[Discussion] Long vs. VERY Long Articles, do exhaustive articles rank better?

batu

batu

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Hello BHW,

Let's discuss and exchange our experiences.

Discussion:​

A long article refers to a 1500-3000 words article whereas a Very Long Article refers to a 3000+ words article.

Would a VERY long article have an advantage over the long one, under equal off-page SEO circumstances?

Or, does it get insignificant after a certain threshold?

My Case:​

I am generating 3000+ word articles with AI but I would like to hear about your experiences as well. If it ranks better, I will generate 1000+ articles like these.

Word Count: 4012
Images: 62 small images
Table of Contents:

toc.jpg
 
Last edited:
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I had the same question, if an expert can answer that would be amazing!
 
No. If the content that is ranking for the keyword you are going to target is ~700 words and 7 paragraphs, a 3000+ word article probably won’t rank that well.

You need to look at the word count and paragraph count of the articles that are ranking for the keyword you are going to be targeting and keep the article around the same.
 
Pillar posts rank well for high volume hard keywords with 2 to 3 words.
Rank well for complete guide, best of etc.
Don't even bother writing one for long tail easy keywords, keep it short and to the point.
 
You should satisfy the search intent as clearly and concisely as possible.

Depending on the query, you can rank #1 with 150-200 words.

In your example, I’m not sure what your query is but if the query you’re targeting is “brown cat with black stripes”, the article seems seems spammy and overoptimized based on the TOC.

Also, the intent for that query will most likely be satisfied by an image result. So the number of words doesn’t matter at all for this query.
 
Look and see what the page one competitors are doing. I have had pages rank better by reducing the number of words. You are not trying to beat the search engine you are trying to beat your competitors..
 
Zombie Pop said:
No. If the content that is ranking for the keyword you are going to target is ~700 words and 7 paragraphs, a 3000+ word article probably won’t rank that well.

You need to look at the word count and paragraph count of the articles that are ranking for the keyword you are going to be targeting and keep the article around the same.
Click to expand...
true, I always check out the first few ranking posts and then post a similar word count then.
 
dang, that's a long-a55 article, I don't think I'd read it even if it ranked #1 :)

Seriously, though, most keywords don't need so many words. If you're going to target a 1-word or 2-word keyword topic then yeah, you could probably write the moon and the stars about it, but then such topics are highly untargeted, which is why nobody in their right mind try to rank for them.

You're much better off splitting all of those chapters into their own page and write 500-100 words on each one and have 20-30 articles instead of 1 long article that will bore people just scrolling through the ToC lol

Anyway, about 1-2 years ago exhaustive content, as you call it, used to rank better, but I'm not sure that it still works today. And it would bore people anyway, I really don't think it would work
 
Depending on the search intent, 800-2500w will do in most niches
Even longer for affiliate content
 
As per my experience if you are writing a fresh keyword then even a basic page with 500 words will work, but if you want your competitors with 1500+ words articles to beat then create a 2000 words article covering all the points and in detail, then you can easily outrank them ...

Remember it is always more important to cater to the search intent rather than beating around the bush ...
 
From my personal experience, I have hardly benefitted from very long content. Some of my posts are not even in a proper paragraph format but simple tables and they still rank in top 3.
 
batu said:
Hello BHW,

Let's discuss and exchange our experiences.

Discussion:​

A long article refers to a 1500-3000 words article whereas a Very Long Article refers to a 3000+ words article.

Would a VERY long article have an advantage over the long one, under equal off-page SEO circumstances?

Or, does it get insignificant after a certain threshold?

My Case:​

I am generating 3000+ word articles with AI but I would like to hear about your experiences as well. If it ranks better, I will generate 1000+ articles like these.

Word Count: 4012
Images: 62 small images
Table of Contents:

View attachment 251884
Click to expand...
If the quality is good, it will rank better.
If an article with 1200 words has better quality with more on-point keywords, links and images, it will rank better then yours, no matter how much words you have.
 
I start with looking at the user intent. If someone is searching for how many x in a y they don’t want the history of x followed by the history of y and a essay of the historical changes.

They want a quick answer.

It’s the same with other search terms. If they are looking for cheapest iPhone 14 it’s going to be short as they appear to be further down the funnel. If they want a comparison between iPhone 13 and 14 then there’s room for more detail.

It’s matching their intent and then giving it to them. Even in a long form a hyperlinked table of contents means they can either read everything or skip to what they need to know.
 
Zombie Pop said:
No. If the content that is ranking for the keyword you are going to target is ~700 words and 7 paragraphs, a 3000+ word article probably won’t rank that well.

You need to look at the word count and paragraph count of the articles that are ranking for the keyword you are going to be targeting and keep the article around the same.
Click to expand...
Are there any tools you use for this? Tools that check the word metrics of top ranking pages for a keyword (word count, para count, keyword density etc). The only one I've come across is CORA, which is great but overkill for many use cases.
 
noellarkin said:
Are there any tools you use for this? Tools that check the word metrics of top ranking pages for a keyword (word count, para count, keyword density etc). The only one I've come across is CORA, which is great but overkill for many use cases.
Click to expand...
You can do most of that with bookmarklets with chatgpt
 
noellarkin said:
Are there any tools you use for this? Tools that check the word metrics of top ranking pages for a keyword (word count, para count, keyword density etc). The only one I've come across is CORA, which is great but overkill for many use cases.
Click to expand...
GSA keyword research. One time (small) payment. :)

Developer is always improving weekly.

Can’t beat it.
 
Look at the top 3, but don't copy them. In recent updates, Google started favoring articles that cover the topic without any excessive content. I other words, use the exact number of words you need to cover the topic of the article.
 
300-500 words in an article can be so good, but if this article is written intelligently, structured, and meets all standards of a quality article.
 
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