How long should your content be? Write for travellers first

The honest answer to "how long should this page be?" is: write for the traveller first, and the length will look after itself. Someone lands on your page dreaming about a trip, planning one, or deciding whether to go. Write for that person. Get that right and search engines and AI, which are built to reward exactly that kind of content, tend to follow.

This is a longer guide, and deliberately so -  it starts where good destination content starts, with the craft of writing for a human reader, then covers structure, recommended lengths, credibility, and last of all how this all plays with SEO and AI search. That order is the point: people first, machines second.

Note: Everything here is a guideline, not a rule. A page should be as long as it needs to be to do its job for the reader, and no longer.

Part 1: Write for the traveller first

Every page you write meets a traveller in one of a few mindsets:

• Dreaming. They are imagining a getaway, not yet committed to yours. Your homepage, Hero, region pages and stories speak to this person, and their job is to build desire.
• Planning. They are weighing your region against others and working out what a trip would actually look like. Category pages, experience guides and place pages serve this, and their job is to build confidence.
• Booking. They have decided and want the practical detail: dates, prices, how to get there, what to book. Product pages, itineraries, deals and planning pages serve this, and their job is to remove friction.

The same person moves through all three. A great destination site inspires them at the top of the funnel and enables them further down, and it never confuses the two. Lyrical scene-setting on a "getting here" page wastes a planner's time. A dry list of facts on the homepage kills the dream. Match the writing to the mindset.

Hold this in mind for everything below. The craft, the structure and the length all serve the traveller you are writing to.

Part 2: The craft of destination copywriting

This is the part that matters most, and the part that separates a destination site people remember from one they scroll past. None of it is about word count.

Show, don't tell

The oldest rule in travel writing, and still the best. Do not tell a reader a place is beautiful. Show them something specific enough that they conclude it themselves.

"Telling" leans on adjectives and asks the reader to take your word for it. "Showing" gives them a concrete image and lets them feel it. Compare:

• Telling: A stunning riverside town with breathtaking scenery.
• Showing: Mist lifts off the river as the paddle-steamers fire up, and by evening you are watching the sun drop behind the red gums with a cold drink in hand.

The second is longer, but the length is beside the point. It works because the reader can see it. Write for the senses: what a traveller would see, hear, smell and taste. Sensory detail is what transports a reader, and it is the difference between copy that sells a place and copy that merely labels it.

Cut the clichés

Travel copy has a stock cupboard of words that have lost all meaning through overuse. When every view is "breathtaking" and every town a "hidden gem", those words stop describing anything, and a reader skims straight past them.

Watch for these and their cousins:

hidden gem, something for everyone, nestled, breathtaking, stunning, must-see, bustling, quaint, picturesque, unspoilt, off the beaten track, a feast for the senses, melting pot, city of contrasts, paradise.

The fix is almost always the same: replace the cliché with a specific, true detail and let the reader draw the conclusion.

• Cliché: a bustling market.

• Better: stalls of just-picked stone fruit, the smell of woodfired coffee, a busker halfway down the lane.

• Cliché: nestled in stunning natural surrounds.

• Better: twenty minutes off the highway, where the ranges give way to vineyards.

• Cliché: our region has something for everyone.

• Better: name the somethings, and who they suit. "Families spend the day at the lake; walkers head for the escarpment tracks; anyone after a quiet weekend books a cellar-door lunch and does very little else."

"Something for everyone" is the tell-tale one. It is usually a sign the writer has not thought about who the traveller actually is. When you know your traveller, you can tell them what specifically is there for them.

Be specific, and be honest

Specificity is what makes copy credible, and honesty is what keeps it credible. Not everywhere is a paradise, and travellers know it. Overselling a place sets up a disappointment and quietly costs you trust. A town that is "wonderfully hectic" or a beach that is "wild and often windswept, best in the shoulder months" reads as true, and true is more persuasive than perfect.

This honesty extends to the practical. Flagging that the pool is closed in winter, or that the drive is longer than people expect, does not put travellers off. It manages expectations, improves the actual trip, and marks you as a source worth trusting. (This links directly to credibility and E-E-A-T, further down.)

Lead with emotion, follow with the benefit

Decide what feeling a page is meant to create - escape, adventure, calm, wonder - then write toward it. And do not stop at what a traveller can do. Tell them why it is worth doing, in terms of how it will feel.

• Feature: The lookout is a one-hour walk from the car park.
• Benefit: An easy hour on foot brings you to a lookout over the whole valley. Time it for sunrise, bring a coffee, and have the view to yourself.

Words that carry value - discover, escape, unwind, explore, wander - do more work than a list of amenities.

