The perfect blog post length or publishing frequency doesn't actually exist. "Perfect" isn't universal — your content's success depends on tons of personalized factors. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why the idea of "perfect" is baloney when it comes to your blog, and lists what you should actually be looking for in a successful publishing strategy.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about blog posts and, more broadly, content length and publishing frequency.
So these are things where a lot of the posts that you might read, for example, if you were to Google "ideal blog post length" or "ideal publishing frequency" will give you data and information that come from these sources of here's the average length of content of the top 10 results in Google across a 5,000-keyword set, and you can see that somewhere between 2,350 and 2,425 words is the ideal length, so that's what you should aim for.
I am going to call a big fat helping if baloney on that. It's not only dead wrong, it's really misleading. In fact, I get frustrated when I see these types of charts used to justify this information, because that's not right at all.
When you see charts/data like this used to provide prescriptive, specific targets for content length, ask:
Any time you see this, if you see a chart or data like this to suggest, hey, this is how long you should make a post because here's the length of the average thing in the top 10, you should ask very careful questions like:
1. What set of keywords does this apply to? Is this a big, broad set of 5,000 keywords, and some of them are navigational and some of them are informational and some of them are transactional and maybe a few of them are ecommerce keywords and a few of them are travel related and a few of them are in some other sector?
Because honestly, what does that mean? That's sort of meaningless, right? Especially if the standard deviation is quite high. If we're talking about like, oh, well many things that actually did rank number one were somewhere between 500 words and 15,000 words. Well, so what does the average tell me? How is that helpful? That's not actually useful or prescriptive information. In fact, it's almost misleading to make that prescriptive.
2. Do the keywords that I care about, the ones that I'm targeting, do they have similar results? Does the chart look the same? If you were to take a sample of let's say 50 keywords that you cared about and you were to get the average content length of the top 10 results, would it resemble that? Would it not? Does it have a high standard deviation? Is there a big delta because some keywords require a lot of content to answer them fully and some keywords require very, very small amounts of content and Google has prioritized accordingly? Is it wise, then, to aim for the average when a much larger article would be much more appreciated and be much more likely to succeed, or a much shorter one would do far better? Why are you aiming for this average if that's the case?
3. Is correlation the same as causation? The answer is hell no. Never has been. Big fat no. Correlation doesn't even necessarily imply causation. In fact, I would say that any time you're looking at an average, especially on this type of stuff, correlation and causation are totally separate. It is not because the number one result is 2,450 words that it happens to rank number one. Google does not work that way. Never has, never will.
INSTEAD of trusting these big, unknown keyword set averages, you should:
A. look at your keywords and your search results and what's working versus not in those specific ones.B. Be willing to innovate, be willing to say, "Hey, you know what? I see this content today, the number one, number two, number three rankings are in these sorts of averages. But I actually think you can answer this with much shorter content and many searchers would appreciate it." I think these folks, who are currently ranking, are over-content creating, and they don't need to be.
C. You should match your goals and your content goals with searcher goals. That's how you should determine the length that you should put in there. If you are trying to help someone solve a very specific problem and it is an easily answerable question and you're trying to get the featured snippet, you probably don't need thousands of words of content. Likewise, if you are trying to solve a very complex query and you have a ton of resources and information that no one else has access to, you've done some really unique work, this may be way too short for what you're aiming for.
All right. Let's switch over to publishing frequency, where you can probably guess I'm going to give you similar information. A lot of times you'll see, "How often should I publish? Oh, look, people who publish 11 times or more per month, they get way more traffic than people who publish only once a month. Therefore, clearly, I should publish 11 or more times a month."
Why is the cutoff at 11? Does that make any sense to you? Are these visits all valuable to all the companies that were part of whatever survey was in here? Did one blog post account for most of the traffic in the 11 plus, and it's just that the other 10 happened to be posts where they were practicing or trying to get good, and it was just one that kind of shot out of the park there?
See a chart like this? Ask:
1. Who's in the set of sites analyzed? Are they similar to me? Do they target a similar audience? Are they in my actual sector? What's the relative quality of the content? How savvy and targeted are the efforts at earning traffic? Is this guy over here, are we sure that all 11 posts were just as good as the one post this person created? Because if not, I'm comparing apples and oranges.
