Is having longer article or blog post results better ranking?

65 replies
  • SEO
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Hi warriors,

I have read that some people claim that having longer post in our blog will perform better than shorter one, in term of ranking.. is it true? Does anyone here experienced this?
(I know that there are many factors that affect rankings.. but does having longer article is one of the factors)

If anyone here did experience this, then how long the article should be? 1000 words or up to 3000+ words per article?

Thanks
#article #blog #longer #post #ranking #results
  • Profile picture of the author Rick Rodd
    Hi masterqif, the way I see it the advantage of having a longer article means you can strategically place your keywords and have a higher limit of keywords per article. 750-1000 seems suffice. Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author webdevpro
    Longer article means you have more interesting stuff to read (also high text/html ratio that SEs like) and can lead to your visitors to spend more time reading it and also may help in reducing the bounce rate too.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by webdevpro View Post

      Longer article means you have more interesting stuff to read (also high text/html ratio that SEs like) and can lead to your visitors to spend more time reading it and also may help in reducing the bounce rate too.
      Can you show one legitimate source that search engines prefer a high text/HTML ratio?

      I would love to see some solid testing on this that backs that up because I never have.
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  • Profile picture of the author Icematikx
    Content should exist for a reason.

    If you're going to write an article about the negative effects of eating McDonald's; then your first priority is to make sure that you're writing something that you believe is higher quality and more engaging than what's already out there.

    After all, if somebody else has written a better post, why would yours be linked to/shared?

    After that, it need a purpose. Are you trying to sell a product? Are you trying to get them to click through to an affiliate link? Figure it out and figure out how you're going to do this. An intrusive approach such as a pop-up, or non-intrusive text links?

    The word count doesn't matter. Here's why:

    If I wanted to look at a comparison between two web hosts - Siteground and Godaddy, which is better?

    #1 - A 4,000 word article describing both companies, their history, what they do, how they were born, what products they sell.. etcetc..

    #2 - A 200 word introduction backed by images/spreadsheets showing loading times, ping times, advanced features (server caching etc).

    I'd take #2, and link to #2 anyday.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO Power
    Forget about article length and focus on satisfying the needs of your visitors. Just give them what they want. Till date, I haven't noticed any difference between how long articles rank and how short articles rank.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    If you took that long article & broke it up into smaller more focused pages, then use internal links to connect the series of relevant pages, you would have a much stronger SERP position than a single page out there on it's own.
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    • Profile picture of the author Zoiden
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      If you took that long article & broke it up into smaller more focused pages, then use internal links to connect the series of relevant pages, you would have a much stronger SERP position than a single page out there on it's own.
      Right on spot! I have done just that and have a lot of blog articles ranking on first page just by building internal links to that blog post.

      Make sure it's useful information and helpful, I would hate to read an article that is 1000+ words and at the end I have not learned anything. So sometimes shorter and straight to the point blogs work much better.
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    There's no documented evidence I have of anything from Google. I doubt anyone else does either.

    That having been said, I combine the best of both worlds when I pick a topic to cover. I'll have one large resource article that can be anywhere from 2k-6k words. That article will use subheadings specifically built to attract their own search engine traffic - and they do. I talked about this a little in my hummingbird article.

    That large article will then link to sub-articles that handle 'Niche Subtopics' that still involve the root keyword. These subniche articles tend to be much shorter 250-600 words and are linked to directly within the context of the article (not below it.) I don't care about the anchor text as much as I do that there is a relevant link within the body.

    On the bottom of the sub-niche articles, I disable any 'related psots' plugin in place and add my own set of links to further interconnect the subniche articles as well as the main topic article.

    As a result of working this strategy over the past year or so, the main article ends up sucking up an enormous amount of random longtail traffic, even for phrases that aren't actually in the text. Additionally the 'Subniche' articles rank very well on their own accord as well despite having very little content at times when compared to the 'normal' opinion on all articles needing to be 500, 1000, 2000 words long etc.

    So what am I getting at?

    Article length is one thing, and it 'MIGHT' (read:probably does) help pull in additional traffic but the most important aspect seems clustering keywords and article titles within a tight group of interconnected pages -=-=- AND THEN looking at the content as a cumulative amount between all of the pages.

    But for the record, I'm sure there is an easier way to do the interlinking by using sub-categories. I just never dug into it enough to really find the right related posts plugin to like purely within the subcategory and further more, link all of the pages within that subcategory no matter how many there may be.

    Anyways, that's my take on content quantity.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      If you knew what google looks at on a page, then you would be very hesitant
      to make a longer, and longer, and even longer page.

      If you must make a longer page, and I see no reason to unless you are wikipedia,
      be sure and use anchors on the page that link to sections on it. If not, you
      get one long, useless piece of sewage that nobody in their right mind is going
      to scroll down to read.

      Short was a good practice even before smartphones and tablets.

      Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        If you knew what google looks at on a page, then you would be very hesitant
        to make a longer, and longer, and even longer page.

        If you must make a longer page, and I see no reason to unless you are Wikipedia
        You know, you also talk this way but you fail to ever provide any specifics...