Find a voice, and drop the jargon

Great destination copy reads like a knowledgeable local talking to a friend, not a brochure. Write the way you would speak. Short sentences. Plain words. A distinct personality is an asset, even the dullest logistics can carry warmth if the voice is right. What you want to avoid is the flat, corporate, everywhere-sounds-the-same register that makes one destination indistinguishable from the next.

Inspire and enable, in that order

A trip needs both the dream and the logistics. Inspiration without practical detail leaves a traveller excited but stuck. Practical detail without inspiration gives them no reason to care. The strongest destination pages open with the reason to go, then quietly hand over what a traveller needs to make it happen, and lean on the platform (maps, Products, itineraries) to carry that practical load.

Do not overwrite

A well-placed image-rich sentence is powerful. Ten in a row are exhausting, and the reader switches off. Less is more with metaphor and adjective. Pick the one detail that does the work and cut the rest. This is also where the length guidance earns its keep: most of the time, tighter is better.

Part 3: Structure (the inverted pyramid)

Once you know what you want to say, structure decides whether anyone reads it. The single most useful structure for the web is the inverted pyramid, borrowed from journalism.

The idea: put the most important thing first, then supporting detail, then background, in descending order of importance. Picture a triangle balanced on its point, the broad, essential material at the top narrowing to the fine detail at the bottom. A reader who takes in only the first line still comes away knowing the point. A reader who wants more keeps going. As the Nielsen Norman Group puts it, this style suits the web precisely because people do not read carefully online, they scan, and they scroll only when the top of a page convinces them it is worth it.

This matters because of how people actually read. Decades of eye-tracking research from the Nielsen Norman Group finds that on a typical page, visitors take in only around a fifth of the words, and scan the rest, most often in an F-shaped pattern: a read across the top, a shorter read lower down, then a glance down the left-hand side. Your most important words need to sit where the eye lands, at the top, and at the start of each section. The inverted pyramid does this by design, out of respect for a busy reader's time.

On a Roam site, think of each content block as its own small inverted pyramid. Lead the block with its key point in the first line, then add the supporting detail. A page then reads as a stack of these, exactly the "set of pyramids" the Nielsen Norman Group describes for the web. This is also why several short Text blocks beat one long one: each gives a scanner a clean entry point.

The practical habit: lead with the answer, everywhere. On a page, in a section, in a block. The opening line is the line most people read.

Part 4: So how long should it be?

Now that you are writing for the traveller and leading with the point, here is roughly how much each page needs. These are starting points, meant to head off the two common mistakes: padding a page that should be quick, and starving a page a reader wants depth from.

Recommended lengths by page

Recommended lengths by content block

Because your pages are built from content blocks, this is the level you actually write to. A page total is the sum of its blocks, so if a block-level figure and a page-level range ever seem to disagree, the block figures win. They are what you control on the page.

Writing each page type well

Homepage and primary destination hubs. Dreaming pages. Keep the Hero short and evocative-but-specific, then an opening Text block that leads with why this place is worth the trip, then themed blocks people can scan. A primary hub earns more room because it has three jobs at once: to create desire, orient, and route people onward. A Region Map or Product Map carries the "where", so the copy does not have to.

Town and nearby-place pages. Planning pages. Enough to support a day-trip or overnight decision: how to get there, how long it takes, what is there, who it suits. Tight when it is just orienting, fuller when a real decision rests on it.

Category pages versus experience guides. These are often confused, and the difference sets the length. A category page is a listing page: a short intro that frames the theme, then the Products block and map do the rest. You do not describe every operator in prose. An experience guide is editorial - think "the best beaches on the coast" or "a first-timer's guide to the wine trail" - where a reader is comparing options and wants real detail, so it can run to 600–1,200 words. Ask what the page is for: orient and route, keep it short; compare and advise, give it room.

Place and attraction pages. Lead with what the place is and why someone would go, then answer the practical questions: where, when, and what to know before setting out. A few short blocks keep it scannable.

Operator and product pages. This is one of the questions we are asked most, so it is worth spelling out. Content on a product card, and on most blocks that display entries, is pulled from the product entry itself. You set it once on the entry and every card that references it follows, so there is no need to write a description again for each card. Most of your Roam products also sync their content automatically from ATDW: the description, images, contact, opening hours and booking link flow into the entry, and therefore the page, without you touching them. The only product pages you write by hand are your custom Roam products, the ones ATDW does not carry. For those, treat the page as a decision aid: around 100–250 words covering what it is, what is on offer and who it suits, and let the entry's structured fields, product tiers and the map carry the practical detail.

Itineraries. Working plans, so length follows the trip. Lead each day or stop with the essentials, where, how long, how far, then the practical detail. An Itinerary Map shows the route so the copy can focus on the experience.

