How Long Should A Post Be, For New Sites?

New websites in a competitive space need to earn the trust of search engines (Google). There are many factors that will make your site trustworthy over a period of time, nonetheless, the swiftest route is to write shorter posts that are 1000-1500 words long, which answer questions not already regurgitated innumerably online.

Long-form content will not rank faster because Google will not trust you enough to rank long-form content in your early days. If you are completely answering questions that are being asked online but have not yet been covered, then your site may earn trust and rank sooner.

This is a hit and miss tactic because sometimes the answers are only on forums and those forum answers are enough. Other times (mostly), forums are a horrible place to find answers, and if the only answers to the query are on forums, well, bingo!

Long-form content on authoritative keywords is anything above 2500 words, usually ranks slowly, simply because search engines have not had time to decipher whether or not your site is trustworthy. You have to earn the trust of your readers, and long-form content is considered expert level stuff. Longer content needs more work and knowledge, so it automatically indicates an authors’ expertise.

When Google is judging your site, you need quick wins, and there is no easier way to get these wins than by writing on a topic that is not already online. Write original content that has not been already written many, many times.

Be original people!

Why is long-form content thought to be necessary?

The reason many digital marketing gurus push the idea that each post should be 2000 to 4000 words long because they just want you to write a longer post than everyone else. In fact, there are a number of reasons this is thought to be a quick fix for new sites.

Here is what people want you to believe about longer content:

it proves to Google you have more knowledge on the subject
you are writing more than everyone else so chances of ranking are higher
your content will not be deemed thin content by Google

It depends on what type of site you have and more is not always better.

Long-form content can also be deemed thin content if it has too much fluff and more importantly if it’s scraped from other sites online.

Why is writing less, sometimes better?

Look at recipe sites, no one wants to read your memoir before finding a recipe. I look at many, many recipes online and honestly I never read the blog. So if your site is a recipe blog just write the recipe! It is a better user experience and if you want to share your stories write it on a seperate blog.

Granted people wrote these blogs before the recipe because they were just filling a word count. You do not need to anymore!

Here is a transcript from what John Muller said about writing more content.

Is more text better in the eyes of Google? I’m trying to convince those in charge that it’s not quite as simple as that, from our point of view the number of words on a page is not a quality factor, not a ranking factor. So just blindly adding more and more text to a page doesn’t make it better. If you have the information that users and google bot understands what you’re trying to achieve with it in a short version then fine keep a short version. You don’t need to make it long, just blindly adding text to a page doesn’t make it better.
John Muller

Here is the YouTube and he starts at about 20 minutes in.

Seriously you do not need to write an entire eBook for every post you write! In the beginning, it just will not rank. I have written a post that is over 6000 words and it still doesn’t rank. Albeit it is for an extremely competitive keyword but it may never rank because why should it?

Google looks at my post from a new domain and thinks “this is a baby site but there are other sites like the Entrepreneur and Penny Hoarder that are trustworthy.” Those sites have much more authority in the industry, so they will outrank me.

How should you know when to write longer/shorter posts?

Could these people, saying longer content is better, or longer content is a ranking factor be wrong? The simple answer is it really depends and longer content is not a ranking factor.

It may not be a ranking factor but you do need to write more robustly for some topics and less for others.

You see, as per the Google guidelines, you need sufficient “Main Content” that indicates you are, in fact, an expert in your topic of choice. If you wrote only a few hundred words on a site with a new domain name that ranks zero and currently has no authority, this could also be considered thin content.

Google wants a great user experience for its users, and thus they will penalise thin content. It is alright to write only 600 words on a topic if you can answer the searcher intent entirely. Because when a search is done, it is, in fact, a question. Google search has become an answering machine, and justifiably Google wants a reputable site, giving correct answers to the questions typed into the search bar.