        So, just what is Google looking at on a page? Don't be shy with details, it's evident by your tone that you've got this all figured out so lay some knowledge on us. Some examples would be great to go along with it, which since you know exactly what to look for shouldn't be too hard to find.

        Here, let me start just so you don't feel I'm trolling you for fun...

        About Wikipedia... that is exactly the kind of niche-leading resource I'm talking about reproducing with the main page. Complete with a TOC (I like TOC+), the links to other internal pages just like wikipedia, etc. You know, the kind of supremely useful resource that constantly attracts links and traffic that you then funnel into a conversion point on the subniche pages - as they are better suited to converting anyways since their nature is very specific and will resonate with an engaged reader.

        Essentially, it's a way of broadly addressing various markets under one domain by taking a small piece of individual niches within those markets after you've proven yourself as an authority on that market with your "long piece of sewage."

        A real example would be what I'm writing on tonight... whole foods diets. My main feature article is already written and it's 5700 words that covers everything you might want to know about a whole foods diet (cardiovascular benefits, cancer, weight loss, basic meal plans, effective shopping habits, etc) - and it instantly attracted a PR5 link with more to come. Tonight my subniche articles will be digging into plant-based whole foods diets, fruitarian whole foods diets, etc. and there is where I'll monetize with "Forks-Over-Knives' merch - Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead merch (like a shoot-out review of blenders $350 and above), etc.

        But to illustrate the point of general effectiveness in this approach, I contacted three bloggers with their own active audiences and have gotten one PR5 resource page link (the link I referred to before) and two "Open Arms" guest blogging offers so that I can take their "Natural Weight Loss" traffic and push it directly into the front end of my sales funnel.

        3 contacts, 3 links, instant traffic - all because I created a huge resource that people will be able to use when learning about whole foods diets or deciding which one is the best for them (which is where I bank.)

        Are you telling me that you could create that kind of thick, detailed, fully developed resource material in a few hundred words and gotten links that easily? Really, is that the argument you want to forward to me? That you would more easily rank with a short page instead of a big, incredible resource that bloggers are willing to just throw links and traffic at?

        There are a lot of reasons to create massive, helpful, industry boosting articles that are wikipedia like and that you are so quick to condemn and "see no reason to" create. There are a lot of ways to use them to build links, get engaged traffic and make sales. Sustainable, long term, business building sales... You know, the kind of sales structure that everyone wants to have but never wants to put the effort into creating.

        As far as addressing "What Google is looking for" just how many PR5 links do you think I will need to have GIVEN to me to rank this page and all of the sub-niche pages? I doubt many... in fact I think Google is going to jerk off and drop it's rank-loving-load all over those pages.

        Give me all the advantages to your short pages in comparison to this kind of resource. Tell me more about how stupid it is to execute my approach of using that large piece of content because I've just put my e-penis on the table and showed you exactly how to do it the right way. Prove me wrong with all you know about "what Google is looking for." And be sure to point out how stupid it is to create "one long, useless piece of sewage that nobody in their right mind is going to scroll down to read."

        Obviously if you can't get someone to read a long article that provides unique and dynamic value then you can't format it correctly or simply can't write for shit - and if that's the case it doesn't matter if the article is 30 words or 30,000 words.

        Let us hear it, expert.
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        • Profile picture of the author raiko
          Actually that's what I've been moving towards as well. Longer sections of content. The reason why I started doing that wasn't so much ranking but rather audience. I fully agree that a reader of content does not want to read a hugely long article on a subject - UNLESS they really love that subject. If they do then they can't get enough of it. Of course, most "articles" are idiotic and usually written by and for someone who knows nothing about the subject. But, what if you're audience really loves dogs? They've already seen all those stupid dog training articles that have been regurgitated a thousand times. When they find something on the net that they feel is "advanced" or is actually very interesting to them they suck it up like a fly sucking up its regurgitated meal. I know this because that is what I do. I read through godoveryou's long post because I felt it was very interesting and I could glean some useful information. If he kept feeding me pieces of useful info then I would keep reading even if it took up 5 pages. In fact, when I feel like I'm getting really good information I soak it up as fast as I can because it's actually pretty hard to find on the net.

          So, perhaps looking at it from just a ranking and SEO perspective, short content seems better but, from an overall user experience perspective longer content seems more appropriate. At least that's the direction I've been leaning toward.
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        • Profile picture of the author danparks
          Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

          ... in fact I think Google is going to jerk off and drop it's rank-loving-load all over those pages.
          I don't know if I'm very amused or very disgusted by that line. Both, I think.

          Oh, yeah, almost forgot. I actually hit "reply" because I wanted to say that was an interesting post on article length.
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        • Profile picture of the author KMalo
          What a great post, thank you for providing real value and meaningful content.

          I don't post a great deal on this forum but I do like to read through some threads here and there. I'm glad I read this one if only for this single post.

          Some posters here in the seo forum do seem to enjoy posting nothing but snide condescending comments. It's refreshing when members like yourself do take the time to offer real insight when someone asks a genuine question, even if the question itself seems flawed.

          I'm learning.


          Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

          You know, you also talk this way but you fail to ever provide any specifics...

