Short vs Long Content. Which one is best?

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Hi! I want to compare two content strategies for search engine traffic. The type of site would be an authority site with evergreen content (2-3 years post lifetime). I will not talk about news or content that is not relevant in future months.

For short posts, I am looking to make each post that can be read in a minute. And for long content it will be more extend contents in average 2000 words per post.

Short Content Strategy
  • 300 words in average per post.
  • Mostly quick tips straight to the point.
  • 1-3 images per post.
  • Publish: 4 times per day.
  • 36000 words in average per month.
  • Useful content.
  • Unique content.

Long Content Strategy
  • 2000 words in average per post.
  • In-depth long content.
  • 5-10 images per post.
  • Publish: 3 times per week.
  • 24000 words in average per month.
  • Useful content.
  • Unique content.

Which one do you consider better? If you can talk with your own experience let me know. In overall I want search engine traffic for long-term steady visits.
#search engine optimization #blogging #content #long #short
  • 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.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • 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.
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
  • 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
  • [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • 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
  • 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.
    • [ 4 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • 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.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • 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.

      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.

      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

      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.
      • [1] reply
  • 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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  • 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.
  • Banned
    You're wasting your time reading moz.
  • 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.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • I agree with what some folks are saying here about doing both. Do short posts for people who are too lazy to read and long posts for people who need detailed answers.

    But instead of evaluating over and over if one is better than the other, I suggest that you just focus on churning out content that so useful that people end up sharing it. From there, it doesn't matter if shorter or longer is better. As long as you're helping people and you're developing a loyal following, then you're good.

    If you're too lazy to write, you can always hire a good writer. Let him take over the site as you focus on other stuff like marketing the site or managing another business.

    I guess it really takes time to evaluate if it is good. But as long as people are sharing it and saying that the content on your site is good and useful, then you know that you're on the right track.
  • Thanks for bringing this up. Tackle each article according to the uniqueness and research of the keywords. Keep in mind that you are meeting specific needs of a particular target group. Because of this, then SEO Optimization is not the only factor.

    Therefore, combine on the short and long articles. Make them as audience oriented, with a specific end result in mind, as possible. That's why we can't overemphasize the importance of proper, thorough KWR.

    And remember, once you start, stick to your well defined goals (the timelines of your articles). I believe that is the biggest challenge. Consistency is key.
  • Hey Itos,

    As long as you keep the content relevant and simple, you should be perfect.

    As a consumer P.O.V sometimes I like a lot of content when I have time to spare, but if I'm just looking for a quick answer to a small problem I definitely prefer short, precise, and to the point answers.


    Hope that helps

    Adam
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Hey

    You're best to test it.

    I tend to keep emails short which lead to my blogs which have more content on them.

    I'd rather emails get to the point and send them to the blog which has all the information.

    However I'll sometimes have small blog posts for odd things (if I'm talking about something that is simple to implement or use I don't want to draw it out.)
  • Why would you want to spend your life involved in something that you couldn't passionately write 2000 words about?

    That's nothing!

    I guarantee you that money will follow when you are writing something so passionately that you forget about counting words.
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • Short answer. For blog SEO, long is better.

    Just make sure it's informative and helpful to your audience.
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  • Focusing on content is always the right things you should do. However, long or short is depends on the specific requirement of your site or others site. I choose short content with quality information and can be broaden steadily.
  • Depends on what your website is all about. Actually its about quality
  • Content near about 1000-1500 words are best for SEO, because it crawled by search engine easily.
  • I would do a combination of both. Some people will love the short posts, some will love the long posts. Google loves longer content, so if you're simply posting to increase your rankings then I would give Google what she wants.
  • Longer articles tend to get better ranking from Google but shorter articles tends to get more attention from your subscribers or visitors to your website. Humans have a short attention span so shorter articles are better for that purpose.
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    • Google spiders words. The more words you give them the more ways you are giving them to rank you. Learn about writing themed articles and filling them with the words you want to rank for. It is possible to rank for 50-100 different keywords and keyword phrases just from one well written 2000+ themed article. Good luck.
  • Banned
    Short and Unique is what keeps people engaged.
  • haha in an SEO Point of View. Neither, just have the words in your url and you can rank. Don't believe anything that says you need content. That's not how SEO works.
  • Here's a thought.

    Go look up whatever keyword you're working with and note how long the top, linked pages are.

    That should tell you everything you need for your specific niche.

    I just looked up "crackers" and found that every page in the top 10 results (except for a Wikipedia link) is under 1,000 words. And on some of them, less than 100.
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    • [1] reply
  • i started to realize that we use both short n long content mixed in our website, it depends on the kw n topic per kw that we dig, how deep or narrow is the content.
    sometime if it's too deep then you wanna add a new post with short content in it that will have possibility of being updated into a longer content in the future.
  • Don't put all your hopes and dreams into search engine traffic. All of the questions you just asked, and all the hopes of traffic that you're imagining that you can get.... can all be done for you quickly with paid advertising. But good luck though. I'd just hate for you to do a long test between short content and long content.... and you're only making $13 per month.
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    • Banned
      Doesn't matter, most of these guys will never rank a page considering they think the amount of text on a page has something to do with SEO.

