In this article, we are going to talk about Do long articles rank better in Google search engine results. So if it is true or false, let’s find out.
Whenever you are doing content marketing or organic SEO for your blog or for your business website, then you must have heard from every SEO guru that you need to write long articles as long as possible to rank better in Google search engine results.
So the question is, is it actually true that longer articles ranked better in Google search engine results? And the answer is yes and no. Let me explain. Now here is a study published on the Blacklinko.com website and here they have analyzed 11 million Google search engine results.
And here in their summary of findings, if we take a look at point number eight it says the average Google first page results contain 1447 words.
Along with that in the point number twelve it says websites with above-average time on site tend to rank higher in Google. So with this, we can say that longer articles do rank better in Google search engine results. But the question is how long is actually a long article? Do you just need to write every article for 1000 plus words?
Or do you need to write articles for maybe 4000 plus words? So what is that number where we can consider that this article is long enough to perform good in search engine results? To get the answer, we need to understand how search engine works.
Now let’s consider the website of a wedding planner business that we have also considered in the previous article as well.
So let’s say you have a long tail keyword for which you want to write an article. And the topic is like do wedding planners help in pre-wedding shoots?
So it looks like a genuine question if someone is hiring a wedding planner, so do they also help them in doing the pre-wedding shoots? Now we know while writing this article we need to divide this topic further down in various subheadings.
So let’s consider the case one where we divide the subheadings like this. Like how much does it cost for a pre-wedding shoot? Why one should get a pre-wedding shoot? And is pre-wedding shoot worth it? So with our main long-tail keyword, these are the subheadings that we have selected and
we will be writing content around it. And I’m sure with this long-tail keyword and these subheadings we can easily extend this article to 1000 plus words. And while writing this article somewhere in the beginning we answer the actual question, that is if wedding planners do help in doing pre-wedding shoots.
Now we have written an article of 1000 plus words, so it should be considered as long article and Google should consider this article to rank number one, or maybe at least in the top three, or at least in the top page of search engine results.
But that’s actually not true. This article with this long tail keyword and these sub headings, Google will not going to consider this article more than 500 words where you have actually answered the user search intent, which means the portion where you have answered the actual question.
If wedding planners help in doing pre-wedding shoots if you answer that in the first paragraph then the job is done. Google will consider that the article is only worded because Google knows that everybody who came on this article read the first 500 words in this post, got the answer of their questions if yes or no, and then just bounce back.
So all your efforts for writing this 1000 word article got wasted.
Now let’s consider case number two where we have this same long-tail keyword topic and now we divide this into new subheadings or subtopics. How Wedding Planners Can Help You in Pre Wedding Shoots or Why Choose a Wedding Planner which can do pre-wedding shoots as well and questions to Ask Your Wedding Planner before booking pre-wedding shoots.
Now if you look at this one closely then you will find out that every subtopic is talking about how a wedding planner can help you doing pre-wedding shoots and every subtopic is covering the same topic in a different scenario.
So whenever you write this article with more than 1000 words, the reader will feel engaged and continue reading your complete article to know more about it.
So here number one, we completely satisfied the user search intent. And number two, we wrote a long article with relevant subheadings and topics which kept the reader engaged to read the full content and maybe share that as well. So Google or search engines will consider this article as 1000 plus word articles or whatever your word count is So by this example,
I’m sure you got an idea that no matter how long you write your blog post, if that is not answering the actual search intent, then you are just wasting your efforts in writing that long post.
On the other hand, there might be various cases, questions or keywords where it’s impossible to extend it further beyond 500 to 700 words. So don’t even try that.
If you are able to answer everything within that word limit, it’s absolutely fine and it’s going to work. Because if you have solved the user search query within that word limit, then that’s all it’s needed.
No matter if it is 700 words or beyond 1000 words, what matters is the relevancy of content and the engagement that you provide.
With that content. You can make it more engaging by adding various graphics, infographics, videos, or N number of things to make it more engaging and relevant to the search query. And the more you do that the better your article will perform in the search engine results so you don’t
have to push every article beyond 1000 or 4000 words. Just make sure you are doing your best for resolving the search intent and make sure you also work on pillar posts on your website and these posts can go beyond 3000 or 4000 words to create a content hub on your website.
So the summary of this article is that do not stress yourself to extend your articles for 1000 plus or 2000 or 4000 plus words. Make sure you try your best to solve the search intent and then do your best with that. So make sure you focus on the quality of content, not the quantity of words that you have written. And if you can add relevancy by adding more content
to that blog post, go ahead and do that But again make sure you do not waste your time and effort in unnecessarily extended the word limit of your article or blog post which will not going to do any good but can surely harm your search ranking.
So that’s it for this one and I’ll see you in the next one.
That’s All Thank You & Have A Nice Day