2. What's the quality of the traffic? What's the value of the traffic? Maybe this person is getting a ton of really valuable traffic, and this person over here is getting very little. You can't tell from a chart like this, especially when it's averaged in this way.
3. What things might matter more than raw frequency?
- Well, matching your goals to your content schedule. If one of your goals is to build up subscribers, like Whiteboard Friday where people know it and they've heard of it, they have a brand association with it, it's called Whiteboard Friday, it should probably come out once a week on Friday. There's a frequency implied in the content, and that makes sense. But you might have goals that only demand publishing once a quarter or once a month or once a week or once every day. That's okay. But you should tie those together.
- Consistency, we have found, is almost always more important than raw frequency, especially if you're trying to build up that consistent audience and a subscriber base. So I would focus on that, not how I should publish more often, but I should publish more consistently so that people will get used to my publishing schedule and will look forward to what I have to say, and also so that you can build up a cadence for yourself and your organization.
- Crafting posts that actually earn attention and amplification and help your conversion funnel goals, whatever those might be, over raw traffic. It's far better if this person got 50 new visits who turned into 5 new paying customers, than this person who published 11 posts and got 1 new paying customer out of all 11. That's a lot more work and expense for a lot less ROI. I'd be careful about that.
*ASIDE:
One aside I would say about publishing frequency. If you're early stage, or if you were trying to build a career in blogging or in publishing, it's great to publish a lot of content. Great writers become great because they write a lot of terrible crap, and then they improve. The same is true with web publishers.
If you look at Whiteboard Friday number one, or a blog post number one from me, you're going to see pretty miserable stuff. But over time, by publishing quite a bit, I got better at it. So if that is your goal, yes, publishing a lot of content, more than you probably need, more than your customers or audience probably needs, is good practice for you, and it will help you get better.
All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We'll see you again next week. Take care.
If I could add a video, you would see me doing the hola when watching the WBF.
The studies about the ideal length of a blog post (or of any piece of content, actually) are the new keyword density studies.
I suspect that we should find the origins of this new myth in a misleading interpretation of "thin content" as a negative factor (Panda and now "quality updates"), so that now all thin content is bad... when even Google itself said many times that it is not.
I want to underline your suggestion of actually looking at the SERPs results and features Google presents for the keywords we want to target.
That kind of exercise can teach us a lot about what kind of content "wins" or not in the SERPs for a given keywords and its corresponding search intent.
Search Intent should be our guide. Do the intent behind a query (and its related keywords) is better answered with a long form? Then go for a great long form. But, maybe, the intent is better answered with a photo gallery with great caption (and great image optimization), so the 2,232 words per post theory is clearly failing here.
Regarding publishing frequency, apart the exceptions you present at the end,... I hope someone of the so called "inbound marketing gurus" is watching this video, because I never saw such a waste of byte as in the blogs of those website, which uncritically follow the prescriptions of the good inbound marketer.
Finally something that you don't touch it: the myth according to which every post should target a different keyword.
In reality I discovered that it's better the contrary.
If we constantly publish posts about a specific topic, and so targeting what could be seen as the same keyword, it is good for:
This consistency in targeting our main keywords about a topic throughout a "blog category" is not keyword cannibalization, but topical consolidation.
I do the hola with you...!
I love your last point. I would even add one thing: targeting the same main keyword, yes, the same long tail keywords, no. We want to climb the mountain (main, general keyword) through all kinds of different paths (many long tail keywords.)
Cheers,
My Question is for Fanny. How does that matter even if you target for a long tail keyword? I agree regarding targeting of main keyword to build topical consolidation as mentioned by Gianluca. Search terms in Google are ever changing and the long tail searches are pretty higher. If we build around the auto-suggest, it can help in getting into to zero rank position. Looking to hear and learn more regarding this topic.
I agree with you. There is no perfect length of post - it all depends on the searchers query and how complete an answer is required. It so happens that the posts or web pages which are very long in length comprehensively answer the searchers query - it is not mere length but the fact that they satisfy the query being asked.
on the other hand you can also see that for several queries posts that are around 500 words in length also ranking on the first page of search results.
