SEO FAQ: How Long Should Content Be?

Every website on the Internet uses content to get new customers. But what different kinds of content work best? And more importantly, how long does SEO content need to be in order to work?

Join Sam Selders as she tackles those topics in this video on SEO FAQs!

Transcript

Hey everyone! My name is Sam Selders and I’m and internet marketer here at WebFX.

We all know that online content is extremely important, but sometimes, it’s hard to determine how long your content should be to get the best results. Let’s talk a little bit more about the kinds of content you can create for your website and how long each should be.

Informational articles

Informative articles are pieces of content that probably take up the bulk of your website.

They are the pages that give users information about your products, services, strategies, or your company as a whole, although there really are no limitations in terms of topics. Informational articles, sometimes also referred to as article pages, are usually around 1,500 to 2,000 words – and for good reason. Content pages with this high of a word count are also called longform articles, and they have been proven to rank higher in search engine results pages.

(SearchEngineLand) SerpIQ conducted a study that looked in depth at the search results for more than 20,000 keywords. The average length of the top 10 results in SERPs, or search engine results pages, was around 2,000. In fact, the average number one ranked page had 2,416 words. That being said, if you want your article pages to rank highly, you should aim to have more than 2,000 words – even though it might be a little lengthier than what you’re used to writing.

Blog posts

Blog posts are great pieces of content to add to your website because they let you make quick and timely content updates to your site.

Blog posts are also easily shareable on your social media accounts, and in email newsletters. You can use blogs to give your opinion on something, or to spur conversation with your potential and current customers. Just like informational articles, it has been proven that the longer your blog posts, the better.

You should aim for more than 1,000 words to ensure that you rank highly in search engines. Typically, blogs aren’t made to be as lengthy as a longform because a blog reader is looking to gain insight or read an opinion fairly quickly. They usually aren’t looking for an expansive discussion, rather an easy-read.

Though some blogs can definitely be longer than 1,000 words!

10x content

10x content is designed to be 10 times better than other content written on a topic. The topics that you cover with 10x content should be topics that you can speak at length about, and should entirely inform readers on a subject.

Instead of just using text, you should also include images, videos, mini-graphics, and other multimedia to keep the page from feeling like a long wall of text. That being said, this is the longest kind of content. 10x articles are at least 2,500 words so you can cover all the details of the subject and adequately explain your visual elements.

Case studies

Case studies are great ways to draw users to your website because they are real-life accounts of how your services affect your customers. It’s hard to determine exactly how long case studies should be, but your case studies should always tell the whole story behind the topic. If you only give bits and pieces of a customer experience, and leave out the details of how they got the results they did with your product or service, your study won’t be much help to readers.

But when you show someone the full scope of your work, your readers will see the level of your work and commitment to customers.

Videos

Videos are another kind of content that can help draw users to your website, and keep them there. Topics for videos can range from a tour of your facility, to a how-to video using one of your products.

No matter what the content, you should keep your video fairly short for easy viewing. In a study done by Wistia, it was proven that the shorter the video, the more likely users are to watch the entire video. Not only are shorter videos watched more often, but it’s more likely that users will watch them from start to finish.

Videos that range from 10-20 minutes in length will only be watched 50% of the time, whereas videos that are one minute or shorter will be watched 75% of the time. Since search engine ranking is so important, you should do everything you can to ensure that your content makes it onto the first page – and with these content length guidelines, you’re ready to go! Do you have any other content types that rank highly in Google?

Let us know in the comments below! Thanks for watching!