It’s been debated for a very long time: How long should an article be?

 

It used to be the case that SEO agencies used to write articles, a bit like how a factory produces a product. That’s to say churning out the work at a rate of knots.

However, with a series of important Google updates, such as the Google Helpful content update, the Google Hummingbird update, and the Google E-EAT update, writing articles just to hit a 500-word count is finished.

This type of work is likely to put your organic SEO in reverse gear, meaning that instead of moving up the ranks, you’re likely to move down if the content marketing is rubbish and half-baked.

 

So, our top advice is, regardless of the word count, the content marketing should:

– Answer a query that your customers often ask
– Make the answer the best you can; write a detailed answer, but don’t go over the top
– Break the text up with plenty of titles and paragraphs
– Add internal links
– Make sure that what you are writing about, you display that you are an expert on the subject or work with an expert on the topic to in order to write the work
– Make sure the text has a good Google E-EAT score.

So how long should an article be?

Well, the answer to this question is it does depend.

It depends on how much text is needed to answer the question comprehensively; sometimes, a question can be answered in just 250 words.

Yet, in order answer a more complex question, such as how exactly do electric cars work? And what servicing do they require? Well, this is going to require a much more detailed answer, a longer article.
So, it does depend on the question; however, instead of trying to focus on just improving your business’s organic SEO by writing, say, a quickly written article, think about this:

– Don’t think about quantity. Think about quality
– Make sure that the work shows that you are an expert on what you are talking about
– Aim to offer the best advice you can, better than your direct competitors if you can
– Write longer articles, and less often, rather than writing an article, say every week, that has a low word count and is half-baked in terms of the author hasn’t put much effort into writing it.
– Instead write better quality work, less often

So, put yourself in your customers’ shoes.

It’s not uncommon to get total writer’s block. You might have been running your company for over 25 years, yet when you are tasked with writing blog posts, you might think, well, what should we be writing about?
Our best advice is to use your knowledge of your customers and what they often ask you in the shop or on the phone about the products or services you sell.

This way, you will understand the questions they typically ask, and you will find that often, these questions often have a high search volume in Google Search Console, meaning that many people are asking these questions to Google.co.uk.
So, if you can offer a brilliant answer, your business might get on the first page of Google for that query, potentially bringing in thousands of organic visitors each month.

 

John Mueller

John Mueller of Google has stated, “We need facts, substance, evidence from authoritative sources on the subject of which it is written”.
So basically, the work should be well written.

 

Structure is important

It doesn’t matter how passionate you are about something; let’s say your passion is motor racing and rally cars; you might not want to read a 1,000-word article that is just a giant block of text.

So make sure the content marketing that you write is interesting and offer a good user experience to the reader; here’s some of the ways you can do that:

– Break the text up into paragraphs; don’t write in giant blocks of text
– Add images
– Add page titles
– Write the work in an exciting way
– Don’t waffle; you still can write a high word count, but you don’t need to keep going over the same points.

 

Conclusion

Because of the Google Helpful Content update and Google E-EAT update, your work must be high quality and well-written.
If it’s not, and you’re just writing a waffle to reach a word count, Google’s algorithm will know the work is spam.

Low-quality content marketing will simply damage your business SEO, so instead, put your back into it and write some really good, helpful, well-written content marketing. Keep in mind that Google is now using Google E-EAT to determine whether the work is of good quality or not. So before you crank up the coffee machine and start writing 3,000 word articles for your website, do have a good read of the Google E-EAT advice.

 

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