      Odds are they'll also never figure out PPC, having a bankroll won't help If they're too lazy to do their own testing (proof = this thread subject).
  • Both, depend on the topic
  • You need to make a test.
    Though longer articles rank better but such a post (a top one that will keep your users engaged) cannot be crafted in less than 6 hours.
    Personally, I use a combination of both short and long blog posts.
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  • I assume that 2000 words post is great for SEO. According to my experience, the posts that get more search traffic contain more than 2000 words.
    • [1] reply
    • Your experience is short, then.

  • Longer content ranks better in Google search results. Neil Patel explained this many times how he increase traffic and ranking by writing long articles.
  • I would use them both. Short content is much easier to do on a regular basis and you can try to link them with the longer content over 2000 words per post to improve the SEO.
  • Hi,

    For getting search engine traffic, a longer blog post gets better ranking, higher indexing and better sharing.

    You can read more here:

    quicksprout.com/2014/03/31/how-long-should-each-blog-post-be-a-data-driven-answer

    All the best and take care.

    Sheriman



  • I use both effectively - it all comes down to content quality. Good content trumps SEO. However, I use more keyword tags than the average person. Abe Lincoln replied when asked, "How long a man's legs need to be?" - 'just long enough to reach the ground'. It also depends on your subject matter. Some topics lend themselves to more frequent & timely posts. Others need more content with fewer posts. Another consideration is your Avatar - what is the target's interest level? A technical how-to takes more explaining than advice for removing wine stains from a shirt. Start with your topic and target reader - that should answer most questions.
  • I would have a combination of both with a lot of cross-linking, photos and videos. Plus you want to link out to relevant sites from each post and then reach out to the owners of those other sites and tell them you linked to their page and would they mind sharing your post to their social networks. Some of them will if you did a good job with creating your content.
  • I would say that 10,000+ words in a post can RANK very well. I got a blogger page on a site that has more than 100k views now! Just a post without any social sharing, doing anything at all! As it comprises of more than 10,000 words, that page literally ranked for a lot of keywords.
  • If you are going to have long posts which is probably the way to go be sure to intermingle into the post relevant photos and videos so your audience does not get bored and so as to attract people to read your posts.
  • Longer content ranks better in Google, Content near about 1000+ words are best for SEO
  • Normally we use 300-400 words high quality unique content for any site.
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    • So what? Elaborate. How does that answer the long vs short question.

      Normally, I watch short movies. But that doesn't bring me one step closer to being an actor in a short or long movie.

  • Its depend on topic if you can describe everything in 300 words then there is no need to add unnecessary words at all however I don't even recommend to cut down a large procedure in few words
  • Long unique post win period. Try to add creative and make your post little fun.

    Reader hate boring txt
  • Long content may rank well but does the visitor read it all? Is it well laid out and easy to read? Will the visitor come back for more? Mixing in shorter content is good for engaging those with less tolerance for a long read. I personally like a blog post straight to the point without a lot of blah blah.
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    • [1] reply
    • Talking nonsense again? What does "keyword density is a must" mean?

      Nothing.

  • Banned
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  • Banned
    Probably a mix. Lot's of short ones with occasional long posts and a few inbetweeners.
  • I prefer Short Content than Long Content
  • Long content is better but not too long. Because if any readers feeling bored reading long content. So, this should be legible, interesting and short as well.
  • I agree with kilgore.No matter how long or short your content is. The thing which matters at the end of day is how it has been presented to the readers.If it is short but well elaborated and able enough to deliver its message then why to add unnecessary stuff.On the other hand if your topic needs a detail explanation to clear all the aspects then why to bother about limits.
  • Hello
    Take into consideration that the most important thing is key words and relevant information. I will recommend you to write long relevant content.
    • [1] reply
    • Idea is great and well enough. I like it.
  • Long content is Good as compared to short content
  • Long content are more useful as compare to short but you have to be on the point and interesting.
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  • Short content or long content does not matter in many cases. The content should be unique, full of knowledge and does not contain keyword stuffing.
  • Short content vs long content is not a main issue whatever it is your content should be unique
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    Short vs Long Content. Which one is best?

    Hi! I want to compare two content strategies for search engine traffic. The type of site would be an authority site with evergreen content (2-3 years post lifetime). I will not talk about news or content that is not relevant in future months. For short posts, I am looking to make each post that can be read in a minute. And for long content it will be more extend contents in average 2000 words per post.