Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

You do know I was teasing with you, right? ;)

You have a very valid point as well. And as Frank said, this thread kind of went off on a few rabbit trails from what the OP intended.

The number one most important thing to do in regards to writing is, you've got to do what proves successful for your own self. :)

Terra

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

Both approaches have its place and they have different targets. Longer articles are done for authority, shorter articles are done for immediate satisfaction. Writers have their strengths. It is great when each one caters the right client and gives results.

I´m a report/ebook/book writer, almost never write articles for others because I spend the same amount of time researching an ebook than an article. Some of my teasing reports have had crazy conversions. In one occasion people asked for refunds after buying the product because they raised the bar too high (that was not fun...).

You are probably good at copywriting, great for teasing leading to a buy now button type of article. What is awesome, and what most affiliate marketers want. If this is your strength you might want to consider moving toward copywriting - far more remunerative.

Sandra :)

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

This isn't right. Well it could be, but you seem to be stating a fact that isn't true. Someone could just as easily be thought of as an authority because they give someone results in each article, rather than take them on this emotional roller coaster than ends with a new perspective on something.

I'm a fan of both approaches. I'm just defending the shorter articles in this thread.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

This. Exactly. It's simply factual. :)

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

For optimum conversions when using the article marketing model, it would be extremely helpful to understand some basics in writing sales copy. Consider that your article, in the sense you are attempting to engage the reader enough to click on your call to action, is essentially subtle sales copy. At least it should be.

As Dan Kennedy said "The person who says ‘I would never read all that copy’ makes the mistake of thinking they are the customer. And they’re not. We are never our own customers. There’s a thing in copywriting I teach called ‘message-to-market match’. It is this: when your message is matched to a target market that has a high level of interest in it, not only does responsiveness go up but readership goes up, too. The whole issue of interest goes up.

The truth about long copy is that, first of all, there’s abundant, legitimate, statistical research, that’s split-testing research, to indicate that virtually without exception, long copy outperforms short copy. There’s some significant research has been done that indicate that readership falls off dramatically at 300 words but does not again drop off until 3,000 words."

Long Copy Or Short Copy?

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I never state facts when giving opinions - what we are all doing here. I apologize if it sounded any other way. If you need me to rephrase it, I do it. No problem.

"It is my experience, that in most cases longer articles are done for authority, while shorter articles target an immediate response."

Happy now? :D

I have seen short articles used to build authority effectively, but in that case the same problem was targeted from different angles (and they all could be used to build one long article).

And Alexa has a lot of experience using long articles that pre-sell effectively. I saw a couple and they are pretty good.

So those are exceptions to an observational law - thanks goodness this is not science or I would have to throw the theory through the window. ;)

It also depends on the subject, some subjects do not have enough juice to write anything long without fluff. Some others are well.. too complex to write short and actually provide any information whatsoever. The article I mentioned of the 2000 words was about the project MK-Ultra; you could write several books just from the material opened to the public and testimonials. Now, good luck trying to write 500 words about how to care for the hair of a short haired chihuahua.

Sandra :)

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

It sounds like they failed to lay out certain details. Both can perform well and both can perform horribly. The information being delivered is what counts. A 500 word article overall would be better preferred, but it has to make and impact. The same goes for a 1000 word article. If they are informative and attention grabbing, then they'll both be read regardless of the length. :-0)

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

And I can throw up a split-test that's got a higher conversion rate with short copy - Does your landing page collect emails? A shorter page may increase signups by 13% « I love split testing – Visual Website Optimizer Blog

I think it just proves nothing is definite and people that deal in absolutes don't get it.

I can understand why people who write eBooks would prefer to add words that maybe don't need to be there. When you get more money for extra words it seems pretty obvious you would defend it.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I don't mind 1,000 word articles if they are well written and not just full of filler content. Sometimes, however, a 500 word article is enough. It all depends on the topic, etc. I definitely do not agree with their statement though.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I don't think anyone should stick to a certain word length with every single article on their site. And hopefully they don't.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

Was that for me? if it was... well, it is evident you don´t know me one bit. And... that you are on the group who would say anything to prove a point. I´m done.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

EZA does. Now, I´m done.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

The way I look at it is that there is no "etched in stone" method...

