You need to remember this is coming from a site that has failed miserably in terms of what it's own expectations were.

It is not just you .. they are wrong.

I'm getting a bit sick of longer articles these days. I wouldn't actually mind if it was more than filler content.

Couldnt agree more. However, for ezinearticles they give preference over a shorter article that is more concise than a longer article..

It really depends on how the article is written. Sometimes I like reading long articles sometimes I don't. But generally, I think they are wrong.

Noooooo ... it's always been there, and it's always been nonsense! :p

A 1,000-word article gets me far, far more traffic (and even far more backlinks!) than the same word-count set out as two 500-word articles. On absolutely any niche at all that I've tried. No comparison!

I'm always grimacing when I see people here, in conversations about article length, saying that "people get bored by more than 500/600 words and won't get as far as your resource-box". Sheeeeeeesh, talk about missing the point. :rolleyes:

Shorter article might work better on EA since the visitor has so many distractions with all those pesky adsense ads !

Clever advice, 2 articles for the price of 1 for EA .

Honestly, article length is BULLSHIT.

I am going to repeat that again... article length means nothing when it comes ranking in Google.

It is all about how engaging the content is and how your visitors react to it. Ever wonder why Youtube videos always rank in Google yet have no text content? It's because Google is getting better at evaluating content quality, so if your content is awesome it doesnt matter whether its 100 words, 500 words, 1000 words or 3000 words. All that matters is user experience.

Say a visitor comes to your site from Google and then spends an hour viewing 20 pages on your site. That is a good user experience, it doesn't matter if your articles are 500 or 1000 words long.

Say your visitor comes to your site, finds it ugly, disgusting, too many ads and leaves straight away. That is a bad experience. Google is getting better at distinguishing the too and rewarding sites with good user experience.

I bought a Nat Geo magazine not so long ago for a story on a new-ish theory on how the monolithic heads were transported and erected on Easter Island to read on a plane trip... I'd have been severely disappointed had that turned out to be a 500 word article.

I'm the same when it comes to researching and learning online too. When i am looking for something to actually read because i am interested in the topic, it doesn't matter if the article turns into a book, i'll still keep reading if it's well written and presented and is giving me what i wanted when i chose to read it.

I don't tend to stay on websites long if it's a bunch of 400 and 500 word pages.

Not sure why i ever thought that was a good way to market my own stuff when it wasn't even anything alike to my own behavior...

Good old times...

With regards to length, if I am looking for a topic like 'how to start a podcast' I would personally prefer the third content piece compared to 1 and 2 and the second content piece over 1.

I agree that the content below is not an article per say and so it is not the same as comparing an Ezine article vs another Ezine article, but the concept is the same. And personally for me, I am able to achieve that "Wow" factor in my articles more easily when they are longer than when they are shorter.

1. 5 Steps to Starting Your Own Podcasting Show | Social Media Examiner

2. How to Start Your Own Podcast: 11 steps - wikiHow

3. How to Start a Podcast – Pat’s Complete Step-By-Step Podcasting Tutorial

[DELETED]

I cant remember the last time i sat down and read word-for-word a 1000-word article. Skimmed through it, yeah. But read it fully? No. I dont know.... i may have ADHD or something.

...haha just kidding.

The basic premise is wrong. I do not write for those people.
Therefore any point built off that statement does not apply.

***

1. Clearly I am not Alexa, but I am going to open my mouth here anyway.
2. Don't concern yourself with "double opt-in". Single opt-in is just fine.
3. I agree 100% with your final statement there.

PS. It is always your choice.


***


Fixed that for you.


***


Great example. Cannot imagine Nat Geo publishing very many
500 word articles, even with their reputation for superb photos.

And if you're going to invest your time and effort in building a
business, do you want it to be like:

1. Nat Geo
2. the tabloids

???


***

I don't even use them anymore.

Ridiculous and utterly false? Absolutely.

But it is not actually the word count that affects the outcome, but the power of the story.

Whatever they are saying, or anyone else is saying, I'd like to see good research data to back it up.

I always chuckle when I see writers advertising their services using the, "EZA Expert Author...." logo.

I laugh even harder when I see the prices they charge, like $1 per hundred words.

-Chris

I am a big fan of Alexa Smith who in my mind is one of the great authorities on authentic article marketing.

However I have to say that I only ever write a maximum of 500 words as it seems to generate the best response for me.

What I am saying is that I was unaware of the Ezine Article write up on this but have discovered through testing that 500 words is about right for my articles and content. I always put videos and images in the mix, plus use formatting to break up the text.

My best article written a few years ago now and published specifically for clicks (apparently not the way to do it) still has a CTR of between 84 - 86%. My average is over 50% CTR.

It may just be that I have a completely different approach.

BernardR

I think it's utterly ridiculously generalized, 500 words might work for some things but not for many others.

