Short articles are better than long one ?

I wouldn't write articles that are below 500 words these days if your eventual goal is to rank in the search engines.

It also depends on what information you are trying to provide ofcourse. You don't have to necessarily make your article longer if it decreases the qualty of the article.

I would say just write for people instead of search engines, and then optimize your article for search engines after it's written.

Definitely write for people first, search engines second.

And take a look at a site like Wikihow - at first glance, their "articles" look to be short but when you count up the words in the bullet pointed lists below you get 500+ words on their more recent pages without looking like a daunting block of text.

Exactly what Jens said - write for the audience and people, make the article useful, if that means thousands of words then that is right but also if you can add value in 300 words then that is right.

If you write quality content full of value then the size becomes fairly irrelevant.

The converse is also true, long hard to read poorly written articles are not going to get you good traffic as much as short valueless articles aren't.

Think value not length.

I also support the opinion of Jens. Article should be for readers, not search engine. I believe short article get more readers than long one. We should always consider the time our reader invest upon reading the article. It will be more better if less than 500 words. The quality determine the value than that of length.

500 words and more is optimal. Longer it is, better it is in SEO terms. But note, the article must be 100% original, attractive and interesting. If you write long articles but there is no one willing to read, then Google will not promote them.

Thank you Everyone for the suggestions. Yes I concluded that the optimal length of the article is about 500words . But it can be short or long according to need and information writen.

There is no 'word count' that is right or wrong.

When you write, it should be to give value to your readers. If what you wrote isn't worth their time to read, it doesn't matter if you have 100 words or 100,000 words.

I've seen words of less than 100 cover a whole topic. And then other topics, words of over 5000.

It all depends on the topic.

As long as your articles are interesting and helpful, the longer, the better. I have very long articles that I'm ranking on Google for a variety of keywords without doing any SEO to them whatsoever.

Just make them useful and Google will check out how long people stay on your page (bounce rate), if there are comments, if they share your content on social media and who knows, you might even get first page ranking for a few keywords.

Here's a great article (post) by Neil Patel. He mentions a bit about Seth Godin's short posts and why they work so well for him.

As always, Neil strives to support his assertions with data. If you're new to blogging, writing articles, etc you can learn much and find direction in this post.

How Long Should Each Blog Post Be? A Data Driven Answer


Ken

Decided to post this article from Patel. It's relevant and certainly a good guideline to use for your posts.

The Ultimate Content Marketing Checklist: 40 Questions to Ask Yourself before Publishing Your Next Blog Post

http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/10/2...st/#more-29477

I usually write my main article up to 2k words and other pillar article 1k+ words. I read on some authority blogs that long content is good for SEO

Longer articles are better for two reasons:

a) They give you more room to demonstrate your expertise. It's very difficult to make a good impression in 500 words. (300 words, really?). People saying they can often aren't real experts.

b) They filter out uninterested people. Folks who are routinely willing to sit down and read 1,000-word articles are more interested in the niche and therefore more likely to buy something.

That said, I do write shorter articles (around 300-600 words), but those are only as "addon" material to link from my emails. And my emails are already 900+ words long, so nobody who's interested only in short articles/emails gets to read them, anyway.

Long articles have their place, and can be used to impress some people, but do keep a sense of proportion. They are not always the perfect solution.

Do not over "contentise", it is inefficient. Just give enough content to "get the cookie", "get the click", or "get the opt in". People do not want to read your 1200 word thesis on teeth whitening or flatter abs , or whatever. They just want to know if the link you provide, will give them what they want.

I suggest you to write articles between 350 -500 words. I think it is much better than writing a 1500 word article. When someone visits your website, he likes to spend 5-7 minutes to read an article. So you need to create articles within 500 words and try to provide as much information as you can. Always try to create unique articles.

