Does too many words hurt your SEO?

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TheLoneSynchro

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I'm working on my website which I am hoping to become an authority site one day in the future. The niche is pretty saturated, but there's not an authority website yet. There's hundreds of thousands of websites, but none of them utilize SEO or even offer anything, they are just pretty much text tossed out into the WWW for no reason whatsoever. You see the top links on google for this niche changing constantly, so I'm trying to secure a top-3 spot.

I'm writing tutorials on my page, as my main niche is education, I supply people with a ridiculous amount of learning and I'm basically the most thorough and quality provider for this information you can find. I had just finished my first tutorial and It's a little over 7,000 words long. This includes snippets of programming code, and utilization of my keyword. I'm using wordpress and my YOAST plugin is stating that the SEO is good, but I'm just wondering if this will effect my first-page chances, because it's so long. I'm always reading that 500-600 word pages are the best.

I have numerous pages with 4k+ words on it.
 
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If you were looking for a source on dinosaurs, would you rather read a 500 word article, or an in depth 5000 word article written by a scientist?
 
TheLoneSynchro said:
I'm working on my website which I am hoping to become an authority site one day in the future. The niche is pretty saturated, but there's not an authority website yet. There's hundreds of thousands of websites, but none of them utilize SEO or even offer anything, they are just pretty much text tossed out into the WWW for no reason whatsoever. You see the top links on google for this niche changing constantly, so I'm trying to secure a top-3 spot.

I'm writing tutorials on my page, as my main niche is education, I supply people with a ridiculous amount of learning and I'm basically the most thorough and quality provider for this information you can find. I had just finished my first tutorial and It's a little over 7,000 words long. This includes snippets of programming code, and utilization of my keyword. I'm using wordpress and my YOAST plugin is stating that the SEO is good, but I'm just wondering if this will effect my first-page chances, because it's so long. I'm always reading that 500-600 word pages are the best.

I have numerous pages with 4k+ words on it.
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Here's what you do.

1) Check your SERPs with your current 7k word article. Use serpbook or something similar. Your rankings should be pretty stable a while after you publish an article.
2) Break that article down into smaller pages.
3) Check your SERPs again. Did you move up or down?
4) You have your answer

In my opinion, 500-600 is too small. I'd say 1000-1500, but that's simply my opinion.

Cheers

XH
 
You can always break up an article into one main part and various smaller articles with secondary information. Google loves secondary info.
 
Believe it or not, A well written tutorial will easily outrank any number of authority sites. Google's Panda Algorithm loves sites like yours. Since its too long, I'd test and optimize the site load speed if required and split the tutorial into 2/3 pages using pagi navi plugin which will also help in the bounce rate.
 
antichrist said:
If you were looking for a source on dinosaurs, would you rather read a 500 word article, or an in depth 5000 word article written by a scientist?
Click to expand...

Irrelevant. It's not about what I want to read to get information quick, it's about explaining things in depth. I'm teaching people how to do things which includes programming source code. The source of the program itself is over 500 words, that's not even talking about breaking it down and explaining it for people.
 
TheLoneSynchro said:
Irrelevant. It's not about what I want to read to get information quick, it's about explaining things in depth. I'm teaching people how to do things which includes programming source code. The source of the program itself is over 500 words, that's not even talking about breaking it down and explaining it for people.
Click to expand...

I think you completely missed my point. Obviously something in depth is much much better. Wikipedia isnt full of shitty 500 word articles, so to answer you bluntly, no, long articles are awesome.
 
antichrist said:
I think you completely missed my point. Obviously something in depth is much much better. Wikipedia isnt full of shitty 500 word articles, so to answer you bluntly, no, long articles are awesome.
Click to expand...

I feel like I did too, it's probably because I don't like to read. Thanks for your reply, it's good to know that I'm not screwing myself before I even begin.
 
I have been interested in article length as well. I didn't know that even longer articles tend to do well in terms of rankings. I'll have to pull out the stops when I write my articles.
 
When you write your article you have to think about your end user, so make sure it's easy to follow and understand... regardless, if it's 300 words or 3,000 words (just think for yourself how you'd rather read your tutorial YOURSELF).
Sometimes, it's necessary to have long articles but sometimes it's better to break them up.
 
In-depth articles are better than 500 to 600 words, don't worry about words just try to give entire information to your users, Don't target for the Search engines, you should target only your audience. So give perfect and wonderful content to your users. Google is smart enough to pick the best content for users
 
TheLoneSynchro said:
I feel like I did too, it's probably because I don't like to read...
Click to expand...

Are you 20-something or younger? If so you answered your own question. I would make a video in depth about it and put codes below on site. Fuck, maybe put the article below for older guys like me who don't like listening to some guy fumble around and comprehend better by reading it.

You seem knowledgeable in your niche. So you can probably "talk" to your audience. But given written is great too.
 
infoasian said:
You can always break up an article into one main part and various smaller articles with secondary information. Google loves secondary info.
Click to expand...
I agree with infoasian. You can break your articles into small part. That would be more helpful for you.
 
Long articles are better and Google will show you more love to you than your competitors!
 
Longer articles also, because of their depth and authority will naturally receive more natural links, which means free link building from good sources.
 
There's no such thing as too much content. However, a wall of text is not very appealing to the eye. Content, to me, means more than just written words. If structured properly with diagrams, info-graphics, relative images & videos and clear call to action for your main funnel, you can have as much content on a page as you want. There's many ways to condense as well, accordions, tabs, etc.
 
Its actually good for SEO, bad for sales/click tactics unless employed properly and in a fashion that's easy to swallow.
 
antichrist said:
If you were looking for a source on dinosaurs, would you rather read a 500 word article, or an in depth 5000 word article written by a scientist?
Click to expand...


Best answer. Obviously, the OP doesn't get it though.
 
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