One of the biggest arguments in the world of SEO is how long your article needs to be. Does it need to be a long explainer article or ultimate guide, or does it need to be brief and to the point? Like most things in SEO, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. However, if you were told that the longer your article is, the higher you rank, then you might have fallen for one of the biggest myths in digital marketing.
Do I Need to Write Long Articles for SEO?
The main source of reference for SEO is obviously Google, but up until recently, Google was not the best at judging authoritative content. The algorithm used to be simple enough to think more words = better information, which is not always the case. Outside Google, readers also tend to be more impressed by longer articles, thinking, “Wow! These guys have put in a lot of effort!” Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but sometimes the answer to your question doesn’t need 2000 words.
For example, suppose you’re searching the internet for “How to boil potatoes”. The last thing you want to come across is an extra long article ranking no. 1 on Google that deep dives into the writer’s childhood, full of anecdotes about potatoes and their rich history, and find yourself reading over 1500 words of fluff until you reach the answer to your Googled question at the very end of the post.
At one point, this sort of waffle became a meme on the internet in digital marketing circles. It’s not hard to guess that most of those fluff words are for Google (or the copywriter trying to make more cents per word) but, because this doesn’t add much value to the page, Google had to get a better grip on understanding what authoritative and useful content was.
How Google Made Long Articles Useless
Once Google realised they needed to do better to filter out relevant information, they started looking at rich snippets, schema code, and bits of information in articles that would directly answer a question Googled like “How do I boil a potato?” It then lifted out this relevant information and put it right up in the search results itself in their new featured snippets tab. All of a sudden, you no longer needed to even click on an article that you’d read till the end to figure out how to cook a spud because Google took that answer from the bottom of the article and just handed it right to you.
The second Google counterattack came in the form of the new content update which does a better job of identifying “human” content. Even though Google is an algorithm, nowadays, writing for the algorithm instead of for humans isn’t the best for ranking. This all comes down to one of the biggest principles of SEO: usability. If your page or website is user-friendly and looks like it’s made for the user, not for zeros and ones, then it will check the usability box.
Why Do Long Articles Rank Better?
After the featured snippets move, writers felt that writing that much to reach a payoff that readers would get before clicking on the article is useless, but long articles are still ranking high on Google, so what’s the catch? Simply put, even though the web is advancing beyond our comprehension, there are still bits where it’s glacially slow, and one of them is finding article alternatives. The reason some articles stay at no. 1 on the Google search results page for so long is that Google simply hasn’t yet found a better alternative that can rank higher.
This takes us to an SEO theory that isn’t talked about enough and that’s the fact that you only need to be marginally better than your competitors to rank higher than them. Now, you can do this by just writing well or having a good copywriter. The fact of the matter is, despite there being tons of expensive tools and software out there now to tell you exactly what you’re supposed to do for SEO, if your competitors aren’t doing SEO or they have terrible websites, you only need to be slightly better than them to rank.
It sounds too good to be true, though, and it is. Being somewhat better than your competitors may help you outrank them on Google, but the caveat is that eventually, someone will catch up to you. Nobody stays at the top of the Google search results page forever with zero maintenance, so if you want to stay at the top of the mountain, you have to be better than just a bit better.
Why Are There Still New Long Articles?
So, if longer articles aren’t ideal for SEO, why are there still so many new ones? Partly because some subjects are complex enough that they need longer articles. Remember, Google will guide users to your website or page if you’re providing high-quality information for the search terms you’re targeting. So, if someone is looking for a way to get rid of a termite infestation and you’ve got everything covered on that topic, then Google will pick you as the most trustworthy resource.
However, if you’re providing redundant information on something as simple as “How to turn my oven on”, then Google will simply ignore all the fluff in your article. The one situation where it may benefit you to write very long articles is in very competitive niches like tech, for instance, where there could be hundreds of thousands of websites trying to rank on top and writing longer and longer articles becomes an arms race.
How Long Should I Make My Articles?
The answer to that question may surprise you: just write naturally! Pick a topic you’re knowledgeable about, cover all its angles, write the best you can, and that’s how long your article needs to be. You could even use an AI tool like ChatGPT4 where you can input what every paragraph will be about and then ask in your prompt what info you might be missing. AI will give you all the relevant talking points; for example, for cooking potatoes, it could recommend including the air fryer as a cooking method to make it the best possible article.
The human element in articles is very important, and with more and more articles on the internet being 100% AI-written with no human touch or flair – like a joke here or a reference there – that human element is sorely needed. Writing an article is a lot like public speaking, and one brilliant author called Dale Carnegie said his secret to public speaking is to speak from the heart about a topic you care about. The same goes for articles; if the reader can feel your passion and interest beyond the screen, your article will be more successful.
Lastly, an easy way to check exactly how you’re doing when writing an article is by using a tool like Semrush that will take you step by step through the important considerations; enter the keywords you want to rank for, the territory you’re targeting, whether you’re writing for mobile viewing or desktop, etc. The tool will look at what’s ranking in the top 10 for these keywords and report back to you with the average article length, relevant primary and semantically linked keywords (words used around the primary keywords), etc. So, for the potatoes example, a tool like Semrush could offer you related angles like potato weight, cooking time, ovens, cooking methods, etc.
Takeaway
So, does content length have an impact on your ranking? Absolutely, but not to the extent you think. So, just write from the heart, and check the very relevant keywords. Make sure you check the competition, and most importantly: be yourself. Always remember that writing for humans is way more important than writing for an algorithm or a program.
Last Updated on June 16, 2024