I write super long articles (just finished a 2,000 word article today speaking of which), and I write several shorter (4-700 word) articles as well. No matter the length, a high percentage of my content has performed pretty well over the years...

I never determine how long my article is going to be. My focus when I open up Wordpad to write is to make sure that whatever shows up on the screen is high quality and that it helps the reader in whatever way I promised in the title. Sometimes I can achieve this with a 535 word article, and sometimes it has to stretch out to 1,287 words...

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I have no argument with that, at all.

But it's terribly easy (for people reading the thread, and other threads - not for you and me) to confuse two very different things, here ...

1. What length of article will work best?

2. What length of article will be published most, in relevant places where our already highly targeted traffic is (that excludes article directories!)?

To over-simplify: a 500-word article that might "work better" than a 1,000-word article is no use to me, because I can't get it read by the people I want to attract.

On my own site, yes ... no problem. The traffic's already there.

But there's no point in my putting a 500-word article in Ezine Articles because nobody's going to re-publish it, and it's obviously not going to make me any money worth talking about by sitting un-syndicated in an article directory, is it?! :p

(For the record: I'm probably exaggerating slightly, to make my point, and I admit it).

You can.

And you did. :)

It's pretty interesting, too. But unlike this thread, it isn't about articles. :p :D

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

A storybook or an article?
Boy, any article with more than 250-400 word ain't for me. I always wanna get points direct, nothing more.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I think people need to test things for themselves. If people understand that it's great. There's been some strong arguments for long articles so maybe they can test them first, but to discount short articles could be a mistake.

I know you're bringing syndicated content into it because it was mentioned in the OP, but it seems the thread has evolved and posts/sales pages have to be taken into consideration to reflect that.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

That was lucky for me, wasn't it? http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/la...smiley-016.gif

Sure ... we can agree about that. :cool:

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

Indeed. :)

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

You are not missing much...

To tell the truth, Kansas sucks!! LOL

Kansas is the only reason that Oklahoma and Texas don't fall into the Gulf of Mexico. :p

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

When I start writing an article, I found it very hard to manage it within 500 words. It easily cross 700 words within 20 minutes. To be honest, I personally do not like to read a long article then how can expect my readers will do? :D

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I have no idea how book authors do it either...

Getting a lazy person to read a 100,000 word book just seems so challenging that it just doesn't make any sense at all to try to write a book... :rolleyes:

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

WOW alexa stuff is awesome.

I have found 850 - 1000 word articles the best...and will perform better if they are high quality. And not SEO' stuffed.

But the real power comes when you syndicate these to blogs, forums, ezines, online niches sites, offline publications, newsletters and all the rest.

You need targeted eyeballs.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

Terra you've said it in what I think to be nothing short of a brilliant comment. I feel, the advice of short articles and "long articles at least as much as 500 words" come from people who cannot think beyond SEO (and SEO is also easier for longer articles in my opinion), and go to people who are not never deep enough in taking the time to understand what the customers in their market need to know. So yes, it is attention deficit disorder, suffered by the writer of the article. And this is what I guess we call "cookie-cutter" articles for all real life purposes.

You bet. While I practically always write my own articles, once it had so happened that I had outsourced a deal to another Warrior who had designed a site for me with Thesis, written the home page article (1,200-odd words from what I remember) and had SEO'd it till he reached the top of the second page (and I think the deal was the first page within a timeline, which he could not manage in spite of 2 extended months). The point here is that the niche was something (a physical product) that I have been selling since 2009, and that 1,200-or-so length article had simply seemed to be insufficient for me in terms of content. Not the length, but the material inside it. Any SEO person would be delighted with the length, but I knew that it was not enough for buyers. I had to expand many sections of it (and this time I did it myself) before I was happy with it. I think it came to 1,800-2,000 odd words, from what I remember.

^^ Interesting perspective... Especially, the last line.