          So, just what is Google looking at on a page? Don't be shy with details, it's evident by your tone that you've got this all figured out so lay some knowledge on us. Some examples would be great to go along with it, which since you know exactly what to look for shouldn't be too hard to find.

          Here, let me start just so you don't feel I'm trolling you for fun...

          About Wikipedia... that is exactly the kind of niche-leading resource I'm talking about reproducing with the main page. Complete with a TOC (I like TOC+), the links to other internal pages just like wikipedia, etc. You know, the kind of supremely useful resource that constantly attracts links and traffic that you then funnel into a conversion point on the subniche pages - as they are better suited to converting anyways since their nature is very specific and will resonate with an engaged reader.

          Essentially, it's a way of broadly addressing various markets under one domain by taking a small piece of individual niches within those markets after you've proven yourself as an authority on that market with your "long piece of sewage."

          A real example would be what I'm writing on tonight... whole foods diets. My main feature article is already written and it's 5700 words that covers everything you might want to know about a whole foods diet (cardiovascular benefits, cancer, weight loss, basic meal plans, effective shopping habits, etc) - and it instantly attracted a PR5 link with more to come. Tonight my subniche articles will be digging into plant-based whole foods diets, fruitarian whole foods diets, etc. and there is where I'll monetize with "Forks-Over-Knives' merch - Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead merch (like a shoot-out review of blenders $350 and above), etc.

          But to illustrate the point of general effectiveness in this approach, I contacted three bloggers with their own active audiences and have gotten one PR5 resource page link (the link I referred to before) and two "Open Arms" guest blogging offers so that I can take their "Natural Weight Loss" traffic and push it directly into the front end of my sales funnel.

          3 contacts, 3 links, instant traffic - all because I created a huge resource that people will be able to use when learning about whole foods diets or deciding which one is the best for them (which is where I bank.)

          Are you telling me that you could create that kind of thick, detailed, fully developed resources in a few hundred words and gotten links that easily? Really, is that the argument you want to forward to me? That you would more easily rank with a short page instead of a big, incredible resource?

          There are a lot of reasons to create massive, helpful, industry boosting articles that are wikipedia like and that you are so quick to condemn and "see no reason to" create. There are a lot of ways to use them to build links, get engaged traffic and make sales. Sustainable, long term, business building sales... You know, the kind of sales structure that everyone wants to have but never wants to put the effort into creating.

          As far as addressing "What Google is looking for" just how many PR5 links do you think I will need to have GIVEN to me to rank this page and all of the sub-niche pages? I doubt many... in fact I think Google is going to jerk off and drop it's rank-loving-load all over those pages.

          Give me all the advantages to your short pages in comparison to this kind of resource. Tell me more about how stupid it is to execute my approach of using that large piece of content because I've just put my e-penis on the table and showed you exactly how to do it the right way. Prove me wrong with all you know about "what Google is looking for." And be sure to point out how stupid it is to create "one long, useless piece of sewage that nobody in their right mind is going to scroll down to read."

          Obviously if you can't get someone to read a long article that provides unique and dynamic value then you can't format it correctly or simply can't write for shit - and if that's the case it doesn't matter if the article is 30 words or 30,000 words.

          Let us hear it, expert.
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        • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
          Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

          Are you telling me that you could create that kind of thick, detailed, fully developed resources in a few hundred words and gotten links that easily? Really, is that the argument you want to forward to me? That you would more easily rank with a short page instead of a big, incredible resource?
          Great post godoveryou, I must say this is the kind of post that should be more abundant, sometimes there are just sarky one liners that dont add any value whatsoever (I am guilty of this myself) while in this response there are several golden nuggets, this is for the first part I wanted to praise the great post even with the graphic metaphors and the slap to Paul.

          On the other hand there are some times where short content may work (not as well as to get a PR5 backlink, but the goal with this traffic is different) in the case that shorted content works better is in the entertainment arena, people just want a good laugh, share it with their peers and be funny, that is the only arena where memes, funy pictures and lol cats will win over an article, but here is hit and miss.
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          • Profile picture of the author raiko
            That may be true Yukon, especially when I'm shopping for a toaster. I don't need to know the history of toasters.

            But, what if like old muscle cars and I come across a 4000 word long story about how someone found a 1969 COPO Camaro in a farm shed somewhere and restored it and now it's at auction. I love that stuff. I would read the whole article and be waiting for a follow up article. On top of that I would send the link to my friends that would be interested and I would link to it on my blog.

            I mean look at PewDiePie on YouTube. That guy makes about a $100k a month with that stupid channel of his. I can barely watch 30 seconds of his videos but all those kids that love that stuff eat it up. He has almost 30 million subscribers. Granted it's not the same as ranking a page with Google but it shows that long duration content can be very compelling to visitors that are interested in the subject matter. If you really want to get depressed watch the DisneyCollector channel on YouTube. I think she makes around $15k a month with that drek. But, hey, to each his own.

            So, yeah, I don't think long content for toasters is very useful with regard to ranking. Who's going to link to it? But, content that is especially interesting will garner links as goy mentioned above. And, sometimes that content needs to be longer than normal because it includes actual knowledge rather than slop.
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        • Haha, just your comment alone was probably over 500 words and I happened to have read the whole thing for the useful content that it turned out to be. Point proven.
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  • Profile picture of the author accessted
    Great topic and great advise.

