Can a well written article of 1000 words outrank a blank page of 2000 words? On-page question only

Taking into account that one of the on-page SEO factors is the interaction of your visitors with your website (they spend more time on your website/they visit more pages during the session = Google will consider this behaviour a sign of quality), I would say it is possible.

But it doesn't depend so much on the number of words. The important thing is if the words are useful for your visitors in some way.

The number of words don't matter other than more words means more possibilities for different keyword phrases being picked up. Also, please stop thinking there is such a thing as "keyword density". That kind of keyword density manipulation stuff stopped working at least a decade ago.

The problem is, just because OP doesn't want anyone to consider links doesn't mean Google will ignore them (they won't).

One thing does not rank a page, it's a whole big picture going on and links (strong followed) links are the core of SEO.

Counting words is useless.

Plus, for all we know OP has a Flash site and the competition is a highly optimized schema/text site (with good links).

Hello Hafu,

It is definitely possible to outrank them with less content on the website. At the end of the day, it really depends on how engaging that content is to the users.

If you are able to get a lot of people to consistently interact with the content on the website and the other guys can't, I am sure you would be able to rank higher than them with even less.

Unfortunately, it is significantly more difficult to catch peoples attention with tiny websites than with large sites with rich and thorough content.

In a vacuum, if both websites do not have any backlinks pointing to them, your competition probably outranks you because they have way more products listed. You can still do well with just 10 products, but they have to be hot items that are bought frequently in order to compete with the amount of engagement that 100 items get.

Also, Google algorithm is not able to distinguish between an article and store site, it analyzes them all the same.

Do you have a chance to outrank him? Of course, you can. Do your best to generate consistent, relevant and engaging traffic from other sources than organic search.

Or, you can focus on building quality backlinks . I hope this helps.

not one thing as Yukon mentions ranks a site

but what I do find is user interaction plays a strong role these days

with chrome being the majority of the browser market Google uses Chrome as a heat map to determine relevancy, so more words helps to be in more places

with more words and more places to check out on a site keeps a person on site longer, I see small sites outranking larger sites all the time because when you look at their content and what triggers the user to interact on the site this could be the only reason

if links had such a dominant role these days then it is a link race on who has the most and best links, IMHO those days are gone but not forgotten

a combination works best and focus on getting users to do something on your site immediately to satisfy relevancy

good luck
Ed

With the exact same on-site SEO, I doubt you'd outrank him with 1,000 words. There are far too many factors involved in SEO to give you a truly solid answer, but if your content isn't as long as your competitors and the quality and on-page SEO is similar, you'll get beaten by the longer content in most cases.

Benjamin Ehinger

As others have said, it's not so much the size of the article on your site, but the interaction of your users. If you have a lower bounce-rate than your competitor, and your users click on more links while on the homepage, you will have a better chance at outranking him.

In all, it depends on your audience. If you can increase social shares and proof, you're good to go in any form of content.

Every advice to you is a simply speculation: noone really knows how the Google algorithm works.

Rest assured that, the most important factor is the quality and the engagement the article does but it also have the EMPHASIS ON THE MONETIZATION.

So not simply for "engage" users and "having shares or likes". But to SELL.

Yes, a well written seo-optimized 1000 words article can outrank 2000 words articles. It totally depends on the kind of SEO you do for the article to make it rank better. Also, google is crawling pages and ranks pages which provide good information to their visitors i.e from bounce rate, returning visitors etc. All of them are somehow connect with the quality of the content.

I hope my answer helped you.

Ranking has nothing to do with content length. It's one of the biggest myths. I used to think the more words on a page the better your rankings. You may pick up some long tail keyword traffic but really when it comes to ranking for a keyword it's irrelevant.

If the content rocks and you get a slew of valuable links in, yep. Word count is not a huge factor. Content quality and links in from aligned, rocking sites play big parts in ranking.

At this point probably it only depends from the time that users spend on your site, for example if you have less content but it's more engaging and users stay more you will outrank them.

The problem is that once they start building some backlink and maybe people stay a bit more on their site you won't be able to catch them, if you compete for the same keywords

Its depend on the quality of content not on quantity.

It is possible to outrank your competitor if you have 1000 words of content on your website and your competitor have don't. All you need to promote our content by many seo & smo activities. it also depends on bounce rate. If any visitor comes to your website and they spend 2-3 minutes on your website then it may be chances to beat your competitor. Regularly update your website and post good stuff. This is my opinion you can try!