Myth-Every post should target a different keyword.:Such pages (1000 plus words) will rank for a lot of long tail terms just because they are very comprehensive and it is quite easy to target more than one core term in such pages
There is another myth of a particular keyword density: My take is the density of the core terms will vary across markets. As long as your copy is natural and a visitor can easily make out your core topic(s) you are fine.
Finally there are quite a few marketeers who publish quite infrequently (e.g. Brian Dean of Backlinko) and still attract a lot of visitors to their website
Couldn't agree more Gianluca. The "thin content" thing is not necessarily only about length and has been badly misinterpreted. I have seen blog posts that could take a half hour to read and are quite "thin" in that they don't put forth any new ideas and don't give me incentive to come back to the publisher's website. On the flip side, I have also read many, many short content pieces that rank well because they're "thick" in ways other than word count. They're well researched, gave me something that I could take away and think about, and made me crave the next piece by that author.
Seth Godin is one of the greatest marketing minds of our age. How long are his blog posts?
They’re really short.
For Seth Godin, shorter is killer. It matches his audience, his style, his message, and his approach.
But saying that Brian Dean, Neil Patel, Rand Fishkin are wrong while they have millions of visitors Is wrong itself
Saying that the short is the only way or the Long is the only way, is a myth.
The takeaway is this. Shorter is not always better. Shorter is sometimes better for some posts, in some situations, and some of the time. :)
Would love to see a discussion from Rand and Brian Dean around this subject :)
Brian Dean is actually wrong.
Brian is great in many things, but saying that 2,332 words is the correct amount of words a blog post (or any text in a site) must be long is at least critiqueable.
Let's use common sense: would you - as a site user - read a 2,332 words long product description about a screw?
Or would you prefer a product page that simply present the characteristics of the screw and about its head (crossed, lined...) and the price?
Content length is the new keyword density.
Agree with you Gianluca - length of blog much depends on topic. Like Neil patel and Brain write something more than 2000 word for SEO Topic. But same word count not applicable for other niche.
I agree with you Gianluca in many points. Stating that there is a correct amount of words on a blog post or an article is wrong and misleading. However, as you state in your previous comment, usually, our post does also has purpose of "Teaching Google"... and as Google softwares do not focus only on quality, but on quantity as well, (even if the quantity mostly serve on long tails purpose), having a long blog post might make the difference with competitors for ranking.
Also, having a long post (like 5000 words) is meaningless if noone is going to see it, and to interact with it.
However, long post usually results to interaction. And people who spend time to read such post (let assume that the post is an add-value to the internet) tend to interact with the author of such post.
I think that the size might only apply to a blog post or article, and not product page.
+1 for Gianluca
Also, it'd be great to have in-depth content on category and product pages but most often people are not interested in reading all that and you have to deal with the UX/CX team, which would like to have quite the opposite: a beautiful image and CTA focused landing page.
Definitely agree with Gianluca. As a reader, I often hate a 3000 word explanation for a simple search term like "cost of a CRM", when all I want is a number and explanation behind it.
yes, you are right Gianluca. The lenght of an article dipends upon the niche. i personally tried on different categories to use this tecniche and it was not suitable on every one.
A text or description of 2332 words can not compete with video or infographics. A normal user running to see it. Personally I try to be 500 word texts accompanied by other elements.
I think when Brian Dean and Neil Patel talk about SEO, they're (maybe unknowingly) targeting a different niche than Rand Fishkin. They're generally preaching to some bloggers that wish to make money from blogging itself -- they are rather blogging coaches (online passive income or whatever). What do bloggers do? They do research and write on mostly-non-commercial keywords right? They're not actively and solely promoting any product of their own. They're not doing any copywriting. They're mostly hovering in the early stages of a sales funnel and they don't even care to go any further (cause they don't need to). They're doing blogging as an end in itself. Plus, most of the blogging niches are already saturated with millions of blog posts and you need to add value to your content by expanding its scope and impress your reader. So for informational non-commercial already-explored-to-the-full blogging topics and keywords, there is no other way than expanding the scope of your argument.