MMO or IM as many call it can be likened to a bizarre alternative universe where everything is over simplified. Definitions in this bizzaro universe don't conform to definitions in the real world. A few examples:

Solo ad: (anyone buying solo ads should be very suspicious as to how the provider can "guarantee" anything.
Authority site: the latest thing the MMO hounds have decided to simplify down to a level that even a caveman could create an "authority" site.
Article marketing: Spun articles and spammed backlinks. Oh yeah! Now we're cookin'!

300-500 words isn't even a decent intro to a real article. 1000 is getting closer. A well written (defined as informative, engaging and entertaining) article of 2000 or more words is a real article. When you think of a real article think of something you'd read in Time or Sports Illustrated or Entrepreneur Magazine.

I think people forget what they're trying to accomplish with written content. Either that or they never understood it in the first place.

The goal of an article is to impress your readers so they come back to your site and tell their friends about you. The idea is to provide them with MASSIVE VALUE so they end up trusting you, a prerequisite to buying from you. It's very unlikely you're going to achieve results like that with "article foreplay."

Thank you everyone and specially hyper active Alexa smith who is ready to answer the question of everyone in the forum.

yes I think my way of asking the question was wrong. I simply said article but I don't know article for what purpose. Is it for traffic generation or for email capturing or for filling the space or something else.
The length of the article can't be same for every thing.
So I will decide the article according to my use and how it can be efficient to user. The detail discripted article will provide the proper information of the topic and the customer will fill that they got something after reading this .However if its for social media or traffic generation or for linking the article can be small.

I think I got these points from this thread. Correct me if I left something or I should know about article length or type .

Thank you everyone for great suggestion and information . I am trying my best to learn English perfectly and making my habit of writing more wherever I get chance and with correct too.

As a content writer I believe I have a bit of insight into the content strategies that many internet marketers employ.

A vast majority of the people that seek out writing services (other writers will probably agree) generally choose articles between the 500-700 word count.

Why are they doing this? Why would they intentionally cheat themselves by posting short posts to their money sites when a skimpy 500 word post isn’t nearly enough to say anything poignant or insightful? It only takes a few moments to breeze through a rinky dink, 500 word post.

The most experienced warriors always preach the importance of creating content that people WANT to read. The phrase “content is king” has been parroted to death, but so few are actually following the advice. Maybe this is the reason why threads like this are created that claim 95% of marketers fail.

Among the other 700 million websites online today, it’s an absolute necessity to stand out. How do you plan on doing that without having a real voice?

I dare you to look at your favorite blog (whatever niche it may be in). Don’t worry, I’ll wait…

I guarantee that you will not find a post under 1,000 words. We’ll even take it a step further. Plug the url of your favorite blog into Buzzsumo to see the most popular posts via social signals (I love this app).

Take a look at the most popular posts over the last 6 months and copy / paste the content into a Word Doc. Now, I have no idea what your favorite blog is or what niche it is in, but I can all but promise that the most popular post is 1,200 words or more.

Popular marketers like Pat Flynn, Mathew Woordward, Neil Patel, (insert anyone else) have all made their name from content.

Based on Pat Flynn’s income reports (which he posts monthly), the majority of his income comes from affiliate referrals from links located throughout his content. Obviously, people come to his site for the content. They’re actively reading it and purchasing through his affiliate links.

Mathew Woodward creates some of the most in depth free guides you’ll find. In the post that outlines his journey to becoming a Top 100 Blogs, he explicitly states that his popularity skyrocketed dramatically after creating guest posts for sites like Search Engine Journal which has since received almost 900 shares and was one of the most popular posts on the site in 2012. Oh yeah, the post is also over 1,400 words in length.

Believe it or not, there is a direct correlation between the length of a post and the overall rankings within the SERP’s and the amount of links that point to that piece. Don’t believe me?

The two graphs below were originally posted by Moz, but guys like Neil Patel and Brian Dean have also featured them on their sites.