    Paul is it safe to assume if you have a 1000 word article on a topic. On your home page you can write 500 words and then link to another page you create on same keyword and link it to that article with the other 500 words? Does the NAV bar have any effect on this as it links to the page. Or do we have to have a direct link to the second article from the first ?

    You are right, I hate having a 1000 article to scroll through. No matter how hard you try and break it up it seems to long.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Ray
    I know I have been told that "Content is king" before.

    But it has to be good content.

    That said, you could probably go with shorter articles, but what you write has to be good content. You can have a 2000 word article and still have it be garbage.

    But it is generally easier for people to write longer articles and have them come out good (just more room to fit in the good, quality content).
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    It's ridiculous to think an article is required to rank a page.

    Don't get me wrong, If someone is a writer, well you'll probably be writing articles but I'm 99.99% sure that 99.99% of the folks on this sub-forum will never be a writer.

    There's some situations that might require long pages of text (ex: FAQ pages, or similar) but having long pages of text just to rank a page is nonsense.

    The EZA IM link spammers invented the idea of trying to associate articles with SEO. Somehow that spread like wildfire on this forum. Years later after EZA nofollowed their junk links the illusion of long pages of text ranking pages is still rampant. Thanks goes out to the interwebs for never forgetting.

    Something tells me nobody gives a $hit about 2,500 words of text when they're shopping for a toaster oven & just because you own an offline business changing brake pads & mufflers doesn't mean potential customers give a crap about your 3,578 words of text on the history of asbestos brake pads.

    Focus people, focus...
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    • Profile picture of the author Andrew S
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      It's ridiculous to think an article is required to rank a page.
      There is a lot of data that would say otherwise.

      Why Data Driven SEO Trumps Guru Opinions
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Andrew S View Post

        There is a lot of data that would say otherwise.

        Why Data Driven SEO Trumps Guru Opinions
        That post is far from being a lot of data.

        They later said this (below) so I guess they didn't drink too much kool-aid.

        In essence, in the aggregate, pages ranking for SERPs with a CI of 75 or higher are well branded and have a lot of other signals going for them, so content length is just not playing a very significant factor in their ranking whatsoever.
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        • Profile picture of the author Andrew S
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          That post is far from being a lot of data.

          They later said this (below) so I guess they didn't drink too much kool-aid.
          I don't know what your idea of a lot of data is, but analyzing the top 10 for 20,000 terms is plenty.

          Google Panda put the hammer on a whole lot of 100 page 300 word sites, so saying length doesn't matter is how SEO was done pre-2011. In SEO years, that is some stone-aged SEO advice there my friend.
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          • Profile picture of the author yukon
            Banned
            Originally Posted by Andrew S View Post

            I don't know what your idea of a lot of data is, but analyzing the top 10 for 20,000 terms is plenty.

            Google Panda put the hammer on a whole lot of 100 page 300 word sites, so saying length doesn't matter is how SEO was done pre-2011. In SEO years, that is some stone-aged SEO advice there my friend.
            No,

            Google put the hammer on a lot of people that didn't know what they were doing (there's a difference). None of my traffic pages that I care about have dropped because of any Google update. I've had the same setup for years on multiple domains.

            Even the latest tweak Google did for self hosted video pages didn't drop any of my pages in the SERPs.

            I'm not saying I can't ever get slapped by an algo. (anything is possible), I'm saying I haven't been slapped yet & doubt it will happen anytime soon.
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    You're welcome guys.

    None the less, I was a little feisty over the attitude that only an idiot would create longer posts.

    In terms of SEO in a no link vs no link scenario, I still think the longer article with properly used subheadings and phrase selection will pull in more traffic from the SERPS than a shorter article. However, would a shorter article rank better for just one phrase... maybe? I don't feel that way but I wouldn't rule it out completely either.

    One thing I do know is that a big, thick, longer resource of helpful information with great insight will almost always attract more organic links or more easily get links when they are asked for. If it will get more links naturally then the SEO is clearly one sided.

    Of course that wouldn't be true if you write like a moron and it's third grade level "Words on a page" filler material. Then it doesn't matter how long the article is, nobody is going to care.

    But to suggest that a long article is sewage... That's where the buck stops. That's just bullshit and I wanted to clearly state exactly why and how.
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    And yukon, obviously I'm not talking about selling toasters here. If it were I'd just autogen a site with spun content and linkspam it.

    I'm talking about creating a funnel that extracts the most traffic out of the SERPS possible, warms them up, establishes trust and then lets them walk themselves into a purchase from the funnel.

    Worse case scenario, this collects a lot of email leads. Best scenario, it makes a lot of sales directly off the ranking subniche pages which get their link juice from the internal links off the large article - which only gets its links because it is a large, helpful resource that embeds itself in the niche on blogs and forums.

    Bottom Line:
    - We use SEO to get targeted traffic.
    - The more targeted traffic we get the more sales we can make.
    - The SEO method that makes the most sales wins.
    - Page content will in part be determined by the niche and user expectation.
    - The internet traffic researching a purchase decision is looking for information.