Rand Fishkin on the other hand has a broader perspective to SEO. He is no passive income coach. From his perspective, there is no universal SEO practice because business goals are different . . . .
As a newbie, Neil and Brian are my tactical teachers. and you can say that Rand is my logical teacher. and when you are in the field you cant always count on your tactics, You adapt.
Well timed post, Rand!
This just shows how misleading internet can be. We get to read all kind of case studies here and not to forget - even from well-renowned SEO personalities, who publish these studies and show how important it is to have X number of words in a post and use of proximity - prominence factors, etc.
The irony is, most of the content writers have adapted themselves to this kind of environment, where if I ask them to have a post on some interesting topic in my mind. They don't ask me to explain that topic a bit more, but all they ask for is a list of target keywords and word limit. #Facepalm
In my personal experience, I have never thought of writing content this way thinking about word limits, proximity-prominence factors, etc. I just wrote content as per the user queries' intent and Google obliged that.
Thanks
Great stuff Rand! I got much irritation whenever I read any post till the end and don't get any info for which I read that blog. Sometimes the post doesn't give any sense but used to be too long. For those who write that type of post should read this WBF at once, they will definitely stop misleading others through their blog and start getting benefit in the same use of time with some valuable post.
Personally, I am more comfortable in thinking that my content creation benefits other factors such as online share of voice, brand awareness, recall and healthy conversion rates. Which to me are better signals and that what I develop is of real value to my readers.
In terms of post length, well I just use that as a guide but not a strict rule. As to content frequency, well the driving force for that is more about the content calendar and schedule. If I can manage it and populate it with good content, stories and so on, then that determines the frequency - not frequency determining the content.
Last week i was looking for "screenshot with windows 10" in spanish, i got into the first result in an article, after ten minutes reading i still did´t know how to do it the screenshot, believe, lots of content in the article for no solution. What lengh should have the article :) ?
Great job Rand! With Google moving toward quicker and more efficient means of providing information to searchers, what are your thoughts on losing clicks because of answer box results? For queries that may only need a short answer, do you think there's value in providing a longer answer with more context just to try and draw more clicks to your site, instead of running the risk of your information being displayed too quickly?
My 2 cents is that it depends on your audience intent and your goals. Sometimes you do not care about clicks. You care about views or conversions. It all depends on your goal (and of course your audience.)
For featured snippets, it might not be as clear that traffic gets lost. As most queries intent need more than a few lines or bullets to be fulfilled, Stone Temple did research and test around that.
Even if that was the case, you get prominent brand placement from Google, ideally with an image associated with the snippet. Brand impressions in the SERPs do have value beyond the clicks.
A timely post for me! I am marketing a SaaS tool named TargetBay and just an hour ago, my boss was like what's our monthly traffic? When I said it out loud, I could sense he was not too happy. That was when I decided I would push myself to publish one blog, every other day. Now reading your post, I feel maybe I was jumping to conclusion. I need to create a content calendar that is well planned out targeting the necessary keywords to improve my traffic.
Thank a ton Moz!! I owe you one!
Consistency, consistency, consistency.
That is what I will remember from this post and all those comments.
Thanks,
Good article, the truth is that much is sought the topic of how long articles should be and how often to write. But not only that, we do not guide the first thing we see and well, this is not correct.
This article clarifies many things that no one has done before to start writing on his blog, whether personal or professional.
Very good article and very clear.
Rand, Great post.
I have found the best efforts and results are based on consistency. If you can consistently publish content 11 times a month or 22 times or once or twice, the act of being consistent produces better content.
You see, I think consistency, or some might call it practice, produces better content. Better content ranks better then content that is loosely thrown together. The consistency creates a learned behavior by the publisher, making the idea of producing content a habit and a very good habit if your trying to increase traffic.
So the better one gets at producing content length and frequency are not relevant attributes.
I love this Rand! It's too easy to follow set instructions on how to do things. Thank you so much for encouraging us to use our brain and question everything!
Fantastic post as always, Rand! I happen to know this is very true as I know for a fact that Matthew Barby's blog gets a lot more traffic than other blogs that publish a lot more frequently! My estimate is that Matt posts once a month and gets way more traffic than a lot of blogs that publish once or twice a week.