Blog and stories. The one place a reader has chosen to read, and where the full craft above belongs: storytelling, sensory detail, a real point of view. There is no ideal length. Match or beat the usefulness of the best pages already covering your topic, then stop.

Deals and events. The offer or the event, the essentials (dates, price, location), and a clear way to book. Tight and time-bound.

Practical and planning pages. Getting here, seasons, accessibility, caravanning, safety. Facts and clarity over lyrical prose. Answer the question, keep each section self-contained, link out where useful.

FAQs. Use the Accordion & Tabs block, put the answer in the first sentence, then add nuance. Aim for 12 to 20 high-value questions rather than a page count.

Part 5: Credibility (E-E-A-T for destinations)

Good writing earns attention. Credibility earns trust, and trust is what turns a reader into a visitor. Google frames credibility with a four-part idea called E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. It is the lens Google's quality raters use to judge whether content is genuinely helpful, and Google is explicit that Trust is the most important of the four.

Here is the part that matters for you: when Google added the first "E", Experience, in 2022, the example it gave was content produced by someone who has actually visited a place. That is the home turf of a destination organisation. For a DMO, E-E-A-T is a natural advantage to lean into, as long as you write to it.

• Experience. You (and your operators) have been there. Write from first-hand knowledge, the walk that is better at low tide, the cafe locals actually go to, the season that catches people out. First-hand detail is impossible to fake and it reads as real.
• Expertise. You know your region better than anyone. Depth and accuracy across your pages signal that.
• Authoritativeness. You are the official voice of the destination. That recognition is worth leaning into, and worth reinforcing with an "about" that makes clear who you are.
• Trustworthiness. Accurate, current, honest information. This is where the "be honest" craft point pays off: overselling and clichés quietly erode trust, while specific, truthful copy and up-to-date practical detail build it. Keep seasonal and factual content current, and correct things when they change.

E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor and there is no "E-E-A-T score". It describes the qualities Google's systems try to reward, and they happen to be the same qualities AI systems favour when deciding what to cite. Write like the experienced, trusted local authority you are, and you are strong on all of it.

Part 6: The happy accident (SEO and AI reward the same thing)

Here is the good news, and the reason this guide is ordered the way it is. Everything so far - leading with the point, specific and honest copy, clear structure, genuine local authority - is exactly what search engines and AI systems are built to reward. Write for people and you are most of the way to writing for machines. You rarely have to trade one against the other.

Content length and SEO

There is no minimum or ideal word count for ranking. Google has said so repeatedly. Its Search Advocate, John Mueller, has said plainly that word count is not a ranking factor, and that nobody at Google is counting the words on your pages. He has also put it memorably: matching a top page's word count will not lift your ranking any more than collecting USB chargers will get you to the moon. Google's Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, has made the same point.

What Google rewards is content that answers the query well: covering the topic and matching what the searcher intended. A focused page that answers a question can beat a longer one that buries it. The test Google's own guidance points to is a good one to keep in mind: does the page leave the reader needing to search again for better information? If yes, it is too thin, whatever its length.

A few mechanical points sit alongside the writing. Meta titles run best at 50 to 60 characters and meta descriptions at 150 to 160, to fit what search engines display. A clear heading hierarchy (one H1, then H2s and H3s, one topic each) helps readers and search engines follow the page; your Text block supports proper heading levels. And the technical groundwork - meta tags, Open Graph and schema markup - is already built into your Roam site, so you can focus on the writing and leave the plumbing to the platform.

Content length and AI search (GEO)

GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, is writing so that AI systems - ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude - can find, understand and cite your content. It sits alongside SEO rather than replacing it, and for destinations it matters more each year.

Why it matters. Travellers increasingly start planning inside an AI tool, and a growing share of searches now end without a click, because the answer appears in the results. Analysts have projected a real shift of search volume toward AI interfaces. So the question is no longer only "do we rank on page one?" but "when a traveller asks an AI where to go for a quiet beach weekend near here, does it know about, and recommend, your region?" This is also part of why many destinations see traditional website traffic softening in analytics: it reflects an industry-wide shift in how people search, driven by AI and zero-click behaviour, rather than a problem with any one site.

How AI chooses what to cite. It rewards much the same habits as good human writing.

• Query fan-out. AI breaks a complex question into smaller sub-queries and searches each. Content that answers those specific smaller questions gets pulled in, another reason to be specific rather than generic.
• It reads the opening first. AI systems that retrieve live pages weigh the opening content heavily, so the first line or two of every section should answer the point directly. This is the inverted pyramid again.
• It lifts self-contained passages. A clear answer that stands on its own is easy to quote, exactly what "one idea per block" produces.
• Structure and FAQs help. Headings phrased the way people ask, and answer-first FAQ blocks, map neatly onto the questions AI is trying to answer.

