How long should articles be nowdays for good seo?

[Roparadise]

A few years ago before google started cracking down on spammy sites, it was estimated that 500 was a good size for each article and that you should do about 3x a week. Is it still the same now, or should it be closer to 1,000 words each and one each weekday? To make the website seem more of an authority white hat site instead of a BH site?

 

[hameem]

I think 500 words is still a good size. Having said that, I have seen articles close to 1k word targetting low comp. keyowrds get some natural SE traffic.

 

[blackhatboss9]

I usually put 500-700 words quality articles on my site on regular basis. One every day and m doing this from couple of months. Its hard to believe but m ranking on most of my keywords with a little bit of Seo.

 

[linkatwork]

There is not any problem untill unless you are posting unique content on your site. Word count can be anywhere more than 400.

 

[Endire]

Roparadise,

I don't think you will find a hard and fast rule on this one. Yes it is true that pages with thin content will not rank very well however that doesn't mean thousands of words of useless fluff will rank better. I think as long as you try not to go below 400 words you should be fine but I would focus more on making a useful post as opposed to how long it is.

For example take this post from Search Engine land on Cutt's most recent video on duplicate content.

http://searchengineland.com/googles...=pluspost&utm_medium=plus&utm_campaign=stream

The article is 169 words with an image and a video. You might think that's too thin yet not only was it shared almost 1,000 times, it ranks very well after only being up for a day. That's probably an extreme example but it shows that an authoritative and quality source ranks well regardless of the length of the content.
Best,

Shawn

 

[Duffers5000]

Depends on the articles you are talking about.

Posts ie weekly updates can be small but I still reckon 600-700 minimum.

Fixed (anchor) Pages on your site probably dont have an outside limit and you should aim for minimum 1500-2000 words

 

[seosoldier]

500-700 words article is the best deal. However if you are publishing content anywhere else other than your site, 400-500 words article is good though.

 

[lietuvis002]

I too post 500-700 words. But in home page put one 1000 words article

 

[Webbers UX]

If you're publishing content on your website, 800+ words truly helps, content is king, content is king, content is king, keep that in mind. Keep writing, if you can do 1.5k, do 1.5k, if you can do 2k, do 2k, just make sure it's interesting for the readers and don't make the blog post look dull.
Look at all top ranking blogs, each of their blog post has 750+ words and is interesting.

If you're talking about articles for backlinks, 400-600 words should do.


Luka

 

[brainstorm1]

As someone who writes content, I would still say that 500 words is okay so long as you do a few things:

1) Include a wide variety of topic related keywords. Even if there is no way for you to monetize or you don't care about traffic, mention topics that give you a bit more authority. Always helps to go past longtail keywords.

2) Make sure it's unique. Been that way for a while, but forget about just "well-spun". Just make it unique.

 

[clint1988]

i would say 500-1000 words per article, on a new site post 3 times a week, if you have some authority you can
cool down and even post less than 3 articles per 2 weeks

 

[mikpel]

I would say it isn't as black&white as people assume. Everything affects everything. Do you see 500 words articles on e-commerce sites? What about landing pages? I'm currently ranking 2nd position 30k search traffic KW with 70 words 'article' (thin affiliate site). Competition is easy to medium.

 

[ahiddenman]

Minimum 500 words long.

Typically the more you can write the better. I've noticed people add a lot of fluff to long articles just to BULK them up since it can be quite difficult to write 1000+ word's in one go without losing the flow of the article.

 

[Roparadise]

Thanks for the input guys.

I think Im going to do the following

Monday to Thursday 400-500 word daily articles, Friday-Sunday will be an extended article of 750 to 1,000 words. Ill also be using the weekend edition to run articles that are a series, like week 1 have part 1 of an article, week 2 part 2 etc.

 

[rchan]

500 words above is better.

 

[Logician]

Mix it up, don't do the same amount every time.

 

[MorganX]

As far as i am concerned quality matters than quantity. If you are going to give an quality content then don't worry about the number of words in it.

 

[bk071]

Another thread directly related to IM by roparadise? Whats going on?

jk.

On topic : Read this, OP :

The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2000 words. And the higher up you go on the search listings page, the more content each web page contains.

Source:
http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/...e-content-increases-rankings-and-conversions/
Do read the whole thing.
Neil is one of those guys who actually know what they're talking about unlike the self proclaimed SEO gurus.

 

[prab1996]

i know about a fucking big niche and the #1 site has 100 word content and [ keyword in url+heading ] he has strong 500+ tire1 links , and 8k+ stubleupons . he gained pr5 for that page with it .

links are still king you will need to know how to use them .

 

[bk071]

i know about a fucking big niche and the #1 site has 100 word content and [ keyword in url+heading ] he has strong 500+ tire1 links , and 8k+ stubleupons . he gained pr5 for that page with it .

links are still king you will need to know how to use them .

The article I quoted from took the data from a bunch of URLs and calculated the average. The fact that the average is 2000 words is not to say you can't rank a 500 (or 100) words article. Exceptions (and blackhats) are everywhere.