Couldn't agree more with these common misconceptions. Yes, Google tends to like length and thoroughness in content, but doing keyword research and competitive research for the terms you want to rank for is key, especially for more local or niche terms. Awesome insight Rand and thanks for shedding light on those two charts as well.
This honestly needed to be said, and I'd like to push that thought further, just a little. So we use data and statistics to try and harness all of the potential energy we see in the elusive "impressions," using keyword combinations and catchy headers that sometimes come together to feel more like a combo move on Street Fighter. This is us, living in a world where we need to hit those keyword benchmarks to climb to the top of relevance and gain the audience we all want.
Right? No, not exactly. It's a blend. A balance.
The data is surplus. It's the map of the past that helps us navigate our future writings to make something worth while down the line.
Our audience is searching for the answer to a question, they're looking for guidance, they're looking for funny cat videos. We cannot and should not ever boil everything down to the numbers and trends alone.
We are all humans wishing to communicate with each other and share information.
So, yes, there are a lot of numbers out there, there are a lot of trends we need to keep in mind when choosing what we want to write about and when, but as long as we stick to the point, we are doing it right. Offer advice, give them the best list of teas that will help you sleep better, answer that obscure question, and give them that cat video.
Look to what your audience might need, what you can offer them, and how the two come together.
An authentic audience isn't built overnight. It is built through hours of hard work and trying to be true to the facts, and true to the topic. The length means nothing if the quality isn't there. And quality is all about your intent and how well your intent helps your readers.
So, no, there's no formula. But every SEO has the power to do good by the people they serve. We just have to keep our audience, and their needs, in mind and rock it out for them. No stuffing needed.
Happy Friday everyone and again a great topic although I am sure this is going to generate much interest and even raise some eyebrows.
I cannot agree more that every post contains a different set of information and therefore there should not be limited to any rule for length or frequency. Some guys like Brian Dean post 1 article per month or even less and get's tonnes of traffic while some others post tonnes of articles and get's almost no traffic. Length of article on the other hand does not matter. Lot of Search Engine blog sites post regular articles which are even less that 700 words and they get consistent high volume traffic. This is because they publish facts and news , which does not need volume but informing and educating users about what's happening in the SEO world.
Rand, this is a great post as always!
I think one of the main misconceptions that comes with longer posts ranking higher is the fact that those who have the time to make longer posts spend the time reaching out and promoting it.
This leads to the data showing longer posts ranking higher. It isn't because the amount of content (which people jump to believe). They are ranking higher because the longer posts are promoted more by the author.
I feel if they shortened their post and got straight to the answer and spent the same time promoting it they would see the same results, if not better.
This misconception is leading people to filling their posts with filler and unnecessary info to make them longer. They are seeing the data at face value and not actually looking deeper into other reasons longer posts are ranking higher.
Very helpful, thanks Rand! The voice of reason, as ever.
The perfect length is whatever answers the audiences questions the most efficently and most effectively and the author must decide. The charts and graphs are semi-interesting noise designed to appeal to people who want short cuts. Be organic, be authentic, be helpful!!
with all of this in mind....I would suggest that this was the perfect length of video for the audience.
Thank you Rand for this WBF, I mean THANK YOU! In my experience being consistent, offering interesting topics and having an easy-to-read blog post is by far more important than writing about loads of unnecessary crap in long format. After all, if your readers expect 3-500 word long but very relevant blog posts than you should probably do just that. My fundamental philosophy is that less is always more.
Hello Rand,
No doubt it's one of the most interesting yet unnoticeable things you have described. I strongly believe that the length of the content writing should depend on Topic and Purpose of your writing. I have seen some very short write up on some particular topic with most of the information covered. I think it's just fine if your readers have understood and gained some knowledge even from the very short content. And yes, improvement comes with the time. compare your own first post with the latest one, you will definitely notice many changes in your writing style and perceptions.
Solid breakdown of this two misconceptions Rand, I see both of those charts alot, expecially the content length one, and their "stats" should definitely not be taken as a "content rule". Doing a personal analysis on what you want to rank for is a much more realistic way to go, as you'll often find 500-750 words will beat out your competition if just looking at content length, especially for local SEO. Thanks for sharing your insight man!