    Why not give them one resource page they want and then walk then through to the sale at the end?

    Short pages are fine if someone knows exactly what they want (a 4 slice silver toaster.) Why not establish yourself as the one to trust with everyone else?

    I'm trying to prevent going into another long post but... relationships are transactional. You give them something and then they want to do something for you. This is basic sales stuff.
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  • Profile picture of the author Action Man
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  • Profile picture of the author shahocean
    Article length is important when you have good content. If visitors staying on the page and actually reading the content, then it is one of the most important factor.

    Take away is Good Quality Hope this helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    Read the section on backlinks and you will find he finds the same thing I did about long content being that people link to it more frequently... A distinct SEO advantage.

    How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions
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    • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      Read the section on backlinks and you will find he finds the same thing I did about long content being that people link to it more frequently... A distinct SEO advantage.

      How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions

      For about a week I thought you might be dead.

      Looks like you where just reloading.

      Use the word funnel again, it sounds sexy when you say it.
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      • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        I disagree, it's not the length of content, it's the content period.
        Obviously there's a lot of support for this.

        That having been said, I still want to hear about how stupid the idea of 'Sewage' articles are from the expert.

        Originally Posted by Kevin Maguire View Post

        For about a week I thought you might be dead.

        Looks like you where just reloading.

        Use the word funnel again, it sounds sexy when you say it.
        Please don't let my word hustle
        Cause your emotions to crumble
        You know I'm trouble
        I can see your puddle
        We can make love like in a jungle
        Please put up a good struggle

        Make me use my muscle
        And I won't be subtle
        Your knees will buckle
        I'll make you cry uncle
        I may be in your tunnel
        But we'll never be a couple

        Now don't you fumble
        In the end you'll guzzle
        From the end of my funnel
        Your heart I'll pummel
        That gave me a chuckle,
        Now what's your rebuttal?
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        • Profile picture of the author raiko
          Wait.. did this discussion go from length of content to length of funnels? Is it going to be a "Who's got the longer funnel" competition now?
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

          Obviously there's a lot of support for this.

          That having been said, I still want to hear about how stupid the idea of 'Sewage' articles are from the expert.
          With a name like sewage, it has to be good...






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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      Read the section on backlinks and you will find he finds the same thing I did about long content being that people link to it more frequently... A distinct SEO advantage.

      How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions
      I disagree, it's not the length of content, it's the content period.

      When people start counting things in SEO the illusions are endless. Remember the keyword density guys, they swear it ranks pages. What about the guys counting backlinks, not quality links, just links. It gets silly real quick.

      BTW, I can't stand that site/link with the relentless stupid popups.
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    • Profile picture of the author WareTime
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      Read the section on backlinks and you will find he finds the same thing I did about long content being that people link to it more frequently... A distinct SEO advantage.

      How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions
      With an informational article, all things equal, longer is more informative so naturally should garner more links. That many in this forum don't want to work this way and would rather take the easy way out is not news to me.

      Quality attracts links, sometimes length contributes to quality. The article you wrote would have been very ineffectual at 200 words.

      I "SEO" in the same way you do. I don't worry about slaps, penalties, or animals beginning with the letter "P" because I get members of the human race to create links for me by providing them with value. Works fine so far.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by WareTime View Post

        With an informational article, all things equal, longer is more informative so naturally should garner more links.
        With that theory a video page would never rank in Google SERPs which obviously isn't the case.

        Long articles for SEO is yet another IMer dream that has nothing to do with ranking a page.

        BTW, I've seen my share of articles (any length) from post/links being made here on the SEO forum, 99.99% of them are pure keyword stuffed crap.
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  • Profile picture of the author Hudson White
    Longer or shorter doesn't affect indeed the quality matters a lot. If your content is not of good quality you will not be able to provide an attractive stuff to readers hence they will not stick to your site hence will increase bounce rate. So for better performance use quality stuff and share that stuff in your social network for better results.
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  • Profile picture of the author Scott016
    Even though no one scrolls down to read line by line of a 1000+ words article , still Google loves longer content. For terms related to SEO, SERPS will show results of longer article with more relevant content.
    Actually its more about creating a webpage which solves a user problem with a user friendly interface and all the relevant links. So just focus on creating a useful web page how small or how big doesnt matter much.
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  • Profile picture of the author Masondavis
    Forget about article length and focus on satisfying the needs of your visitors.
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  • Profile picture of the author usemyteam
    If you have read the myths of SEO it included keyword density, article length among others. Google made it clear that relevance of article is more important than anything else because it is your end user who is going to read it, if they find it helpful - they will save your website and if not then they wont be coming back to you.
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    • Profile picture of the author raiko
      OK, I'm sorry but I don't buy the "relevancy of the article" argument. Go ahead and write an article on losing belly fat for me. Make it 500 words. Then explain to me how it's more relevant than any of the other 2 billion 500 word "lose your belly fat" articles clogging the net right now. Go ahead, jam all 500 words full of extremely relevant stuff. If relevancy is so important then that article should generate organic links like crazy.

