Short vs Long Content. Which one is best?

11 years ago

I do both, I keep my emails short, super short. Facebook posts range from long to short and my sales pages are long my 21 pages on the last one.

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thesadshow

11 years ago

Talking strictly from an seo point of view, the longer the better. In the past other factors like keyword density and a bunch of other crap weighed heavily, but today one of the biggest factors is the amount of unique content on the page itself.

Search Google for a topic a lot of blogs will have written a post about and guaranteed 8 out of the top 10 results will be pretty long. As long as it's high quality and unique content, the longer the better.

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thesadshow 11 years ago

You can also extend the amount of unique content by encouraging users to leave comments at the end of the post/article and then personally reply to each person who comments to keep the conversation going.

Another trend you'll see among top Google results are a long string of user comments.
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discrat

11 years ago

Its not an 'either' 'or' scenario. But if I was basing it on SE Traffic I would go for the quality 2000 word Post.

From my own experience, it has served me better than the short one you talk about

- Robert Andrew

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Complex

11 years ago

[DELETED]

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samiegardners 11 years ago

Originally Posted by Complex

Test it.
;-)

Testing is very expensive if you are starting now. Because, you will lose a lot of time. So, the following dual strategy is working for me.

My strategy, which is working for me is short content.

To get SEO ranking, write short articles. Because,
1) They are quick and easy to write
2) Can cover various topics
3) With various topics, you can reach multiple sets of audiences. That is very crucial when you are starting.

Once you established some SEO authority, then go for longer ones. Because,
1) Now that you have search engines' eyes on you, you need to show deeper thought leadership

Good luck!
Advo.Ninja
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writeaway

11 years ago

Well, you can ask for people's OPINIONS (and everyone has one) but most of it will be WRONG...

Or...

You can look at DATA-DRIVEN case studies. Here's one:

https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-ideal...ing-to-science

The verdict? Depending on your niche, 1500+ words is the way to go.

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kilgore

11 years ago

Originally Posted by writeaway

Well, you can ask for people's OPINIONS (and everyone has one) but most of it will be WRONG...

Or...

You can look at DATA-DRIVEN case studies. Here's one:

https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-ideal...ing-to-science

The verdict? Depending on your niche, 1500+ words is the way to go.

The problem with "studies" such as these are that even if they're well designed (and that's a really big IF), they only tell you about averages and not about you, your niche or your business. For instance, the link you shared says, "The ideal length of a Facebook post is less than 40 characters" but in my experience that's just not true at all. For instance, here is some real data from three of our more popular posts on Facebook:

2,100 characters
27,350,000 people reached
450,000 likes
310,000 shares
22,000 comments

4,100 characters
19,100,000 people reached
460,000 likes
500,000 shares
53,000 comments

5,200 characters
18,750,000 people reached
130,000 likes
130,000 shares
6,000 comments

I am NOT suggesting that others should use long-form Facebook posts. Maybe they should, maybe the shouldn't. What I'm saying is it all depends. You develop your voice; you develop your niche; you develop your audience. For some, that might be a 40 character Facebook post or a 1500 character blog post. For others, like us, that might be much, much longer. Try a bunch of things out, do what works for you and forget about what anyone else says.

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itos

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Complex

Test it.

The only answer that's not opinion or guessing or someone trying to enhance their image as an "expert."

But nobody wants to do the damn thing and test it, do they?

;-)

Yeap! That's the way to go! I am currently making articles with more than 2000 words. Still to early to throw results. Will probably need many months to test.

Originally Posted by James McAllister

If you're going strictly for organic search engine traffic you'll definitely want to do the longer posts, especially since it looks like you're in the extremely saturated make money online market.

Relying solely on search engine traffic is an extremely foolish strategy for any business though, so you may wish to reconsider that.

I don't want just search engine traffic. But in almost all traffic reports I see that more than 60% of the traffic comes from search engines, so it's really important. I am looking for referrals and social media but even that is not that stable as good rankings.

Originally Posted by Sarevok

For SEO I believe that the more content you have, the better.

I can prove it to you with sound logic.

The more content you have, the more "hooks" you can throw into Google's ocean.

There is one powerful caveat though...

Because if your end users do NOT read your content, and they do NOT stay on your page... Your bounce rate will fall flatter than a pancake convention.

Also remember, that ultimately GOOD CONTENT wins. Google wants to share content that people read, engage with, and share.

And yes, Google can tell which content sucks, and which content doesn't based upon these sneaky algorithms.

Good luck to you.

You have a good point. Quantity is also important but it has to go along with quality. Posting 5 x 2000 words useful articles per week will be better in terms of traffic than just 1 x 2000 word article per day. But it will only work if it's good quality content. Plus quality content gets free backlinks

Originally Posted by writeaway

Well, you can ask for people's OPINIONS (and everyone has one) but most of it will be WRONG...

Or...

You can look at DATA-DRIVEN case studies. Here's one:

https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-ideal...ing-to-science

The verdict? Depending on your niche, 1500+ words is the way to go.

I love data driven case studies. To tell you the truth I have seen studies like the ones from Neil Patel from Quick Sprout that says writing 3 x 2000 words articles per week will achieve 100.000 visits in 18 months.

But also has seen a study that a professor from an MBA. He made his students create a new blog in any niche and post the results after many months later. You can see the trend that every new blog is like in a sandbox in Google. And just like 3 months later ALL blogs increase dramatically in search engine traffic. They key is frequency and consistency. Weird that the ones that got more traffic were the ones that posted multiple times per day around 250 words per article.

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anwar001

11 years ago

Originally Posted by itos

I love data driven case studies. To tell you the truth I have seen studies like the ones from Neil Patel from Quick Sprout that says writing 3 x 2000 words articles per week will achieve 100.000 visits in 18 months.

Oh! Its a lot of work writing 3 articles of 2000 or more words per week. And on top of that the articles have to be of high quality. Not easy for most bloggers.

Originally Posted by itos

But also has seen a study that a professor from an MBA. He made his students create a new blog in any niche and post the results after many months later. You can see the trend that every new blog is like in a sandbox in Google. And just like 3 months later ALL blogs increase dramatically in search engine traffic. They key is frequency and consistency. Weird that the ones that got more traffic were the ones that posted multiple times per day around 250 words per article.

Now this seems to be a much more doable strategy of posting 3 or 4 articles of 200- 250 words each per day. But the trick is to be consistent over sufficiently long periods of time. And not to forget, even the 250 word articles have to have quality information and substance and not just fluff.

Overall, I think, different strategies suit different people. Some like writing long pieces of content and others like to post smaller articles multiple times. Do not think that small articles have no value. Some of the brilliant writers of the world have written short books and can convey lot of information using very few words.

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stackman

11 years ago

In my experience, Google ranks larger articles (1000+ words) best, and the more words the better. Articles or posts with fewer words only rank high if they have unique content with unique keywords for which there is little competition.

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James McAllister

11 years ago

If you're going strictly for organic search engine traffic you'll definitely want to do the longer posts, especially since it looks like you're in the extremely saturated make money online market.

Relying solely on search engine traffic is an extremely foolish strategy for any business though, so you may wish to reconsider that.