Reasons to Be Different From the Majority
Compared to short articles, long ones are very hard to write but there are many reasons to write longer articles.
Less Competition
Based on what we’ve encountered, 85% of authors write short articles (1,000 words or less); even in the travel market, only a few authors dare to attempt long-form blogging. Long articles don’t mean choosing longer words or writing watery sentences without information. You must do a lot of searching and include many details about the topic and perhaps even details from different perspectives. Also, don’t forget about other ways of sharing information – video and images.
A high-quality long article requires more time and effort. Therefore, the competition is very low, and you have a higher chance of succeeded among fewer competitors. Pages with 1,000 words or less are rarely competitors for well-done pages with 3,000-5,000 or more words. Check it out right now in a Google search results page.
Long Articles Are Google’s Favorite
Google thinks that long articles are more detailed and complete then short ones. When the information is meticulous and extensive, it more likely has the answer for which the visitor is searching. Therefore, Google trusts long articles more.
Of course, the search engine has its own methods for evaluating the quality of your post. Characters that were done for size, not for real information, will have the opposite effect for your page – it will increase or be totally invisible in SERP.
Moreover, readers of small articles can jump to another website; for them, length may indicate that the article doesn’t include the answers they want. This will affect your website’s bounce rate – it will grow. Bounce rate is included in behavioral factors and has a huge impact for Google. You can improve the position of your webpage if you increase the average time spent on your page and reduce the number of people who immediately leave your posts. This will affect not only one page, but your entire blog.
When posts are longer, visitors often remain on the article longer to find the information they need. Some visitors even trust the information in longer articles more because it seems more professional to them.
Longer Articles Are More Adjustable for New Uses and Purposes
As we said, longs articles must be more detailed and include many aspects of the topic. Therefore, in the future, you can cut small parts of the post and use them as e-mail newsletters or a slide deck.
A long page offers more opportunities to add hyperlinks to redirect to your old posts. This will help increase the page depth parameter, which represents the number of pages, on average, a user visited. This is as important as the bounce rate.
Downsides of Longer Articles
If it were easy to create long stories, everybody would do it and this parameter would depreciate. The first hardship is that longer articles aren’t easy to create, and they present more difficulties:
- They require more research about the topic;
- They take more time to create;
- They contain more details, which means they may sooner become out of date.
Imagine that you extensively researched visas to the USA or another time-related topic and created a huge post. The more details you discover, the higher the chances that some of them will soon become out of date. Long stories require a lot of work, not just in creation but also in updating.
However, don’t worry about the amount of work waiting for you. Investing your time in development will return a great income. To make the process easier and more efficient, take a look at our instructions on how to make high-quality content for your site. However, don’t forget that you need to focus on your website’s design, too.
To avoid creating problems for our partners, we are seeking to make affiliate tools that are less related to time and that are accurate for as long as possible. Imagine that you joined the car rental affiliate program or one of the other offers, and placed a widget. It can remain in place longer without updates because it allows your visitors to always get fresh information.
While longer articles have their challenges, it is worth gaining the trust of Google and your readers. In addition, you will have the advantage of less competition and more flexibility. For motivation, try to monetize your travel blog. You will find ways to do so on this page.
How to Determinate the Length of an Article for Google’s Top 10
What is an average length of a blog post? It has been said that Google fancies long-reads. However, this doesn’t mean you have to extract thousands of words despite the article’s goal and the topic’s objective requirements.
The average word length of a blog post is from 500 to 3000. For example, Apple’s posts are always 500-800 words. The number of words is calculated in terms of the reading time. The perfect timeframe is no longer than 5-7 minutes, representing 1500-1800 words.
The other parameter of the ideal blog length 2018 is the topic of the article and the quality of the content. If your content is valid, you have many followers, and you have managed to get awareness, you can publish extremely long texts and be sure of your audience’s loyalty.
How the Google Algo Treats Article Length
The perfect blog post length does not exist. Note that the number of words in the article is just a formal parameter. What is crucial is to use valid words that are useful for users and have plenty of LSI keywords and words related to them. In this case, a long article can solve all the user’s issues and motivate him for further engagement.
One of the ways to determine blog post length SEO is to look through the top five results on the first page of SERP for a definite keyword. When speaking about rankings, we should focus not on the quantity of the text but on its quality. Blog post length best practices 2020 recommend using long-reads with a few related keywords and key phrases to a phrase that is good for key phrases with long tails. This makes the exploration of related terms much easier.
SEO and Readability Balance
So, do blog posts have to be long? No, they don’t, but it is highly desirable. The optimal blog post length SEO is really long but the post should contain keywords – both high, medium, and low-frequency requests.
So, how long should a blog post be 2020? There are no limits. Add as much text as you can – the more articles, the better. However, don’t forget that they should be unique and useful, relevant to a topic, and enriched with keywords. Only in this case will search engines give you plenty of the most relevant visitors.
Don’t add text just to have more text. Any letter in your article must have meaning for the readers. Big articles worked in the past, but in 2020 Google has the skills to evaluate and score your article. You can get to the top in SERP even with a short article … and this is the best for users!
Share in the comments your experience and your opinion about the length of articles in 2020.
