Does more content help SEO?

samiejg

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Like say if I was trying to rank an article on Google, does it make a big difference(or any difference?) if with was only 200 or 300 words compared to 800 words? or if I want to rank something well, should I be getting bigger articles?
 
Well it depends. If the content is helpful, unique and answer questions that the reader may have, then a 300 word article works just as well as 800 word article. Now if the content is related to violence, nudity such as flashing people in public, or anything related to drugs, then 800 words is a must!
 
I'd go for a main article that has 800-1000 "properly structured" words. Lots of long-tail KW can be targeted. Then I'd support it with shorter articles (250-350 words with 2-3 images with proper file name and alt-tags).
 
Word count does really matters in most of the cases, longer posts usually perform better. But rather than focussing on the word count, focus on quality instead.
 
The length of an article doesn't matter in all cases.It really depends on what the competition is like on the keywords you using in the articles. I would go for a minimum of 500 words in each article.when i am targeting much hard keywords,i use around 900 to 1,000 words.
 
I disagree with the majority here. While it may be A factor, the length of a piece of content with respect to SEO benefit ranks fairly low down the list of ranking factors. Content is NOT king.
 
I would disagree with you James. I have found longer articles with multiple H tags that support LSI keywords to be ranking better than short articles targeted with 1-2 keywords. Right now I am testing if articles with url's such as "finding furniture part 1" then another post with part 2 rank better.
 
Well it depends. If the content is helpful, unique and answer questions that the reader may have, then a 300 word article works just as well as 800 word article. Now if the content is related to violence, nudity such as flashing people in public, or anything related to drugs, then 800 words is a must!

Ok, so what I'm understanding from the posts here is that it may have a slight affect on SEO Rankings. But what does the content matter if it's helpful or quality? Like isn't that something only the website visitor would be able to tell? Like how could Google measure if the website is not helpful or is content is not quality.
 
Ok, so what I'm understanding from the posts here is that it may have a slight affect on SEO Rankings. But what does the content matter if it's helpful or quality? Like isn't that something only the website visitor would be able to tell? Like how could Google measure if the website is not helpful or is content is not quality.

That is why you have to write for both the G bot and your readers. The long articles (800-1000 words) are for the search engine. The medium-length supporting posts (250-500 words) are for both, while shorter posts (150-300 words) are for your users. Shorter posts should be n0-indexed if there are too many.
 
Yea it definitely decide the seo. One article can be up for over 5k words longer that is not the main part as long you keep those articles unique they will be interesting for visitors
 
You won't get a definitive answer here. Some would feel that longer articles are better while some would say that short articles won't matter.

I've read on moz that there really is a correlation between longer articles and higher rankings. Do take note that the two are just correlated. They are just related, not the cause of or effect to the other.

That being said, I would recommend that you write as much as you need, but as little as possible. Be as informative as possible, because that's what the search engines want by default. ​
 
It is right that content is the backbone of SEO, but having more content will not help you. Even a article of 500 words can make your blog popular among the visitors provided your content should be impressive and of good quality. Mostly you need to focus on headlines of your article a lot.
 
Articles, that contain 800+ words tend to rank for many long tail keywords and bring you additional traffic. That is the main benefit of such articles. Usually, i post long articles to my homepage while inner pages contain 500w articles.
 
Normally you should try to create unique and informative article. If you can write 800 words article that would be more helpful than 300 words article. I hope you know about keyword density. In 800 words article you can use more keyword than 300 words article.
 
Optimum words count for article is 500 to 1000 words. But even then, quality matters. Article must be unique and informative. I think you should go for 800 words as compared to 300 words.
 
Some of it depends on if it will pass a human-review. The manual checkers are only going to spend 30-45 seconds on your site, if the content looks spammy at all, they are going to rate it low, hurting your SERPs.
 
I can tell you this, I've had sites that stagnate at the top of page 2 or bottom of page 1. If I add more well written content they usually get a bump in rankings. It's not always permanent.
 
That is why you have to write for both the G bot and your readers. The long articles (800-1000 words) are for the search engine. The medium-length supporting posts (250-500 words) are for both, while shorter posts (150-300 words) are for your users. Shorter posts should be n0-indexed if there are too many.

Would you be able to clarify on what you mean by this? Like are you talking about cloaking so users see different information than what search engines see?

I can tell you this, I've had sites that stagnate at the top of page 2 or bottom of page 1. If I add more well written content they usually get a bump in rankings. It's not always permanent.

How does Google tell if you've written "well written" content?
 
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