^^ But you know what? EZA accepts all kinds of articles, and their articles get published. And there's no way to track how many sales are because of EZA, unless you are publishing nowhere else (which is impractical formost cases). So its easy for them to get away with it...

Interesting. I am going to test this slogan soon enough with my WF signature link.:)

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

Really?

That's like saying "A V-6 will always outperform a V-8." To take it even further, I've seen some 4-cylinder Honda Civics take Corvettes in the 1/4 mile, but, they are highly "souped the hell up!"

It's all subjective to the type of reader you're proposing your articles to. Not everyone wants to sit and read long articles (has nothing to do with ADD). Not everyone feels like they get enough information with a 500 word article.

I'm thinking; sites like TMZ don't need to pour out 1,000 word articles to make a statement, unlike the WebMD's of the net. It's about testing, targeting.

I think, some writers feel like they aren't professional enough unless they over-produce "length wise" in their articles. Not all of us care to spend a ton of time on something that could of been summarized.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

There seems to be a commonly held, but in my opinion misinformed, view that people will not read long things online. I often see pundits opining that because it is supposedly difficult to read from a screen, readers' attention spans are impaired.

The inevitable solution proposed is to keep your writing short, sharp and pithy.

I have probably been guilty of giving such advice myself over the years, but on reflection it is a very lazy proposition that flies in the face of the simple truth: people actually do read long writing.

There is a caveat though: it is the responsibility of the writer to make their long writing attractive, enticing, entertaining and informative enough to grab hold of the readers' attention and not let go.

Paul Myers writes huge emails, but I've never heard anyone suggest he would be better off condensing his bon mots into 250 words. To a lesser extent my own newsletters tend to run on and on, but I often get responses to parts of the messages 2000 words in so it seems my readers don't suffer much from the ubiquitous attention span deficiency we hear about so often either.

Of course, if I - or Paul - have something to say that only requires 250 words to convey, that's what we'll do.

Long form sales letters still work really well - when they are written really well. If you were to ask me I would say I don't like them myself, but the truth is that I have read many a well crafted sales letter right to the end and not even realised it was 5000 words long!

The same can be said of long articles.

But the key to it all is the standard of the writing. Poor writing mumbles; good writing speaks to you; great writing sings.

Writing length is only a problem when the act of reading is more noticeable than the content.

A poor writer can seldom sustain their own interest, let alone their readers', beyond the first few lines and so should not be encouraged to prolong the agony. Teach them technique before you teach them wordlength, please.

Martin

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

The best articles don't have a word count. As long as the writer can make their point, get the opinion across, inform the reader and make them think - it's a truly successful article. My .02

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I think so too... it is probably the reason why they allow Diamond writers to just have at least 300 words and basic author at least 400...

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

You'll have even better results with a 499 word article!

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

So you're saying people should write as much as they need to?

It's kind of ironic that it took 500 words lol.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

Did it? I didn't count.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I just guessed.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

If it's high quality, I've seen longer articles outperform shorter ones. But maybe it's just me.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

It makes sense. The more you know about a subject, the more you have to say about it. If you have been selling the product for so long, your have a deep understanding on it. The person you hired could be a great writer but didn´t have the experience you had with the product, 1200 words is a good size article.

This 2000 article I wrote was a test that didn´t go through, and the person who asked me to expand was a friend who really knows about the subject.

The size is also tied up with the persona you create around the article. A sharp and witty character will write shorter articles than a softer one. There are only so many punches in the stomach a person can take reading. When I am emotionally charged and have a single point I want to come across, the articles are not long.When I am delivering information or telling a tale, they are usually longer.

Sandra :)

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

Precisely. A well-written piece of content will ask only for more writing. The real reader will look to read more rather than stop reading. They will want to read till they know exactly what is meant to be read by them, and exactly to the depth so that they know enough to feel comfortable. And the right writing will not only start properly and flow naturally, but it will also stop smoothly rather than screeching to an abrupt halt when the halt was completely uncalled for...

Interestingly, whenever I come to a topic that I can talk about with authority, I mostly find stopping within 500 words to be a difficult task without cutting the message down, unless the message merits 500 words.

