's the right page length. If it takes thousands of words, then we get to a new decision and plan. This also has to do with choosing a key phrase for the page for which you'll be doing SEO. If you have a lot of information, and if you're having trouble narrowing down to one important key phrase, then you've got more than one web page of information.
Better less than too much: Suddenly some of the fear of not having a lot of SEO'd pages on your site will die away. The average web visitor is in a hurry, looking for fast access to the information they seek, and doesn't necessarily want extra information at that moment. This works in your favor for your site planning and content development. If you've got lots of information that answers several questions, you've probably got several pages of information. Generally, too much scrolling is not good, so a text-heavy page of information could be perfect with anywhere from around 200 to a bit more than 1000 words for complex topics.
Really, the "content" question is frequently not a question if you answer the "intent" question first. Develop the content of a page around the information you're trying to provide to your visitor. In another article about content length, we disect a subject and show how intent can shape content. It's more common sense than SEO. By the way, there are approximately 550 words in this article.