      Sadly, it will not. You will have to force links to it. As a webmaster, with actual site visitors, I am never going to link to some stupid rehashed article that glosses over the generalities of a particular subject. That's why Wikipedia does so well. It's not just their on page structure, it's that everyone and their mom links to their stuff.

      How's this for relevancy: Burn more calories than you consume and you will lose weight.

      That statement is so relevant this thread should rank page one for weight loss by tomorrow.

      I'll be back tomorrow to check.
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    I accidentally took it there when we got into the 'Sewage' discussion.

    Basically, it's my fault.
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  • Profile picture of the author npoint
    I didn`t saw any evidence to prove that but the truth is if longer is your article the better you can optimize them for you keyphrases (:


    Originally Posted by masterqif View Post

    Hi warriors,

    I have read that some people claim that having longer post in our blog will perform better than shorter one, in term of ranking.. is it true? Does anyone here experienced this?
    (I know that there are many factors that affect rankings.. but does having longer article is one of the factors)

    If anyone here did experience this, then how long the article should be? 1000 words or up to 3000+ words per article?

    Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnnyPlan
    There's some logic to the idea that a longer article might be considered more credible or authoritative by Google. After all, what can you really say in a few hundred words that is relevant about a subject? Not that every post has to be a massive tome of words to rank well. After all, many shorter posts on famous blogs rank well, but maybe that has more to do with the authority of the entire site and not one individual post. But, lacking the authority status, if you want to establish one specific page on Google, then you might want to take the time to flesh out your content and cover all sides of the issue and go in depth, rather than simply offering the surface treatment for your topic.
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  • Profile picture of the author shimul0011
    Search on Google for many keywords. I believe in most cases you will find, high ranking pages contain long articles ! That proves the truth . I saw somewhere, Google wants to put value on articles that seem to be detailed in nature so that people can find their answers on the same page. That doesn't mean Google would bring a long article when someone searches " what is the capital of Germany " ! If everything else is same, then long articles provide a lot more chances than short articles do - more contents, more keywords, more detail.

    I don't know if this is the same case, but almost all wikihow articles those rank on Google for hundreds of keywords are long, detailed and have pictures, thought I myself find most pictures unnecessary.
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    I suppose one question that we haven't really looked at in this thread is 'Query Intent.'

    Up until now, we've treated all queries as equals where as Google certainly does not. The perceived (calculated) intent of the query will change the type of preferred results returned in most cases.

    Therefore, might it be an over simplification to ask if an articles length is really the determining factor in ranking performance? Might this also be the reason for such mixed opinions?

    Just saying...

    None the less, I'm on the edge of my seat on this sewage thing. I know he's been on the forum since that post. Speak sir, lay upon me your education, skills, training and experience. Do it, do it now.
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    • Profile picture of the author raiko
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      I suppose one question that we haven't really looked at in this thread is 'Query Intent.'
      Another question I have is whether or not more technical detail in the content is beneficial. "Eat less and exercise more and you will lose your belly fat" in 400 words has no benefit. But what if you have 1000 words on the most recent research project that your Dad, the exercise physiologist at MIT, just conducted that goes into detail as to how you can lose specific belly fat when doing general exercise?

      How does Google determine not merely the relevancy, which is almost meaningless, but rather the utility of the information? Is it strictly based upon the sophistication of the query?
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      I suppose one question that we haven't really looked at in this thread is 'Query Intent.'

      Up until now, we've treated all queries as equals where as Google certainly does not. The perceived (calculated) intent of the query will change the type of preferred results returned in most cases.

      Therefore, might it be an over simplification to ask if an articles length is really the determining factor in ranking performance? Might this also be the reason for such mixed opinions?
      That's sort of what I was hinting at with the FAQ comment on post #16.

      Your right though on search intent, that kind of fudged up the whole stop words list. I wouldn't be surprised If Google was looking at punctuation in that instance for both a search phrase & ranked page.

      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      There's some situations that might require long pages of text (ex: FAQ pages, or similar) but having long pages of text just to rank a page is nonsense.
      I'm not saying long pages of text aren't always necessary, just that the amount of text on it's own isn't ranking anything. Believe me, If 10,000 words ranked pages I would be all over it like a spider monkey. Obviously having the keyword on the page is useful but when you go blazing through a list of keywords for a single page it starts diluting focus on the main keyword for the page so you end up with a page that's really not optimized for anything.

      The answer (IMO) is to take that long article & break it up into a series of internal pages that are each focused on their own main keyword, then use each of the pages in the series as internal link sources (silo).

      The advantage with a series of pages is the SEO value of the highly relevant internal links to multiple internal pages that each have optimized page <title>s. Then you also get multiple entry points in the SERPs of several pages that each rank for same/similar keywords. You can't rank a single article page in positions #1, #2, #3 for the [exact] same keyword, you can do that with multiple internal pages (more traffic).

      The user experience is also better (IMO) considering traffic almost always has a short attention span. Plus you can easily jack up your page views, example, a long article broken up into 7 internal pages will most likely generate at least 7 page views per unique traffic, assuming each page in the content series is linking to the other pages in the same series which it should be or it's a wasted SEO opportunity.