What the research says. The big SEO platforms have studied this at scale, and the findings back the human-first approach. Ahrefs analysed 75,000 brands and found almost no relationship between how many pages a site has and how often it turns up in AI answers, so more content is not the lever. What matters is being useful, well-structured and current. Semrush's own guidance is to write to be easily referenced and cited rather than exhaustively comprehensive: answer the specific question, back a point with a concrete fact or figure, and keep pages fresh, since AI leans toward recent content. Semrush also found that AI often cites content built for a specific audience or question even when the page does not rank especially well in ordinary search, which rewards the specific over the generic.

The other consistent finding is about reputation. Ahrefs found the strongest signals for AI visibility are off-site: how often a brand is mentioned and referenced across the web, not its own page count. For a destination, that means being the recognised, frequently-referenced authority on your region, which is the same ground E-E-A-T rewards. Being the trusted local source, and being talked about as one, is what earns the citation.

An honest note on the plumbing. You will see a lot of GEO "hacks" online. Google's own position is that optimising for its AI features is still ordinary SEO, and it says you do not need special files like llms.txt for Google Search specifically. Other AI systems, though, do benefit from clean, machine-readable content and the emerging llms.txt standard. Your Roam site handles this layer for you, at no extra cost: AI Discovery automatically generates and maintains an llms.txt file, serves clean markdown to AI agents instead of messy HTML, and auto-generates schema markup from FAQ components.

One last point worth making: the Nielsen Norman Group's own recent work found that even AI-generated answers read best when they follow the inverted pyramid, and that some people choose an AI tool precisely because it puts the answer first. So the same structure that serves a scanning human serves the machines too. Write for people first, and the rest tends to follow.

A quick check before you publish

Run every page past these, roughly in this order:

The writing

• Does it show rather than tell, with a specific, sensory detail or two?
• Have you cut the clichés (no "hidden gem", "breathtaking", "something for everyone")?
• Is it honest, would a local recognise it as true?
• Does it lead with the point in the first line?

The structure and length

• Could someone get the gist from the headings and opening lines alone?
• Does each content block make a single, clear point?
• Are you writing prose to describe something a map or Products block already shows?
• Is every paragraph earning its place, or is some of it padding?

Credibility and currency

• Does the page reflect real, first-hand local knowledge?
• Is the practical and seasonal detail up to date?

If a page passes these, its length is right, whatever the word count.

Why we recommend this

This guidance rests on the craft of destination writing first, and on evidence that all points the same way:

• Travel copywriting craft. Show, don't tell; cut the clichés; be specific and honest; write for the senses and in a real voice. These are the long-standing principles of good travel writing.
• How people read online. Nielsen Norman Group research consistently finds that people scan rather than read, and that the inverted pyramid - most important information first - is the structure that serves them.
• Credibility. Google's E-E-A-T framework rewards first-hand experience, genuine expertise, authority and, above all, trust - all natural strengths for a destination organisation.
• SEO and AI search. Word count is not a ranking factor; what matters is answering the reader well. The same clear, specific, current, well-structured content is what AI systems cite.

Write for the traveller first, lead with the point, be specific and honest, and let your Roam site's search, maps, Products and AI Discovery carry the rest.

Sources and further reading

On how people read and structure content (primary)

• Nielsen Norman Group, Inverted Pyramid: Writing for Comprehension - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/inverted-pyramid/
• Nielsen Norman Group, How Users Read on the Web - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/
• Nielsen Norman Group, How Little Do Users Read? - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-little-do-users-read/

On credibility (primary)

• Google Search Central, E-A-T gets an extra E for Experience (the E-E-A-T update) - https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/12/google-raters-guidelines-e-e-a-t
• Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines (the source of the E-E-A-T framework).

On SEO and AI search (primary)

• Google Search Central, Guide to Optimising for Generative AI Features on Google Search - https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide
• Google Search Central guidance confirming word count is not a ranking factor.
• Ahrefs, Top brand visibility factors in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews (75,000 brands studied) - https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-brand-visibility-correlations/
• Semrush, We studied the impact of AI search on SEO traffic - https://www.semrush.com/blog/ai-search-seo-traffic-study/
• Semrush, How to optimise for AI search results - https://www.semrush.com/blog/ai-search-optimization/

On destination and travel copywriting (industry perspectives)

• Stratton Craig, Cut the cliché: how to make your travel writing soar - https://www.strattoncraig.com/insight/cut-the-cliche-make-your-travel-writing-soar/
• Big Star Copywriting, Travel copywriting guide: selling a destination with words - https://www.bigstarcopywriting.com/blog/content-marketing/travel-copywriting-guide/

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