Does too many words hurt your SEO?
- Thread starter TheLoneSynchro
- Start date
rasmusk
Senior Member
- Oct 4, 2012
- 927
- 368
Np. I hope I can help you earn enough, to someday, afford your own place. Living with your parents at your age is not something to brag about :/
Techxan
Elite Member
- Dec 7, 2011
- 3,091
- 3,620
There are two factors to consider here, the SEO value of the longer articles and visitor engagement.
Longer articles are better for SEO, but people will not read a wall of text unless it is technical subject that they are interested in.
It sounds like you are writing for a techie crowd, so I would agree that longer articles are best and your readers will read a wall of text, if it's not too much of a wall.
So now lets take in the SEO aspect. Really long articles loose their focus as far as keyword targeting. This is really, really bad for SEO.
In your situation this is what I would do.
Segment out the material into 1500 word chunks. Keep each segmnent as closely related as possible, and daisy chain the pages together. Break up the page with some visual relief and white space.
Make it easy for people to find something the on the page using headings, bold and italics. For really long pages it is critical that the user be able to digest parts of the page at a time.
At the end of each page, write a summary of what the next page is going to contain, so the daisy chain link is very contextual. This will strengthen your internal linking.
By daisy chaining the pages together your visitor will move from the landing page further into your site, improving your bounce rate.
If you put all that info on one page and someone reads it all then leaves, it will count as a bounce. Use the content to push your visitors further into the site.
By segmenting, the page focus can be kept tight, you can do keyword research on the conent of that segment and "flavor" the page to target those keywords with on page elements, thereby ranking better and pulling more traffic. You will have 5 pages of content if you segment out 1500 word pages from a 7000 word document. If you paginate the segment (say 800/700 words), then daisy chain the segments, you will have 10 pages. This is great for an authority site.
This gives you 5 to 10 times more virtual real estate to use to monetize when you decide to do that.
Also for SEO purposes, 5 pages are better than one, and 10 is better than 5, if they are quality.
Longer articles are better for SEO, but people will not read a wall of text unless it is technical subject that they are interested in.
It sounds like you are writing for a techie crowd, so I would agree that longer articles are best and your readers will read a wall of text, if it's not too much of a wall.
So now lets take in the SEO aspect. Really long articles loose their focus as far as keyword targeting. This is really, really bad for SEO.
In your situation this is what I would do.
Segment out the material into 1500 word chunks. Keep each segmnent as closely related as possible, and daisy chain the pages together. Break up the page with some visual relief and white space.
Make it easy for people to find something the on the page using headings, bold and italics. For really long pages it is critical that the user be able to digest parts of the page at a time.
At the end of each page, write a summary of what the next page is going to contain, so the daisy chain link is very contextual. This will strengthen your internal linking.
By daisy chaining the pages together your visitor will move from the landing page further into your site, improving your bounce rate.
If you put all that info on one page and someone reads it all then leaves, it will count as a bounce. Use the content to push your visitors further into the site.
By segmenting, the page focus can be kept tight, you can do keyword research on the conent of that segment and "flavor" the page to target those keywords with on page elements, thereby ranking better and pulling more traffic. You will have 5 pages of content if you segment out 1500 word pages from a 7000 word document. If you paginate the segment (say 800/700 words), then daisy chain the segments, you will have 10 pages. This is great for an authority site.
This gives you 5 to 10 times more virtual real estate to use to monetize when you decide to do that.
Also for SEO purposes, 5 pages are better than one, and 10 is better than 5, if they are quality.
TheLoneSynchro
Regular Member
- Sep 13, 2013
- 306
- 77
Thanks for your reply, all of my tutorials come with an embedded video (up top) and a direct-video(down bottom) link. Yes, I am 20.
srb888
Elite Member
- Jul 30, 2008
- 3,304
- 5,290
My personal experience:
I was writing tech articles for an authority site for almost 4 years, and I was writing small and large sized content. When I was exceeding, for example, 500~700 words, sometimes even 900~1000 words if that was needed, I was creating another page as continuation of the content, and linking. The readers of the site were very happy with that method, they even mentioned sometimes, and the articles (including those sections) were, usually, ranking in the top 3 (most of the times, and because the site was aleady a hugely popular leader in the niche) for those new keywords, almost immediately because I guess that it was among G's fav sites! The additional pages also gave me scope to add specific keyphrases and keywords, LSI including, to that particular page, and that added to the success, and my (whatever graded) knowledge of SEO.
HTH you.
I was writing tech articles for an authority site for almost 4 years, and I was writing small and large sized content. When I was exceeding, for example, 500~700 words, sometimes even 900~1000 words if that was needed, I was creating another page as continuation of the content, and linking. The readers of the site were very happy with that method, they even mentioned sometimes, and the articles (including those sections) were, usually, ranking in the top 3 (most of the times, and because the site was aleady a hugely popular leader in the niche) for those new keywords, almost immediately because I guess that it was among G's fav sites! The additional pages also gave me scope to add specific keyphrases and keywords, LSI including, to that particular page, and that added to the success, and my (whatever graded) knowledge of SEO.
HTH you.
Last edited:
WildSmurfs
Newbie
- Jul 31, 2014
- 12
- 0
It really depends upon your niche, but to make your lengthy articles seo friendly, try paginating them like other authority sites do.