I think the most important thing is not to create content more or less frequently, but to create relevant content, provide it with successful keywords and the results usually arrive.
People don't seem to remember basic maths from school ... the average of any series of numbers tells you nothing about the individual constituents.
The median (the most common value) is often more useful.
Given Rand's arguements about the 'quality' of a post, the actual number of words is far too one dimensional to convey any useful meaning.
Good post, Rand.
I'm loving the passion I see in this white board friday! That's how you can tell someone likes what they do. When you have the passion for something, it's hard to hold back.
Even though I didn'twatch the video, I did read the transcript, and love the outline form with the graphs.
I came to this conclusion a while ago also. It's almost as if SEO is changing and innovating, and we need to move on with it. Writing organically - yet on topic - is what people want to read. And with the snippets that google puts out, it's best to be structured and short, and a question-answer style is appreciated.
And writing frequently...this involves both committment and a scheduling with a view of getting more exposure or more subscribers.
Great stuff! Thanks!
Hi Rand! I loved to see some logical way of thinking along with good arguments.
I've to admit, after reading "my first WBF are miserable stuff" I couldn't resist to search the first Whiteboard Friday (well, the first post in the WBF blog category). I must say that it doesn't look as professional as now but it's still pretty good!
But what I really wanted to say is that... man! It took me 2 mins to realize that this guy was you! Now I know how many swag can give 10 years of doing SEO ;)
Just joking. Keep up the good stuff!
Post frequency is a misconception, just like social media post frequency. To me, it all depends on the topic of the blog and the value, supply and demand it represents to it's target market.
Loved the *ASIDE. True words! :)
This week's whiteboard Friday is very inspiring and surprising at the same time!
We hear lots of "don't write 500-word blog posts" on every corner. This makes you want to give up on your blog.
But then you mentioned that if you publish frequently, you get better! I've seen your first blog post. It looked like a personal diary post. Then I looked at the first blog post of Seth Godin
I really love it!
Thank you a lot, Rand
This post is really helpful. It's a relief to hear that common sense weighs over those charts.
The frequency point is a bit misleading. We put our goal as 12 times per month. What that really is, is 3 times per week. Because we look to make a post every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It's a deadline. And a publishing schedule. Just like we used to have in print publishing. Which is ... consistency. So yes frequency matters. Because it involves consistency.
What Rand is talking about is frequency, and not consistency. Yes, posting regularly is consistent, however, that only scratches the surface.
You will see that a lot of blogs posting everyday will not get a lot of traffic. One example could be the JDR Group's Digital Prosperity Blog. They post a lot, but only really have an average amount of traffic.
However, you can then come across blogs such as Matthew Barby's blog. This is much less active as he only posts about 1 blog post per month. However, he gets a lot of traffic to his blog and his website!
So yes, consistency does come into it if it is good for your audience. However, it doesn't matter in terms of a ranking perspective, which is what Rand is talking about.
What do you think? It is better to write a post with (say, for example) 1000 words and update it periodically until reaching 2000 or publish it directly with 2000 words?
It really depends on what your nice is and what you believe your target audience would like to see. For example, are you offering advice on link building? In this case, it may be better to produce a long piece of content and only update it when it does need updating (when statistics go out of date etc).
However, if you are writing for a client who offers massages, it would be better to produce a smaller, frequently updated piece of content.
I hope this helps.
Thanks,
Ryan :)
More or less what I thought, but it's fine read it from an expert :)
Thank you Ryan
Both. You could:
1. upload one long content with 2000 words, or more
2. upload bit by bit, on your platform and/or other platforms, parts of that long article
You could even change the format: posts, videos, inforgaphics, slideshares ... That is basically content curation and when it is well done, it is great.
Hi Rand,
Love the tittle of this Whiteboard Friday! :)
This is something that is wrecking my head at the moment. I have a website on the travel sector and we are creating pages with relevant content only that our users are really likely to appreciate.
It takes us a lot of time to gather all the information relevant that location and put it in a format that´s simple and easy to understand. I have to say this is not working for us.
Other pages with really bad and non-relevant content rank ahead of us instead. What would be your suggestion moving forward? We are considering going on the same route as these other pages as good relevant content is not working for us.
