In recent years, the length of content has caused heated debate, and many SEO masters have told their fans that if they want to succeed, they must create very long articles. Although there is ample evidence that content length is related to ranking, this is not the most important factor. The reason
does this is because content length is usually inversely proportional to content quality. When you give priority to length, you naturally reduce the value of each word and express it in 1000 words instead of 300 words, because you want to rank higher.
may improve your ranking in the short term, but it’s the exact opposite of what Google wants, and eventually, the algorithm will be adjusted to make up for it. After all, they want to provide value to searchers, not to the pages with the most words. In many cases, people are looking for concise and valuable content rather than lengthy explanations.
therefore, while the word count is obviously associated with a high ranking, you should also consider at least five other more important factors. The average content length in
SERP (photo source: Capsicum Mediaworks)
gives us an in-depth understanding of the following:
- provides value to readers.
- provides more than just the text
- correct syntax and spelling
- keywords optimization
- attaches importance to the reader’s time
1. Provide value for readers
first of all, the most important goal of your content should be to provide value to your readers. If you cannot achieve this simple goal, then people are less likely to share or link to your page, which will make it more difficult for you to rank competitive search terms.
even if you do manage to get people into your page, if your content has no value, they are unlikely to turn into paying customers. In fact, if your page is full of fluff because you are trying to reach any number of words, then they are likely to leave your site and leave a bad taste in their mouth and never want to come back.
if you want to provide value to your readers and make them paying customers, you must give priority to quality over quantity. Not doing so is a quick way to damage your brand’s reputation and make readers think your brand doesn’t care about quality.
be sure to check out our long article on this topic: content Marketing Essentials
Why are they reading your content? For
to provide value to your readers, you must first understand why they are reading the article you are creating. It is difficult to provide value correctly if you do not understand the problem that the reader is trying to solve. There are many different forms of
value; readers may be looking for advice, entertainment, instruction, humor, or many other different forms of value. Recognizing why your readers come to you is critical to producing your content in a way that provides that value.
for example: if you are creating posts about how to install drains, readers may search for detailed instructions. Searchers may have little experience, so your instructions must be detailed and very detailed, rather than skipping details that more experienced people will find intuitive.
‘s understanding of the “searcher’s intentions” is critical to providing value. Now that you know what they are looking for, you must create a page that best conveys that value, in many cases, not by writing a large article that is longer than your competitor. Rand Fishkin, founder of
Moz, has this comment on long content:
is. I’ve read the research. I know the relevance. On average, full-length content has more participation, higher rankings and more sharing than its more concise brothers. However, this does not make the long content the same as the wonderful content. It does not target long content as the goal of each content. Of course, this does not mean that longer content is better content.
2. It’s not just text
. In this day and age, it’s not enough to force your users to read your content. You must provide other forms of content, such as graphics, video, and audio experiences. The reason for this is that reading is not usually the best way for you to present content, especially if you are trying to explain something visual or complex.
shows us an example; you can create a guide to explain to your customers how they repair lawnmowers. Of course, you can explain this in words only, but it is far less valuable to your customers than images or videos. For this reason, most
instructions now come with pictures, and many companies have detailed videos on their websites or on YouTube channels. Both options are much better than words, which is why content length can be said to be unimportant.
your page may be only a hundred words long, but it may be accompanied by multiple pictures and an incredible video, providing great value to your readers. In addition to
, studies have shown that pages with images tend to rank better. In addition, people are more likely to link to websites that contain detailed videos and graphics than plain text. The reason for this is that, in many cases, text is not as good as video, and they are immersive and impressive.
creates social content (Img src:Edge Media)
obviously, the cost of producing high-quality video is usually higher than the cost of writing articles, which may deter some websites, but this is also a good opportunity. Your benefits are much greater because many of your competitors fail to take advantage of video content.
In addition, by creating video content, you can upload it to other platforms such as Vimeo and YouTube. Doing so gives you access to another marketing channel to find more customers and increase revenue. Content length is not everything, and it is certainly no more important than adding visual elements to enhance your page.