Let's say I were to write a concise and good post about "How to do SEO after Panda"...500 words would hardly be enough. And some people WANT in-depth information and not just a short overview.

Edit: Looking at the source...ah..ok...ezinearticles...

I believe length has very little to do with traffic. It is all about value!

If you can get your point across in 300 words then great, if you need 1000 words then that's great too. As long as you make your point as short and to the point as possible without any fluff.

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)

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.

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?

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.

[DELETED]

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

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

I just guessed.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Yeah, I know, just ask Seth Godin.

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.

500 word articles are better for users but when it comes to Google search you need to have at least 1000 word articles to make then rank well.
Of course ranking consists of many different things but Google loves longer articles. Of course it is not the best way to measure the quality of article but fact still remains and we can't do anything about it.

If you are still working on small websites with few hundred articles with 300-400 words each then you will never make them rank well in Google.

So I am screwed if I have 900 word article ?

All sorts of combinations until you have achieved what you wanted to. Don't just fill in unnecessary words as filler to get the article over a certain length. Write naturally. Don't inject keywords all over the place. They read horribly.

I think it really depends on the engagement level of the article. Obviously 500 words would be more to the point but sometimes 1000+ words are needed to thoroughly cover a topic. Longer, engaging posts with different media (pictures or video clips) mixed in have done the best for me.

It doesn't matter how many words are in the article if the content is terrible. Can be 500 words or 1000 words of garbage. A good article is a good article regardless of the word count.

It'd be interesting to see what the average word count is for an entry on Wikipedia (arguably a very popular article site).

I know that for me, I much prefer a loooong Wikipedia post with lots of information so that I can learn as much as possible about the topic.

500 words wouldn't cut it for most entries I suspect, and Wikipedia seems to do fairly well in the search engines.

It actually depends on the content. If it is really good content that needs to be about 1000 words, than go ahead, but is not all that necessary.

This is really simple... If you are here to benefit
from the experience of others, pay attention to
what the more experienced, very successful people
in this forum keep spelling out for you: These are
the real facts, the reality, based on actual experience
from the people who are actually doing it:


Article Syndication vs. Article Search Engine Ranking:
Proper syndication wins easily, again and again, by far.

Syndicating articles, 500 words vs. 1000 words:
1000 words wins easily, again and again, by far.



***
So please, for the sake of my sanity, stop with the:


1. Advice on how to get articles ranked in search engines.
(Search engine traffic is terrible compared to article syndication traffic!)

2. Debates about whether a 500 word article can be quality and catchy.
(We know it can, but that is just not the point at all!-- see below)

3. Debates over whether you or anyone else read longer articles.
(It doesn't matter, it is what publishers and their readers want!!!)

I just always ignore people offering 500words free review article.
In many cases, I knew that my targeted readers are needs detailed article, and most of it will more than 500words

Nope it's not just you. What's funny about this is Ezine Articles gives more exposure to longer articles than they do shorter ones. They won't even accept 500 word articles in some categories anymore.

I find that longer articles (assuming they are high quality and usable content) end up in more places than shorter articles. It's possible to write a GREAT 500 word article, but most subjects need at least 800 words for thorough explanation.

You can write 1,000 words and still hit the instant gratification note perfectly. It's all in the formatting and making the article easy to read.

Benjamin Ehinger

That is indeed true since a lot of the long articles tend to have fillers. Of course some long articles are great but if you can be informative and creative within 500 words people will truly read the whole article instead of getting bored and not finishing the 1000 word one.

Thanks for the post!

-Will

When it comes to me reading an article it totally depends on the Author. Now if you're an Author that loves to write and provide valuable content in your writing it shows and you won't care how long it is because you'll be hanging on every word but for authors who are just doing it for traffic and I feel like you're bored writing it then it's likely the reader will be bored reading it and lose interests all together

Kind regards

I wouldn't actually mind if it was more than filler content.If you can get your point across in 300 words then great, if you need 1000 words then that's great too.

It's completely and utterly ridiculous for sure. It's not about the # of words, it's all about the content and quality of those words.

Ezinearticles has failed more than once in their quest for being a better article network. This is just an example of how strict they are becoming and this is definitely wrong.

I read a doc on google analysis by an authority this year that said that high ranking sites across many countries and many servers seemed on average to have homepages of around 450 words. It could be a coincidence, but then why do most home pages need to have 1000 words. you can always use a testimonial page or a read more button.

I also find that it is difficult to have any meaningful keyword density (heaven forbid in 2012) when you have thousands of words. If you are trying to get your point across, and sell people something, 500 words seems about right ...

but I am sure that Matt knows best.

I agree with the clear and concise bit but I don't believe that a 500 word article will always out perform one with a 1000 words.

Forget about reading! I much rather prefer to write a 500 word article than a 1,000.

You can get a lot of information in 500 words or less so don't try to push the limits. If you do have an article that's more than 500 words you could break it up into a couple of posts and viola! You got 2 articles instead of one.