Do I have to write my long article to get a ranking?

Hello. Good day guys. Is it necessary to write long articles to rank high on Google? Will writing longer articles than top 10 competitors rank me higher? I use Semrush's own typing assistant and it shows me the average word count by keyword. The articles written by the top 10 competitors in Google are very short. If I write a longer article, how likely will I be to rank first? Neipatel and other seo experts say that I should create longer content, but when I look at the top 10, short articles are listed. Does this length vary by keyword? Or should I write all articles long?

you're stressing too much over this. Just write enough to address the intent of the keyword (or to fully cover the topic if you're doing skyscraper / pillar content) and move on to the next article!

Some keywords don't even have enough points to address anyway. For example, how are you going to write 5k words on keywords like these:

- can snakes eat hamsters?
- what are cars with retractable tops called?
- nigiri sushi recipe

Such keywords only need a few words to address them, so you wouldn't be able to write long articles on these keywords even if you wanted to, simply because there isn't enough info to write about

tazarbm said:

you're stressing too much over this. Just write enough to address the intent of the keyword (or to fully cover the topic if you're doing skyscraper / pillar content) and move on to the next article!

Some keywords don't even have enough points to address anyway. For example, how are you going to write 5k words on keywords like these:

- can snakes eat hamsters?
- what are cars with retractable tops called?
- nigiri sushi recipe

Such keywords only need a few words to address them, so you wouldn't be able to write long articles on these keywords even if you wanted to, simply because there isn't enough info to write about

Click to expand...

However, while some articles can be written with 1000+ words, semrush says 600 words are more ideal. What should we do in this situation?

Even though having longer content can be helpful, it is not the only thing that affects where you rank in search results. Focusing on a mix of things, like keyword research, on-page optimization, backlinks, and website speed, can increase your chances of doing well on search engines.

cemsid said:

Does this length vary by keyword?

Click to expand...

Yes.

And Just write a little bit longer than your competitors. Or even if you cover the intent of the keyword by writing shorter than your competitor that's also good as long as your article ranks.

cemsid said:

However, while some articles can be written with 1000+ words, semrush says 600 words are more ideal. What should we do in this situation?

Click to expand...

like I said, you are stressing too much over this. Just write to address the topic and when you it's done you can stop, no matter if it's 300 words, 4000 words, or 16 pages.

If you write longer articles than your competitors, you will naturally use more keywords in the content. It doesn't make search engines think that you are keyword stuffing. As a result, you will rank for more keywords in search results compared to your competitors. You can add more backlinks and internal links to the longer articles. That also sends a positive signal for your SEO.

definitely a comprehensive article will be easily ranked

Your word count doesnt matter when it provides the best user search intent.

tazarbm said:

Some keywords don't even have enough points to address anyway. For example, how are you going to write 5k words on keywords like these:

Click to expand...

It'd probably hurt more than help writing 5k words on keywords like that.

Just write enough to answer the question. I rank with articles that are less than 1k words for some keywords. It really depends on the competition.

Yes with Long tail keyword + KGR keyword work well

Spats said:

It'd probably hurt more than help writing 5k words on keywords like that.

Click to expand...

definitely!

I used to be one of the most patient people you could meet, I would waste hours reading whatever the blogger had to say even though oftentimes I found my answer in the first few paragraphs. I literally wasted months of my life reading stuff that I didn't care about.

But I can't do this anymore. My time is as precious as everyone else's, and when I click through to visit a page that has the answer I'm searching for I immediately scroll to the section that has the answer (thank God for Table of Contents plugins, I'll use them on all of my websites from now on). if the page doesn't even have a ToC I immediately click BACK to visit another site. Only if i really don't find the answer I'm looking for, on any page that's ranking in top 10 of google, only then do I bother "reading" the entire article, even if it doesn't have ToC, but when I say "reading" I mean skimming through the content until I find what I'm looking for

So yeah, google tracks this behavior of visitors and when google "sees" that visitors exit the site / page without even spending 5 seconds on them I'm sure that it's smart enough to consider this bad user experience and de-rank that page (unless it's an authority site, obviously, but that's a different story)

Spats said:

Just write enough to answer the question. I rank with articles that are less than 1k words for some keywords. It really depends on the competition.

Click to expand...

yep! That's exactly what I advised OP to do, but (s)he probably didn't take my advice lightly and thought that I was just trying to be a smartass or something

Oh well, I've given my opinion, it's up to him / her what (s)he wants to do. I just hope that whatever length (s)he chooses it will pay out for him/her

I try to write around 2500+ words per article for ranking purposes.

cemsid said:

Hello. Good day guys. Is it necessary to write long articles to rank high on Google? Will writing longer articles than top 10 competitors rank me higher? I use Semrush's own typing assistant and it shows me the average word count by keyword. The articles written by the top 10 competitors in Google are very short. If I write a longer article, how likely will I be to rank first? Neipatel and other seo experts say that I should create longer content, but when I look at the top 10, short articles are listed. Does this length vary by keyword? Or should I write all articles long?

Click to expand...

the average article lenght should be atleast 1000 words, but if you want ot rank your aticle in top 10 category use high rank keywords, so you are using semrush than you can easily founnd some good high kd keywords for the best ranking,

do only just enough

always do tons of writing with quality

Average words count in article should be 800-1000 words, should be optimized with key words.