      Here's a real example (howstuffworks.com) that was once optimized & ranked for the keyword hurricane for years. I have no idea why they went & overhauled the series of keyword rich internal links & screwed up their SERP position, they dropped to page #2 shortly after the overhaul. The Wayback (link) screenshot below is how the series of pages was structured (silo).

      The old page layout style was a very good setup:
      • Series of keyword anchor-text links (now they have numbers for anchor-text (duh)
      • Obvious call-to-action for traffic


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  • Profile picture of the author blaze the trail
    Longer article or blog post does not necessarily put you on Google's First page or increase your rank.if you 've got great content and your article or blog post is fully seo optimized,then an improved ranking might come along the way.
    So write a longer article or blog post so long as is of high quality,fully seo optimized and an attention-grabber any day,anytime.
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    Truthfully, outside of some markers - I doubt they can.

    Anyone who is really a SEO junkie when it comes to content should be familiar with cooccurence and cocitation at this point...

    Those would be markers that I would consider as important when talking about a research query. And really, this goes back to Wikipedia as well.

    I wasn't too convinced of 'The co's' at first but around 6-8 months ago, Matt Cutts tweeted an article that discussed links being compared to a list of sources on a research paper where as the links indicated previously conducted research of importance or facts that influenced the primary document. So I began to looking into how external links were used on research papers since that seemed to be the direction I should look towards.

    I've yet to really complete my opinion on the topic, but... It is a great way to easily identify the 'vertical' of a new document and perceive its possible value as research and information.

    Put yourself in the shoes of a skeptic, which is exactly where Google is.
    -Are you more likely to trust a research paper that cites its sources versus one that doesn't?
    -Are you more likely to trust a research paper based on sources you know are already proven to be good by their history in comparison to a research paper that uses sources you've never heard of?

    My point is that I don't think they could determine utility based on the words of the document, but would also need outside markers....
    -links (sources)
    -charts
    -videos
    -comments
    -tools they can crawl and execute (like JS based tools)

    Etc
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      My point is that I don't think they could determine utility based on the words of the document, but would also need outside markers....
      -links (sources)
      -charts
      -videos
      -comments
      -tools they can crawl and execute (like JS based tools)

      Etc

      Your still holding back, an article isn't a necessity for a huge percentage of web traffic.
      • Nobody goes to youtube.com for articles, they go for the videos.
      • Nobody goes to github.com for articles, they go for the source code.
      • Nobody goes to shutterstock.com for articles, they go for the images.
      • etc...

      All those examples rank pages without articles, millions more do the same everyday & have been for years.
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      • Profile picture of the author Andrew S
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        No,
        I'm not saying I can't ever get slapped by an algo. (anything is possible), I'm saying I haven't been slapped yet & doubt it will happen anytime soon.
        That's cool but I was referring to Google Panda and how it affected sites with thin content.

        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        Your still holding back, an article isn't a necessity for a huge percentage of web traffic.
        • Nobody goes to youtube.com for articles, they go for the videos.
        • Nobody goes to github.com for articles, they go for the source code.
        • Nobody goes to shutterstock.com for articles, they go for the images.
        • etc...

        All those examples rank pages without articles, millions more do the same everyday & have been for years.
        Not the greatest examples.

        I've ranked plenty of youtube videos and an integral part of doing so is transcribing the audio for the video description.

        Github repo's can rank and when they do they have a fleshed out Readme a lot of links. Jquery/Node/etc.. repos for example.

        Never seen an image rank for a SERP that wasn't G images.

        Search spiders need text.
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        • Profile picture of the author pendulator
          Well let`s just say I read only short, well structured answers on this topic and not the long ones... Does that ring any bell to you OP?
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      • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        Your still holding back....
        Oh sure, now you want it all...
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    • Profile picture of the author raiko
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      I wasn't too convinced of 'The co's' at first but around 6-8 months ago, Matt Cutts tweeted an article that discussed links being compared to a list of sources on a research paper where as the links indicated previously conducted research of importance or facts that influenced the primary document. So I began to looking into how external links were used on research papers since that seemed to be the direction I should look towards.
      That's exactly how I perceive value myself. In grad school I spent countless hours reading research papers and citations, and references became something I relied upon to determine the value of a paper. People do the same thing on WF. If they perceive a particular poster to not be knowledgeable in the area of their query they tend to discount their posts in terms of usefulness. Some, such as yourself and Yukon, have given enough applicable knowledge out in your previous posts that many readers here have applied a high value to your information. If someone references your post I immediately give them a higher level of credibility because they value things the same way I do.

      Of course there is a trade off between the level of sophistication of the content and appeal to the general market. Ph.D level information doesn't dominate the top of the serps because most of it is nearly incomprehensible to most web surfers. I would think Google would want to analyze content in a similar manner though I'm not exactly sure how they would do it effectively.

      Academics always know where current research stands in their field of expertise and where it is headed. They also know what past research has been relegated to the trash heap and which has been used as a foundation for current knowledge. I don't know that Google has that capability. It appears as though their idea of the most valuable useable level of current human knowledge is Wikipedia or eHow.
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    • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      Anyone who is really a SEO junkie when it comes to content should be familiar with cooccurence and cocitation at this point...
      Geeky alert!!!