Thank you!
Hi, maybe I can help?
When it comes to producing great content, backlinks matter. This was covered in agreat video from Matthew Barby's talk at INBOUND 2016.
You are obviously spending a long time writing great pieces of content, which is brilliant! However, you also need to ensure that this is shared so to gain backlinks. It may be worth implementing some share buttons to add backlinks from social site, as well as sharing the content on other sites as well. Reddit and Quora are good examples for doing this.
Now, great content is the first step and you sound like you know this! Again, fantastic. But you also need to get your content shared as much as possible. This will make Google look at this and think... "Wait, this piece of content has been shared many times. Maybe we should put this a little higher as it seems like people like this!"
I hope this helps. If you need any more advice, feel free to drop me an email at [email protected].
Thanks,
Ryan :)
Aida, the right thing is always the right thing.
1. You have to look at all your data. Google ranking is one thing but the most important numbers are your sales. There is no point in ranking high if it does not increase your sales (by attracting people who are not interested in your product and will never buy it, for example)
2. How long have you been doing this? If it is just few weeks, keep on. If it has been months/years, pivot.
3. Try out stuff. Do one little change, measure your success, then repeat.
There are just so many ways you can improve your content marketing. And deacreasing its quality is not one of them.
Do your best,
Hello, Aida
I agree with Fanny's suggestions and points. Just wanted to share with you something very interesting. You have a website on the travel sector and your content mostly covered with location info and other related things. To make your location-based content more interesting you need to research more try on writing up with keep in mind of Filming locations. I have seen many blogs based on Game of Thrones locations, Harry Potter locations, and many others. People really love to see, read such info. The point is trying to connect your business with current scenario and famous things which are still affecting the many persons. As, Fanny said, if you have just started doing this, wait for some time to get proper results. hope this helps.
As someone who's just beginning to implement our digital content strategy, this edition of WBF is really reassuring.
I've been trying to create long-form content around certain topics, and feel as if I'm hitting a wall sometimes--- trying to hit a word count with content that doesn't warrant enough information or data.
Thanks for your help,
Mo
Hey Moz/Rand,
I'm just curious, as I've seen them pop-up quite often in my search results. How are quiz sites, like Quibblo/zimbio/etc. ranked so highly on search results? I understand that they have tons of content on their sites, but most of it seems pretty thin (or clickbait-y). What makes them rank so high and how do they remain so high even though they seem sort of out-dated? Perhaps you could explain this for me.
Thanks,
Christian Stewart
Hi Christian,
I would say it depends on users. As I have been crawling through Google both professionally and personally, I did not meet many quiz sites (or maybe even none.) So the questions you could ask yourself here are the same:
what intent has the audience?
what keywords were used?
So why are quiz sites popping up a lot in your search results? What was your intent? What were the keywords you used? Have you been a lot to those websites (for whatever reason)?
You can also try to look for the same keyword but with other search engines. The results could be different.
Thanks Rand for clear tips about content length to make your blogpost SEO friendly.
Hi Rand, you are amazing. You discussed two topics and boy you have just nailed it altogether. Honestly I was so wrong about long posts. Analysing the competition and need are equally important. Thats why I have seen crisp and to the point post ranking higher in the past. I was carried away in the past and wrote some lengthy posts. From now I know what to target. Thanks a lot.
Thank you for the bold directness, Rand. Correlation is not the same as causation.
Thank you, Rand! I've heard a lot from SEO experts about content length somewhere between 2100 to 2500 words but it's not true in every niche.
The perfect content length is one that covers entire topic comprehensively and answers the query to the point.
Recently, I've seen a lot of how to results in the Google search from Quora that was not 2000 or more words. They were somewhere between 600 to 1000 but they answer they query completely.
Hey Rand
You are just awesomely on spot as always.
I remember i published Six Thousand plus words article right after knowing about this research. Perfect content length truly depends on a lots of factors like intention of your target keyword and even your target audience category/location.
As we all know that hyper local keywords will be very common in the near future, you might want to write different lengths for targeting Asian and European audience for like same keyword.
Thanks for sharing i really loved this one. :)
Afraz