In summary, one should write the message to exactly the length that it merits, neither more nor less.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

No, it took 360 words, I measured it now after reading your post. LOL...:D

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

500 words articles are better. More than that is simply boring for most people to read through. Myself included.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I am a firm believer that there isn’t a “right” length for all articles. To me, you write what is needed to cover the topic of the article. I think it depends on the subject.

From an SEO perspective, articles under 400 words will get rejected. About 750 words is the sweet spot for me. The minimum word count for me is 500 words.That way you will be able to past a message accross and still keep your convertion rate high.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

Strange... Forget marketing articles. Did you read any article when you were planning your last vacation destination? Did you read any review article when you purchased your mobile phone? Did you ever read up Wikipedia for any information seeking on any topic that had interested you for any reason?

If the answer to any of the above is yes then did you ever check the article length in any case? Or, would you want to go back and check?

I hope you didn't say no to all the questions above and all the questions that are alike to the ones above?

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I don't think anyone's suggesting that, Fred, are they?

Those (especially Wiki) are perhaps a little different from what we're discussing here, but in quite a significant way: one of the points being made here isn't so much about whether readers check the length of articles, it's about whether shorter articles will be published in the first place where the readers we want are looking.

As I said above (and I did admit that I was exaggerating slightly): a 500-word article is fine for my own site. But it's no use to me for article marketing, because I can't get it published in the right places.

To take a fictional example: if my niche is cauliflower soup recipes, I want my articles to be read by the subscribers of the "cauliflower soup ezine" and the visitors to the "cauliflower soup website". My point is simply that the publisher of the ezine, and the WebMaster of the site will publish a 1,000 word article but not a 500-word one.

I've been doing this almost every day for years, and that's my experience, and (as has been made so clear in many other discussions of article length) it's many other article marketers' experience, too.

I've labored my argument a little, but I'm sure you take my point? "My reader" may not care at all (and may not necessarily even notice) whether the article he reads is 500 words or 1,000 words. But I often can't get it as far as his eyes if it's only 500 words. ;)

It seems pretty much incontrovertible, to me? :)

There's "the hard way" and "the easy way", with article marketing. The difference between the two is typically the difference between making a living (and building a real, asset-based business), and not making a living (and building nothing). The hard way - and it's very, very difficult indeed - is to try to draw targeted traffic to your articles. The easy way is to put your articles where the targeted traffic already is, and use the articles to draw the traffic from there to your own site. Long experience has taught many of us that to all intents and purposes you can't use the easy way very much with short articles.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

Probably a 700 word article could be optimal. 500 would be too short to have more than 2 links in it. A 1000 word article may be too long to keep readers interested. The optimal length could be about 700 to 750 words. It can have a link to a authority site and a back link to another of your sites and a link back to the same site home page.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

When I read articles whether online or off, if the article has nothing but point blank lines of facts, I won't remember a word of it. It's dull, boring, dry, lackluster and takes me back to a lecture hall with Professor Schmedley droning on in monotone. I zone out.

It was a waste of my time. However, if the piece had some character, some personality, it held my attention and I retained the information. That is why I always was at the library searching for books or articles on the that same subject matter that weren't just fact after fact. Those types of articles remind me of all the "cool" professors.

I know people say you are not your market, but I am not so pompous as to believe that I am the only one on earth that is so unique that no one else has any traits similar to mine. If I enjoy and prefer that type of writing, I'm confidant others do as well.

Yes, I know people that say they like just the facts only. However, via my testing, when I presented those people with two pieces, one short with just matter of fact facts and another longer piece with the same facts but presented with personality and character, they in the end, admitted it was a more enjoyable and memorable read.

I tested and those were the results. That's all I'm saying is that you must test. By those tests and by others who have tested like Alexa, we found the longer creative pieces to be more successful in meeting the purpose of that said content.

I'm quite sure there are some readers that may pass my pieces by if they only want bullet point type articles, but they are in the minority.

They are also in the minority of my clients' readers as well.

