How long should a service page be?
Short answer
As long as it takes to answer what a customer needs to know before calling, and no longer. Google says it has no preferred word count. Longer pages often rank because they cover more questions, not because of their length. Cover each thing the customer needs once, then stop.
The right length for a service page is whatever it takes to answer what a customer needs to know before calling, and no longer. Google has said that it has no preferred length, and length isn’t something it rewards. In practice, a good page for a simple job is short and a good page for a complicated job is longer. Treat that as a description of good pages and never as a count to write toward.
What Google says about word count
Google says it doesn’t have one. Its guidance on creating helpful content asks whether you’re writing to a particular word count because you have heard Google prefers one, and then answers that it doesn’t. So a proposal that promises a set number of words per page is promising something Google says it doesn’t measure. You can read the current wording in Google Search Central.
Why longer pages often seem to rank better
Because of what is in them, as far as anyone outside Google can tell. A longer page tends to answer more of the questions a customer has, and the answers do the work. Length comes along as a side effect. A page padded to the same length with company history and repeated phrases answers nothing extra, and a reader on a phone has to scroll past all of it to find the number to call.
What a service page needs to cover
Whatever a customer wants settled before picking up the phone. For most home-service jobs that is this list:
- What the service is, in the words customers use, in the first sentence.
- The signs that someone needs it.
- What happens on the job, and roughly how disruptive it is.
- What affects the cost, even if you don’t publish prices.
- Which cities you do it in.
- Your license and any warranty you really offer.
- How to book: the phone number and your hours.
- Short answers to the questions your office hears most.
When each item is covered once, the page is long enough. The subject sets the length. A page about an electrical panel upgrade needs more room than a page about clearing a drain, because the customer has more to understand: permits, the power being off, and whether the upgrade is needed at all. Arranging these parts on the page, with titles and headings, is on-page SEO. The homepage has a different job, and what belongs on a home-service company’s homepage is a different list.
How to tell a page is too short or too long
A page is too short when a visitor can’t tell from it what you do and whether you do it in their city, or what happens next. Two sentences and a contact form is the usual case.
A page is too long when the answer is buried. The signs are several paragraphs of introduction before the service is named and the same point made more than once. Sections that belong on a different page are another. A long section about tankless water heaters inside a general water heater page may deserve a page of its own, provided customers search for it separately.
How I judge the length of a page
I compare coverage and ignore word counts. I read the pages that rank above yours for the search and note which customer questions they answer that yours doesn’t. Then I add the one missing answer that seems to matter most, measure about two weeks later, and keep it if the page moved. Sometimes the right edit is a cut. Deciding what a page should say is content for SEO work.