      Even if co citation and co occurrence play a factor in the rankings Google still needs a parameter to know what keywords are the "imputs" (talking in a neural networks language) and these imputs (from my experience) are the anchor texts otherwise how do you define the proximity of the terms?

      Furthermore even if they introduced those two variables the old anchor text is the most relevant factor (as it was always been) to rank a page, for sure now we need to pay more attention of what phrases we put the anchor text, but a well created anchor text is still the base.
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      • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
        Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post

        Geeky alert!!!

        Even if co citation and co occurrence play a factor in the rankings Google still needs a parameter to know what keywords are the "imputs" (talking in a neural networks language) and these imputs (from my experience) are the anchor texts otherwise how do you define the proximity of the terms?

        Furthermore even if they introduced those two variables the old anchor text is the most relevant factor (as it was always been) to rank a page, for sure now we need to pay more attention of what phrases we put the anchor text, but a well created anchor text is still the base.
        This is a good point. I feel that you are on the right path but are placing too much emphasis on anchor text as an input. I'm on my phone so I will be somewhat brief in my reply.

        Their N.N. training radically advanced in 2007 and even then published patents referenced many hidden inputs. Since that point, 7 years later I feel confident that the N.N. training has advanced well beyond a linear reliance on anchor text and instead will depend more on additional document metadata that a referencing document would provide and as permitted in scope by BigTable - a technical advancement that was surely aimed at improving the sample size for the N.N. at work.

        Really, all we can do is guess at what those inputs may be and how they are weighted. It is not my intention to dispute that anchor text is a valuable input. I merely forward that the inputs are non-linear and with the increased availablility of sample metadata provided by BigTable, anchor text as applied to the N.N. processing would have diminished in weight.

        As a "common sense" example I would forward the sample research papers that often times only include their referenced sources as naked urls where as the value of that input would be negated despite the document having significant value and a strong relationship with the originating document.

        It would be in these cases where metadata related to things like image tags, etc etc etc would be more useful inputs and for all we know - they very well may have proven to be just that.

        A secondary significant example would be documents served as a relevant result without the searched query existing in the title, body or anchor text of said content. This strongly points to the N.N. relying and weighting the analysis of other metadata that we don't have access to.

        But wouldn't it be nice to?
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  • Profile picture of the author manojbhardwaj
    Originally Posted by masterqif View Post

    Hi warriors,

    I have read that some people claim that having longer post in our blog will perform better than shorter one, in term of ranking.. is it true? Does anyone here experienced this?
    (I know that there are many factors that affect rankings.. but does having longer article is one of the factors)

    If anyone here did experience this, then how long the article should be? 1000 words or up to 3000+ words per article?

    Thanks
    A very short and concise answer to your question is a big NO. Length hardly matters, what matters is the relevancy of the content!
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnnyPlan
      Originally Posted by manojbhardwaj View Post

      A very short and concise answer to your question is a big NO. Length hardly matters, what matters is the relevancy of the content!
      One reason that longer articles rank so well is how they are usually linked to as a resource by bloggers and appear on resource pages. These back links help the position of that page in Google search. Also when you have more words on the page, you are likely to hit at least a few of your keywords. This is one reason that I rely upon content rich (as in longer content) pages as they are usually seen as evergreen content by Google.
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  • Profile picture of the author cherbeat
    yes, for a few reasons. 1. the reader or viewer will be onsite longer which helps with your ranking. 2. Google prefers longer articles because of point #1. Helps to keep the person engaged longer.

    Keep your articles to a minimum of 400 words. If you include longer articles make sure your (LSI 2-4%), internal linking, images and videos are tailored to your content. If you use outbound links to authoritative sites (wiki, edu, etc) that helps as well.

    Good Luck.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dr los3
    I wrote a 100k word article one time. NSA is still after me for hacking the serps
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  • Profile picture of the author dbk03
    Quality content is the one which will improve ranking. Of course, this means that an article need to be long enough, too. But be careful because 3000+ words which bring no real value will definitely not help you ranking.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kikrly
    I don't think your story should be longer that 1000 words.
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  • Profile picture of the author dinurock
    Originally Posted by masterqif View Post

    Hi warriors,

    I have read that some people claim that having longer post in our blog will perform better than shorter one, in term of ranking.. is it true? Does anyone here experienced this?
    (I know that there are many factors that affect rankings.. but does having longer article is one of the factors)

    If anyone here did experience this, then how long the article should be? 1000 words or up to 3000+ words per article?

    Thanks
    Every blogger must write long blog posts with SEO friendly. Writing blog post longer is just one trick for easy ranking, and you have to do lots of work. See How to write blog posts SEO friendly by this link [ No ads, Very useful for new bloggers ]
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  • Profile picture of the author Voxleaf
    Blogging is quite popular fashion now days. Being known as professional blogger one has go through several steps and plan the next strategy. SEO Consultant London defines clear objectives for pro bloggers. Steps like respecting fellow bloggers, having positive attitude counts at the end.
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  • Profile picture of the author Voxleaf
    I think longer but not too much that every visitors feel boring ........
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