Am I saying short information only articles don't work? No. I'm saying short informational articles don't work for me.;)

Terra

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I'm just trying to wind you up now 'cause I know you're game for a debate, BUT...

Since when were short articles nothing but lines of facts?

Can a longer article have more personality and character? Surely the way it's presented is the personality and character, so they both have the same.

Maybe if you tested them against shorter creative pieces you would get different results.:p

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I'm glad to read this and see that most of yo disagree. I was told something similar once, that people won't read an article over 500 words. I haven't found that to be the case with mine, which hover around 1000 and sometimes more. It's isn't fluff though, it's real training. And people comment all the time about how much they love getting the e-mails.

But a great point was made earlier. There are no absolutes. I've read short articles I wished had said more, and I've read long ones that I just wanted to be done with.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

I never said they were. I only tested people who said they prefer short articles with just facts.

I personally find it extremely difficult to write a short article of 500 words or less presenting all of the facts with the personality and character infused in them as well. I can do it, I have done it for a rare few clients and they loved them, but I find it difficult and actually spend more time writing that type of article. Also, I personally find way down deep in my inner most self, feeling that I could have done better for that client. :o

Again, I only tested with those that said they prefer short to the point facts type of articles. However, as in my last statement above, it can be done and with great client satisfaction. But those clients are in the minority for me anyway. ;):p

Terra

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

It is a shame that you did not read any other post in this thread after the first one before responding...

If I am wrong :eek: and you did read more than one post, then you read more than 500 words and was better off for the experience.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

read that, and as an article writer and freelance writer kind of agree. most people don't have time to read a 1000 word article. if you can knock it out of the park with an awesome 500 word piece that isn't overflowing with keywords, you have a winner.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

But really, what are the chances that a 500 word article will be syndicated? This metric is an integral factor for measuring overall article performance. For maximum article performance, there really are minimum standards that must be met, including reader and publisher expectations. In writing for syndication, take into consideration not only what publishers require, but also expectations of the readership audience.

In my experience, long articles drive more targeted traffic - both in quantity and quality. Many publishers have minimum word requirements. And there does seem to be a subtle perception that long articles are more substantive, which tends to confer a sort of "assumptive authority". In competitive niches, article length can be the razor's edge for engaging the reader enough to respond favorably to a call to action.

The marketing model of article syndication - writing to directly engage targeted readers with the leverage of strategic alliances through syndicated partners, is extremely powerful. Assuming the article has other positive engaging factors relevant to the reader, and coupled with the leverage achieved through syndication, it can drive massive highly targeted traffic.

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

"A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article"

Yeah, I know, just ask Seth Godin. :D

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

All I mean by that is, if a reader is interested in an article, s/he will read it, even if it is "long" (1000+ words or whatever merits to be called long in the given context).

It won't probably get boring just because of the length of something more is than 500 words, which is what the post that I quoted appeared to suggest (in my understanding).

It may get boring because of the way it is written or for any other reason of course - but not for the legitimate reason of having written a brilliant and informative article that happened to be longer than 500 words...

Re: A 500 word article will always outperform a 1000 word article
 

This is the title of the thread but I think many have missed the point.

I prefer to read longer content myself but that doesn't mean a longer article will outperform a shorter article.

The only way you can really answer is to actually test it with some data and measure results.

Also, all articles don't have to be syndicated to provide a better return on investment so I have no idea why so many people are obsessed with this whenever articles are mentioned.

Let's say you do a powerful content rich 500 word article and publish it on the warrior forum where it ranks position 1 in google. Then complete a 1000 word article and send it to publishers to syndicate. Depending on your niche it's unlikely that any of these guys will outrank your original article so you are depending on their lists and readers to visit your website.

Of course if you get an article published on a site or newsletter with a million people reading then you have hit a home run but not many people can do that.

The obvious answer is also that a 1000 word article will rank for more keywords also.

I prefer longer articles and spend time reading various topics on sites like the BBC and Wikipedia so these sites have performed although in many cases it's subjective as they haven't performed if you are measuring monetization.