The Right Content Length: A Godilocks Complex?
Everybody has an opinion on the correct length for content. Some will say it's 400 words. Others will say it needs to be much longer, around 1500-2000 words. Others yet, say somewhere in the middle is just right. This story has a familiar ring doesn't it?
I have my own opinion on the subject. My feeling is that your content should be just long enough to get your point across and nothing more. Otherwise, you'll start to ramble and that increases the chances of your visitors heading for the exits.
How do you handle this issue? Do you just write what you feel and forget about what everyone thinks regarding content length? That could be the smartest approach in my opinion. The trouble is, what if there is something to this content length issue? This article explores this.
A Line Drawn in the Sand
Who is the authority on what length your content should be? I don't remember getting the memo from Google telling us an official number. If you did, can you pass that on to me? I feel that could be pretty useful. But until I receive that, we have to rely on arbitrary lengths defined by anyone that claims authority on the subject (whether they have it or not).
Neil Patel of QuickSprout fame, in his article "How Long Should Each Blog Post Be?", tries to dispel some myths about content length. He states that shorter is not the only way and that longer is not the only way.
There's more to his post and it is a worthy read. But it kind of makes you feel like there's a tug of war going on between the two camps (short and long). And towards the end of the article, he declares that longer posts beat out shorter ones rather handily. He gives numbers to back up that claim.
The "Shorter is Better" Camp
The argument for shorter posts comes from the fact that people don't read long passages (this is the 3rd myth that Patel tries to dispel in his article). You can answer this one yourself. Do you like to read long pages on websites? You can ask your your friends and family as well. I tend to be a skimmer myself, although when I am doing in depth research, you can be sure that I am going to delve deep into articles that seem like they have some meat to them, i.e., longer articles/posts, etc. But which sites should be chosen for that deeper research?
The "Longer is Better" Camp
Patel covers much of why longer content tends to outperform shorter, at least with tests that he performed on the subject. Essentially, it has to do with search engines indexing variations on the main keyword. This is a concept called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) which is a fancy word for saying related keywords. If you have these contained in your content the chances of the search engines picking up on at least one variation increases. Google is a fan of this LSI concept and supposedly it's part of the ranking algorithm.
But even with that, and assuming it's all true, it's important that you fit those keyword variations properly within your content. They have to read well. In other words, don't just use them for the sake of using them. If you do, you'll see your readers heading for the exits. The search engines also pick up on this and it can affect your rankings, negatively of course.
Does Authority Have Something To Do With It?
In a post by Diana Adams on BitRebels titled, "Long Posts vs. Short Posts: 10 Things To Consider", she gives arguments for both sides. Adams also feels as though longer posts have an edge. She states that people tend to comment on longer posts more than they do on shorter ones.
But who is Diana Adams? I've never heard of her before. If you notice from her post, it is very short (at least when compared to Patel's) and has nice content boxes that break up the message which I found very engaging. I was able to read her post in a very short period of time. Also, she wrote this post three years ago. I've been on the web for a while now, how come I never heard of her?
She states that on the BitRebels website, most of the posts are very short. "Here at Bit Rebels, we’ve always tried to write posts that our readers can read in 3-5 minutes.", states Adams. At the start of the next paragraph she says, "A short post is like a snack, a long post is like a meal." I think that is a neat way to look at it.
Diana Adams on Long Posts vs. Short Posts
"A short post is like a snack, a long post is like a meal."
Neil Patel is someone that many of us are quite familiar with. His post is lengthy and as you can see if you read it, he makes note of this. Yet I read the entire thing. And although I was still left without a resolution, it was a compelling read.
It's interesting to note that Patel's Google Page Rank is non existent whereas Adams has a Page Rank of 0. They both have a great Alexa ranking but Patel's is better. In Neils's post, he has a ton of comments whereas Diana has none and Diana's is three years old as I stated before.
Neil also makes mention that "Longer content gets shared more". A comparison shows that Neil's post has hundreds of shares whereas Diana's is in the double digits. But a comparison of one post against one other is no way conclusive evidence. In this case it has to do with the fact that Neil has more authority than Diana so his post is likely to be read far more than Diana's will be.
This is not to say that I wouldn't consider Diana's information. I thought she brought up some good points. It's just I have never heard about her or BitRebels.com before. Yet, the funny part is both her home page and Neil's carries a Page Rank of 5.
I don't necessarily use those measures when determining whether a website is an authority or not. I merely bring it up because many others do. Why does this matter? My belief is when you have an authority site (at least what everybody believes is one) and you are well known like Neil, you will have a much better chance of your visitors reading long posts, all things being equal.
Does Authority Need a Do-over?
There is buzz lately that Google is getting ready to release a new algorithm change. This change is rumored to help smaller bloggers that have been providing quality content consistently but can't seem to break through the grips of the larger, well establish "authority sites". No one knows the extent of these changes nor when they will occur.
My guess is you are swearing at me because I didn't put the issue to rest. That's the price of being a blogger these days. But I really believe that until we get that official release from Google, we just have to continue using our intuition about what feels right. If you get your message across which causes your traffic to increase and you are able to accomplish that with a 300-400 word count, pat yourself on the back. On the other hand if you are able to cohesively construct epic pages that increase your rankings, than you should give yourself a gold star. Somehow though just like Goldilocks, I think the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.
