[GUIDE] Do you need to write thousands of words to rank on Google ?

Do you need to write thousands of words to rank on Google page 1 for a keyword? Or can you write something shorter?
Most copywriters, designers, and business owners would probably choose the latter.
Let’s be real.
Writing 2000+ words on a Monday morning isn’t a dream work scenario.
Who has the time for long posts and articles anyway?
Besides, brevity is the soul of the wit, right?
But don’t jump onto the “long-form content hate wagon” just yet!
Andrew Holland, Head of Organic at Embryo, recently pointed out that you can’t treat a landing page or an article the way you do a short email (link in comments).
With articles, long-form content may be the missing ingredient to stirring up the right SEO brew!
They:
- Can be more valuable and engaging.
- Tend to get more social shares.
- Can present more internal linking opportunities.
Cool. But how does this help with SEO?
Google ranks articles that can conclude and satisfy a user’s search from all possible angles.
And as an SEO professional, it’s your job to analyze the SERP results for a keyword and note the search intent.
Now in most keywords with high search volume, you’ll find that there are multiple intents — something that Shopify's SEO Director Kevin Indig talked about in a Clearscope Fireside Chat hosted by Bernard Huang (link to the recording in comments).
You can then put out long-form content that addresses as many search intents as possible, making it valuable to as many people as possible! I talk more about search intents in one of my previous posts (link in comments).
If you manage to nail the different search intents, your long-form content can become the ultimate guide on something for your audience — something they’ll keep referring to.
Hold up.
Does this mean that you have to now write 2000+ words FOR EVERY TOPIC?
Absolutely not!
Let’s say you’re writing about “how many glasses in a bottle of wine” (it’s 5 for a standard 750ml bottle ) and SERP results show one clear search intent.
A 2000-word article in this scenario would make as much sense as wearing a raincoat on a sunny afternoon.
So getting back to the million-dollar question: does long-form content work in SEO?
It certainly can! As long as you study the search intent and craft your content around it.
You’re able to nail the search intent in 800 words? Fantastic!
BUT don’t shy away from the 2000-word guide where you see the need.

Yes the more words the better, also use your keyword in your article.

wickbruh said:

Now in most keywords with high search volume, you’ll find that there are multiple intents — something that Shopify's SEO Director Kevin Indig talked about in a Clearscope Fireside Chat hosted by Bernard Huang (link to the recording in comments).

Click to expand...

NO. NO. NO

Don't really talk about Shopify. They are enterprise businesses. They have millions of backlinks, an insane amount of online reputation (that is a factor in ranking), and billions of traffic. I mean, if Google doesn't rank Shopify, who the fuck it will be?

I know I may be sounding negative but stop following these "Content Marketing Checklist" types of professionals. They are just not what we need. The only thing they talk aboutt is finding an angle to write an article, do you know why? Because they already have a boat load of backlinks to their domain's ass. The only thing they have to worry is writing something.

And here we are talking about why our 200-articles website isn't getting indexed.

We achieve best results with at least 1500 words per article. Better 2000.

Writing long pieces of content just for length is not enough.

Quantity, after all, doesn't mean quality.

You have to focus on two things.

First, deliver on the search intent behind those keywords.

Second, make sure that your content competes with existing content.

If you just sit down and come up with content that you believe is the "very best" without first researching your competition, you may be wasting your time.

Two things can happen.

Either you overwrite and produce a massive epic thousands of words long when your competitors only wrote hundreds of words.

You can also go the other direction and underwrite.

Pay close attention to what your competitors are doing.

Use tools like Frase to pinpoint the contextual keywords that they're using.

Remember, your content simply has to beat the existing competitor content out there.

Focus on that.

Either way, you posted some really good information here from Andrew Holland but it needs a little bit of adjustment to fit real-world cases.