Since the introduction of “In-depth Articles Section” by Google; the blogging world, copy-writing community and content marketers are in a frenzy.
They are working hard, stretching their concepts of the articles as much as possible to make them at least 2200 words long, or more.
Before this also, there was a general consensus that “short articles are usually penalized by Google Panda.” So, lots of webmasters started rejecting guest posts which is less than 700, or even 1000 words.
I don’t know where did they get the concept? Google has never mentioned that “Panda will attack your site if your posts are 300 words or less.” But yes, Google says – Excessive amount of thin articles or thin content will be penalized by Panda algorithm. Now the question is – What does Google mean by thin article or thin blog post?
Google labels an article thin or low quality when it (the article) is less useful, or convey an extremely blunt idea without any supportive arguments, facts or figures.
- Don’t think Panda doesn’t attack blog posts with 1000 words or more. It does – if the entire article is meaningless, crafted in a robotic way (spinned), or a copied version with slight change.
- And you should also know that Panda doesn’t always hit posts with less than 300 words. There are plenty of blogs who regularly publish articles with 200 to 300 words and proudly rank on the first page of Google search.
Be a short blogger
1. Conveying your idea or message in a short format is the best possible user experience you can give to your readers.
2. Writing a blog post is an act of expressing an idea or opinion about a subject matter. Unnecessary stretching the article by stuffing with unwanted words and sentences simply dilute the core concept. That’s the reason lots of blog readers abandon a long post in the mid-way.
3. People have less attention-span and less time in their busy life. They want a clean and crisp copy which fulfills their needs.
4. Google also doesn’t like to show in-depth articles at the top of the search results. They only appear 5 to 7 links below on the 1st page. That’s why the CTR of short articles are always higher.
Conclusion
Writing a short article about an important topic is not so easy. It needs more hard work in terms of removing/editing lines but still portraying the same meaning or concept.
After all said, I don’t mean you should always go for shorter version. If your blog post is a tutorial, and really needs some in-depth content to justify the points, then go for it.
Neil Patel of QuickSprout.com says – write at least 2,183 words articles and get them included in Google’s In-depth Article Section and increase your traffic by 13.15% in just 30 days.
It’s completely misleading for newbie bloggers. 1stly: stay away from bloggers who always talk about Crunchy-numbers like – How I earned or lost $30,000 in 30 days? How I gained 3,00,000 traffic in 30 days without doing anything, etc. These type of articles are meant to attract newbie and inexperienced bloggers. 2ndly: stay away from bloggers who always blow their own trumpet.
Have you seen Brian Clark of Copyblogger, or Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand speaking how much they earn every month? Bloggers who earn big bucks never disclose. No hard-feelings with Neil Patel. He is an all time great blogger.
What’s your preference – A short post, or a long one?
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