Moz analyzed all of the content on their site to find out whether there was a relationship between the overall length of their posts and the amount of backlinks they received. The graph shows the amount of posts vs the amount of content. As you can see, Moz creates some insanely long posts (one apparently is 35k!).

Now take a look at the graph below. It shows the amount of links that point to those posts in graph 1. Notice any similarities? There’s clearly a trend between the amount of backlinks posts receive and the overall length of the post



Need further proof? The next graph is from a study that SERP IQ produced . They analyzed something like 20k keywords and the average word count for the posts that appear in the top 10 positions.



As you can see, on average the pages that hold the highest position have a word count of over 2,000.

You don’t have to be the next Stephen Hawking to understand what is going on here. People want to read and share content that is long enough to make them think, make them feel, or make them act. The short, clumsy articles that the majority of Warriors are after simply aren't going to cut it.

If you have trouble creating lengthy posts, my suggestion would be to join a writing community (either a forum or a popular blog) and then read, learn, write, and repeat the process. The words will begin to flow like water before you know it.

And then we have Mark Twain's (in)famous quote:

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Actually it depends upon the topic of article. But as per my opinion, I love to read only short articles than long one. Because short articles attracts me more and it takes less time to read.

As a professional content writer, my experience says that 500 words SEO optimized articles are better

Reading this thread makes me miss the heady days of EzineArticles.
When I could literally rule the world for a single keyword

I advise my clients to vary article lengths from 250 - 500 words per page.

What is interesting is that after a period of time (a few dozen articles later) we have found that there seems to be a compound effect on the SEO of a site. So that even pages with a small amount of copy on get ranked along with the other pages.

Key points

Page name
Article Title should be H1
Meta Description
Meta Keywords - GOOGLE DO NOT USE THESE SO IGNORE

Have a great day

BernardR

I always prefer articles between 500-1000 words. According to google updates you should write and post longer articles.

Mike

Basically, long article is better than short article. There is a huge debate on this, look for it in this forum and google.

Hi,

Great question!

Generally - the longer the better.
1. They will get indexed better in the current super-competitive environment
2. People will spend more time on you site (while reading the article)
3. Also, it's been proven again and again that long articles get shared much more often.

Just make sure that you avoid long sentences and insert good pics.

Good luck!
Vlad

Long or Short, one thing to remember is that you need to keep the page up to date.

I have had countless articles get loads of traffic, then dry up. Most of those regained their traffic after adding new information on the topic.

If your readers have any interest, they will want to keep up to date. Why rank a brand new page, when you can spice up an old page.

This simple idea can turn 300, 400, 500 word articles, into 3,000; 4,000; 5,000 word articles.

Did I mention that the additional content will help rank the page for new keywords? << Guess I just did.

Quality of articles matters not length. I think articles should be at least 350 words.
Google check user engagement in the articles by seeing the no of seconds a person remains in the article page.
More user engagement better SERP.

There is no such parameter or guideline that article should be of certain word limit. It should serve its purpose well by demonstrating what it want to demonstrate. A reader should get all the information in the article and doesn't loose its interest while reading and I think thats all. But, yes if you are submitting your article in some external websites you should know about there guidelines as every website have different guidelines and to submit on those websites you should fulfill their guidelines.

For me the content of the article matters more than the word length. If you read some of the articles on Ezine or any other article directory, they may all be above 400-500 words but you don't learn more than 1 or 2 points after going through the article, the rest is just fluff and fillers. On the other hand, if you learn some great points and practical tips then the value of that article is far more than the fluff-filled one.

Before we start writing the article, we should jot down what points we want to teach the readers in the article. What would be the takeaways for the reader when they finish the article. Then go about covering those points with as many relevant examples, explanations or whatever you can think of to adequately cover and explain the points you had planned. The reader should feel he gained something valuable after reading through your article. If that happens, you have done your job. It might take you 2000 words to achieve this or more than that or fewer words than that.

As per the latest Google algorithm long content around 450 words is considered a good option. So, write long lengthy content having an impact on search engines..