How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions

Being in this industry long enough makes you ask yourself several questions one of them being: Is the length of your content an issue to make it in the Google pages? It is not easy to make a make a clear judgment of what really matters between content quality and content length but I will try to find out which one out-ways the other in this post read for more information.

The exact words from Bill Gates is that content is king and therefore important in any form of online literature. Which obviously makes sense since no matter how long or short your content is; if your readers can’t find anything valuable to them, they’re not going to hang around much. Your content needs to make sense and compelling for your readers to grasp anything from it, no matter how long it is. Let’s be frank here, if they can’t learn anything from your content, there is no use reading it.

That is just one side of it. On the other hand, research conducted by Brian Dean proves that longer content rank higher in Google search engine and therefore improves your content visibility. He even stated that the average content word count is 1890 words. Looking from his point of view, I believe he is right. It is hard to write good quality content without providing detailed information to back up your content. This information can be in form of statistics, tabulations, charts, and researches.

Same goes for headlines where longer headlines will receive a better reception from visitors than shorter ones. This is according to research conducted by BuzzSumo, where he states that headlines with 12 to 18 words will get more engagement from visitors. From the above information, it is obvious that there is no direct answer as to whether content or length is better, although statistics show which content type is more effective to your readership. To understand how to improve SEO ranking on Google, you need strike a balance between length and quality.

Google’s View on Content-Length

Writing 2000 words pages won’t mean anything to Google. Let’s be realistic here and ask ourselves how many pages are 2000 words? A Tweet with 140 characters long will be picked by Google, which suggests that Google ranking factors do not put much emphasis on content length. They strongly believe that word count alone isn’t a good indicator
of quality in a content. Relying on word count won’t tell Google if your post is of good quality. They believe that a blog of any length can stir up a conversation and may add to both the length and the quality of the blog.

Length Doesn’t Equal Quality

Along content doesn’t necessarily mean that it is of quality. If a reader can only make sense of 300 of a 1000 word post, then the length is not worth it. If your post is full of repetition with no solid facts to back it up, then the reader is bound to drop the post like a hot metal. Another concern I a lengthy content is plagiarism. Here a writer can plagiarize intentionally hoping to not getting caught, or forgets to cite
sources properly when using them. Eventually, their luck runs out when they get caught out by Google. This will lead to Google algorithm not picking up your blog if you are writing a long article. What you should do is run your blog through Paper follows or Plagium to find out if your content was plagiarized.

Also, you can check Ubersuggest: Awesome Free SEO Keyword Suggestion Tool

Advantages of Length

Although the length of your blog may not have any significant impact on Google ranking tool, it has some benefits if applied appropriately in content writing. Here are some of its benefits:
More Links – Lengthy content allows you to add links if you still have room to write. You can include more links to other content. This is known as backlinking and is a good way to increase your website traffic since it shows what you are researching from other, quality websites. Adding more links can only help you build your audience.
Provide More Details – Another benefit of lengthy posts is that it allows you to provide the reader with extra information about the article. This way, the reader won’t need to source somewhere else to get more information about of what he or she is looking for. “How to” style posts goes well with lengthy articles because you can add points and other details that shorter blogs won’t allow.
Keywords Accommodation – A long post gives you an opportunity to include more keywords in your content. Compared to shorter ones that can only allow few keywords, long articles gives you space to add more keywords if you feel that they are not sufficient in your article. The right keywords give you the right audience for Google ranking. This doesn’t mean that you stuff your keywords to get more readers, but rather carefully placing them to increase visibility.
Expert Oriented – Writing a long article means that you know exactly what you are talking about and there is no guesswork, therefore it needs an expert in a certain niche to handle it. Long posts allow them to exhaust every detail needed by the reader without beating around the bush. Experts can do this seamlessly without driving the readers away.

Drawing a Line between Content and Length

Balancing a good content and length is a tricky affair but is no rocket science. The key is to find the amount of information needed by the reader as you write the content. Don’t focus on one and ignore the other as this will lower your ranking.

Final thoughts

As we’ve seen both length and content are important and you need to have them in mind every time you are writing an article or a blog. This will ensure that your articles are not only appealing to the reader but also search engine friendly. Writing long articles goes well with experts in a certain niche since they have enough information on that particular subject. You can also use certain tools to help you create ideal content. To understand how Google ranking works refer to Google ranking factors in 2018.