In most cases, it is almost impossible to write a brief few hundred words to answer a question fully. Many people behind awesome websites and businesses are not fantastic writer’s. Nonetheless, they are able to spew an unending amount of useful information without pro writing skills (just like me who has not got pro writing skills).

You have to be an exceptional writer to write concisely and succinctly. In the watered down words of Blaise Pascal a french mathematician and philosopher, the following is a line you should always consider when writing for your readers.

“I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”
Mark Twain but originally written by Blaise Pascal

If you know your topic well and can answer a query fully within some hundred words, then go ahead, but most often, the search query is just the beginning of a thought that leads to many questions. Stay relevant and answer all the subsequent questions.

Can shorter content rank?

Yes, it can and it does! My website ranks at an amazing 1 and not first place guys. It ranks 1 out of 100. Yeah, it is a sad situation (Note: domain authority is a ranking factor created by Moz NOT Google). Still, there is hope for me yet because my site is less than a year old, it’s still a baby.

So this is a post I wrote about how to do keyword research for beginner bloggers that ranks #1 on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page), it is over 2000 words, and it ranks above Ahrefs. 😉

Alternatively, here is another post I wrote about removing nofollow links, and it ranks #1 on the SERP, but it only has about 600 words.

What is the difference and why do they both rank well? They both answer a question fully and they are unique original content. If your content is just copied content from other websites and made to look a little better Google will not rank it in the SERPs.

Your baby site is just saying the same old stuff so there is no point in bothering with you. Imagine you read an article all about cats not responding to their owners/slaves 😉 last year. This year another website wrote an article with the same content but they changed the heading a little and reworded the entire post. Would you read it again? Probably not and the algorithm knows this too.

What is the difference between these pages and why does one that is the recommended by most at 2000 words ranking and yet a pathetice 600 word article ranks too?

It is simple really, one post is about keyword research so that is an extensive topic and the other is just simple fix/how-to-post.

Google strives to provide a great user experience so remember this and write on!

Your site is new and how much should you write?

write content that is original
write content that has not been written before
answer questions that are being asked
answer the question fully

Now you may be thinking my brilliant idea has already been covered and how on earth will I compete with the big sites for all this content? Do not despair because there are so many topics that have not been written yet.

Sometimes the topics you want to write about have been covered but they are:

outdated (old content that is no longer relevant)
poorly covered (badly written content or thin content)
not yet written about (the best type of content to write about)

So do your research and find topics relevant to your area of expertise that fit into the above categories. You will need to write at least 10-50 blogs before you see any traction.

Honestly the more you write the better you’ll get at it and you will be able to analyse how your content is received. You can go back after a year or two and delete the worst writings and make improvements where it’s necessary to whatever is left. Trust me we all go through this! 😉

It is hard to say that if you write x number of blogs your site will rank faster because everything depends on many ranking factors. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind when writing for your website.

Very high level of Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T).
A very satisfying amount of high or highest quality MC.
Very positive website reputation for a website that is responsible for the MC on the page. Very positive reputation of the creator of the MC, if different from that of the website.
Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines by Google

To cover each pointer breifly:

cover E-A-T by putting up a great “About Page” with images, links to your social profiles and anything that shows your readers how you know what you write about
you can only do this by writing original content (not already available online) and adding a steady stream of high quality content to your site
get yourself on a podcast interview or something that gets your name/brand on the internet; anyone can claim to be awesome, nonetheless, you need an outside perspective to vouch for your credibility

Why should I write short content rever written before?

Well think about it, someone somewhere is wondering how should I remove nofollow links from my site for link juice, but the internet doesn’t come up with an answer. If you can write up simple answers for small issues that are often overlooked by bigger sites then you can achieve quick wins!

Final thoughts

Start with lower hanging fruit as an SEO would say and then go for bigger topics. Write your first 10 posts that answer overlooked topics and then see what your results are. The more people find you the more search engines will look at your site with appreciation.

Good luck and feel free to ask me direct questions on Twitter or Reddit.