Stop writing 2000 word novels. Cutting fluff is the easiest win right now.

ploxtanio said:

Good read, real world test results like this are more useful than most SEO theory floating around.

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That is actually the most important impact of this forum. Real discussions based on personal experiences of members.

I’ve seen this too. Cutting unnecessary filler and answering the main question faster can make a big difference.

Ben Arthur said:

Exactly. If three sentences solve the user's problem, that's all you need. Google is clearly getting better at figuring out when someone actually found what they came for, instead of just counting how many words are on the page.

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Does that apply to the title, description, or just the article itself?

agree with all of it. the funny part is where the 2000 word habit came from in the first place.. paying writers per word, and then early AI padding everything to hit a number. both were cost problems not seo problems

now that content basically costs nothing theres no reason to pad anymore. i generate the long version, cut it to whatever actually answers the question, 600-800 words usually, and the pages do better. cheaper content made shorter content easier which is a weird outcome but its what happened

In general, the more useful information there is, the better. When there are a lot of unnecessary words in the text, even a child will understand that it’s just fluff, not actual content.

Cutting fluff helps, but word count itself isn’t the variable.
If 700 words satisfies intent better than 2,000, the shorter page should win.

Yeah I've been trimming older posts too. the main thing is making sure you're removing fluff without cutting anything the searcher actually needs.