300 Words or Quality Content for SEO?

Much has been written about the "300 words rule for SEO" during the last years. In short, it is usually adviced that bloggers and other content authors should write posts that have at least 300 words. This should be the optimum or at least the minimum for getting the web site a good ranking in the search engine results.

Three hundred words are not much especially when one writes in English. Every text has lots of "meaningless" words that do not carry any meaning that is used for web searches. With these meaningless words I mean for example articles ("a", "the"), prepositions ("in", "at", "of" etc.) and very common words like the verb "to be" ("is", "are" and so on).

I have not read anything very specific on this topic but I tend to think that as author I should concentrate on using words that have a meaning, words that add to the content of the blog. I doubt there is any point in just trying to make the articles longer by adding meaningless words to it. After all, what is the point of writing a blog? Is it just to make money by providing a platform for Google Adsense advertising? Or should I think my readers as customers who have needs that have to be addressed?

If I think my readers as my customers I have to provide them something that is worth reading. In my opinion this is best done by writing lengthy blog articles that have some point and answer the problems of my readers - or problems of my customers. If I think my readers as my customers I must concentrate on the quality of the service I provide. Only so will the customers return to the blog. Otherwise they will just read a few lines and never return back unless Google sends them here again with some new combination of search words.

Another point in providing quality content is the fact that even if I would not earn any high AdSense revenues I myself learn all the time. I learn about many things, not only about SEO, blogging or AdSense, but at least as importantly about writing in a foreign language. All of these are skills I can use elsewhere.

I am convinced that in order to keep my readers happy I have to be ready to work. Otherwise the blog is not worth reading. And at least as importantly I will not learn anything.