If you have been a blogger for a while now, you have probably thought about your blog post length and how it affects your Google Rankings. You may have even noticed that some of your longer posts have been more popular than the short ones.
Lengthy blog posts on competitors’ blogs get the most traffic as well. Everyone has a different opinion when it comes to the length of the blog posts. Luckily, there have been studies and research considering this topic and they offer some great information.
What Google Has To Say About It
In 2012, Google representative, John Mueller said that Googlebot doesn't count the words on the page since even the smallest of posts, like Tweets, for example, are still being indexed. This means that some of your shorter posts could get to the top of Google Search – it all depends on how useful people find it and whether it's popular.
Mandy Solis, an SEO expert from Paper Fellows commented, ‘It's inevitable that people are going to try to figure out how Google Rankings work. However, this may be a lot more complicated than they anticipated. Case studies are the best ways to find out – but when it comes to length of the articles it's clear that there is some relation.'
What Studies Say About This
Researchers have concluded that, while it doesn't directly affect your Google Rankings, it certainly plays an important role in many indirect ways.
Medium said that their users spend the most time on blog posts which take seven minutes to read which translates to about 1600 words. American Marketing Association made the similar conclusion – that articles of 1200-1500 words perform best on Google Rankings.
SerpIQ, on the other hand, has found that articles that had more than 2000 words on the page perform best but proposed that it would be best to keep your articles around 1500 words. Neil Patel came up with a similar answer, providing some insight into sharing potential of longer articles.
‘We conducted series of researches and we found that there is definitely a visible difference between blog posts that are shorter than 1500 and those that are longer. The performance of longer articles overall is better. It's not just about the rankings but also about shares, time spent on the page, likes, usefulness etc.' says Chloe Grimm, a content manager at Australian Help.
Reasons Behind This
All of those case studies were not done only to simply show that longer articles rank better but they have also brought some answers and conclusions that can be useful to any blogger or a website owner.
Here they are:
- Sites that have more content get more attention
In a case study done by Quicksprout, they compared 327 articles both longer than 1500 words and shorter. The elements they paid attention to are the shares and likes on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
They observed that articles which were longer than 1500 words received more attention in the terms of sharing – it received 68% more shares on Twitter and 22% more shares on Facebook. Considering that social media plays a crucial role in determining the ranking of each blog post on Google, it's safe to say that length of the posts matter. As previously stated, blog posts longer than or around 1500 words are the best for Google Rankings.
Some bloggers may have trouble writing longer content, especially if they are used to writing shorter posts – experts recommend that in this case, they should use writing guides that are available online. They offer a lot of useful information that will add more length and value to your articles – visit platforms like State Of Writing or Via Writing.
There was a Google algorithm update to feature sites with most details first
People love detailed information. As much as 10% of the search specifically to find details on certain information that they need. This is why Google developed an update to give attention to those websites which offer the most details.
Updates like this means that longer content will have an advantage over short content since more details mean more words. This can potentially bring you more attention from social media, more backlinks, and more exposure to readers.
Since case studies have concluded what the desired length of blog posts is and now you know what the readers are mostly looking for, you can create suitable articles. You may feel insecure if you have never created long and detailed articles but luckily, there are plenty of content creation tools online, like Ox Essays or Big Assignments, for example, to help you out in the beginning.
If you have more words in your blog post, you can add more keywords
This is a good advantage. Short blog posts don't have as many words and as much space as it's necessary for Google to understand what it's about. With more keywords, you give your blog post a good chance to reach high rankings on Google search.
Another great thing about this is that you have to create a lot of subheadings in order to achieve readability – keywords in subheadings are a lot stronger than regular keywords.
This doesn't mean that you have to pack as many keywords as you can in your blog posts. They will come along with length – it's inevitable that you have to mention your subject a lot of times in a text longer than 1500 words.
Hiring professionals when you are not sure how to do this is a good idea. You'll need to use plagiarism checkers, however, just in case. Some of the good ones are Copyscape and Academized. The unique and original text also helps in your Google Rankings.
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of elements affecting your rankings on Google. One of them is certainly the length of your posts, no matter how indirectly. Some other benefits of longer blog posts are:
- You'll provide more value for your readers
- You'll get more backlinks
- People will comment more
- Your blog posts will convert a lot better
As you can see, there are plenty of reasons why you should write longer blog posts. Keep in mind that quality is the key to success and always maintain a high level of value to go along with your marketing and success efforts.
In my opinion, the quality of blogs decides to rank on google rather than the length
What matters most is the quality of your content. As long as they meet the potential need of your visitors. The length of your blog is not necessarily a ranking factor. Nice article, I really love reading your articles they are straightforward and easy to understand
Just focus on the quality of the articles
Great content you have here. When I write a blog post, I just focus on three things. Those are – my readers, type of post and the message. There has been a controversy concerning long-form content and short-form content. While some say and prefer to publish short posts of about 500~600 words article, others love publishing 1000~3000 words blog posts.
In fact, my article are more of long form, ranging from 1000~3000 words. However, although, long form content performs well on search engine, according to Google, you need to find out what works best for you, short or long. What content length does your target market love to read? Your result will help you create content that will engage your audience.
Anyways, thanks for sharing such a resourceful post, I really understand the fact that the length and frequency totally depend on your own abilities, the niche and your readers preferences. However from an SEO point of view, what do you suggest how often should a new blogger post on their blog?
Good day Barakha, Good to have you here. How often a new blogger posts depend on the niche. Some niche needs daily updates while some doesn’t.