3. Correct grammar and spelling
although you can make a good argument that correct grammar is contained in “valuable content”, it is so important that it deserves its part. If your syntax is poor, both Google and your visitors will notice. Some
studies have shown that Google’s algorithm can distinguish between well-written content and poorly syntactic pages. If they haven’t at that time, they are likely to use good grammar as a ranking factor in the future. The reason for this is simple; users want to read well-written content, which is why you can’t skip content proofreading.
grammar and spelling
as a user, if you arrive at a page with poor grammar and spelling, you may click back and try to find another page to visit. Users do this because it is very difficult to read poorly written pages.
users who click back will obviously not be your customers, but even those who stay on your page are unlikely to convert. After all, if there are spelling and grammatical errors in your content, your readers will associate your brand with low quality and low standards.
in fact, Globo Lingo researchers found that 59 per cent of participants were less likely to use services or products if there were obvious grammatical or spelling errors on their websites or marketing materials.
allows for this correlation, and no matter how good your sales page is or how helpful your product is, they are much less likely to turn into paying customers.
, take a look at these 30 common grammar mistakes that we all need to stop making. If you need help, please check out these free grammar checking tools.
4. Keyword optimization
if you are trying to create a wonderful piece of content for your readers to enjoy it, it is wise to make sure it is properly optimized for valuable keywords. Doing so will make you more likely to rank keywords that people often search for, resulting in passive traffic from Google, Yahoo, and Bing. By following simple SEO techniques, you can help your site increase natural traffic.
Natural Traffic growth
although no enterprise should rely entirely on SEO traffic for revenue, it would be foolish to ignore such a targeted source of traffic that can be used. Instead, by studying the keywords that people are searching for, you can optimize your posts so that they rank higher in terms related to the posts you are writing. Before
optimizes the article, you need to figure out which keywords people are searching for, which is easier said than done. Fortunately, tools like Ahrefs Keyword Explorer make it easier.
through keyword research, you can enter seed keywords and find other relevant search terms. The key to this study is to find words that are highly searched but uncompetitive, which are the words you are most likely to rank, but monthly searches are also valuable.
uses Ahrefs to study keywords in
, but it is not enough to look at keywords on the surface, which is a mistake made by many beginners when they start keyword research. In fact, the searcher’s intention may be the most important factor when you decide which keywords to locate.
after all, unconverted traffic is useless, which is why you spend some time thinking about who will search for these terms and why it is important to search for them. Doing so will give you a deeper understanding of these people, whether or not they are likely to buy from you, and whether they are ready to buy or still need more persuasion.
these factors are crucial, especially if you are trying to sell high-priced goods to people. For example, people who want to buy a car may need more persuasive and detailed information than those looking for cheap gadgets.
now that you have found the ideal target keywords, you must effectively optimize your page for them while avoiding the penalty of over-optimization. First of all, it is always wise to write as naturally as possible rather than focus on keyword optimization, because it will produce the highest quality content.
, however, it is recommended that you keep the keyword density between 0.2% and 0.4%. At this level, you can encourage Google to rank your keywords, but you won’t look like you’re trying to manipulate their algorithm. For more information on
, check out this article, where we share more information about our favorite WordPress SEO tool.
the most valuable place for your keywords is in your title and title tags, because Google seems to pay more attention to the words in these tags. Therefore, it is wise to use keywords in the title as much as possible.
5. Cherish your readers’ time
instead of worrying too much about the length of the content, you should make sure you provide value to your readers and don’t waste their time. Perhaps the biggest reason to focus on content length is that it encourages you to write longer articles than you need.
values readers’ time
this will show your readers that you don’t value their time and prefer to improve your rankings rather than care about your customers. In this day and age, everyone is busy and people want to answer their questions quickly. They certainly don’t want to read a long article to find out something relatively simple.
Your goal should be to provide value to your readers in the most effective way. In many cases, this means that your article is only a few hundred words, but usually the fastest reading speed may still be thousands of words.
but the key is that you have to distinguish between the questions people ask and when they need quick answers and when they need more detailed articles. Doing so will ensure that you value your readers’ time and still provide them with everything they are looking for.
if you have any questions, you should put yourself in the reader’s shoes, search for queries they will use on Google, and view content posted on other sites. Are they procrastinating or are they too short?
‘s research is very useful because it not only allows you to find gaps in the market, but also determines how best you can provide value to your audience.
Summary
after reading this article, you may ask yourself if you should care about your word count. This can be confusing, and it’s important that you want to focus on these five things, but you also want to rank, and research shows that long articles tend to rank higher.
‘s answer is to reprioritize and treat the word count as an afterthought before publication rather than when writing an article. Doing so will help prevent you from writing too long articles and allow you to focus on simply providing maximum value to your readers.
instead, you can use word count to tell you how much marketing and link building you need to rank articles. But by forgetting the number of words, you can create articles that provide a better user experience, which by-product makes link building and marketing easier.
