QAP please - length

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   TessSchlesingerposted 4 years ago

   https://hubpages.com/business/Lying-Pol … Need-Jobs?
   
   HP says we are to write between 700 and 1200 words. This article is 1955 words. But also, no matter how hard I try, my articles are always a lot longer than 1200 words, and I have yet to write an article that is between 700 and 1200 words.
   
   Can you think of a way to make this article shorter? Will it impair traffic? And why has HP made the article requirement shorter than it used to be?
   
   Do shorter articles get more traffic?
   
   Thank you.

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2. 94

   Beth Eaglescliffeposted 4 years ago

   HP's guidance of 700 to 1200 words is just that, guidance. I've had successful articles that are much, much longer than that, so I wouldn't stress about making your article shorter. Many of my most successful articles are around 1800 words, but I know some hubbers regularly write 3,000 to 4,000 with good results.

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      TessSchlesingerposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Okay. Thanks. That is exactly what I wanted to know. It isdifficult sometimes to explain some things in too few words.

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3. 97

   theraggededgeposted 4 years ago

   My longest article is almost 7k words and has been HubPro edited as well. If the topic takes a lot of words to cover, then so be it

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   TessSchlesingerposted 4 years ago

   Okay. Thanks. Do you know if there is a correlation between length and success?

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      theraggededgeposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I don't think there is really. Obviously, the longer the piece the more search terms will naturally occur. I write them as long as they need to be I rarely write one under 2k nowadays. Most tend to be 2-3k.

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         DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

         I think there is. The internet changes all of the time, and I think that 1250 word article that was suggested in the past is no longer enough to rank at the top.
         Most of my high ranking articles are over 2 k too. I just looked at my account page and had to go down to number nine to find a shorter article (1381 words) but it was published back in 2013. I think if you published such a short article now it would never reach the top.

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            TessSchlesingerposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            That is really strange. So why do hp recommend 750 to 1200 words? That is incredibly short.

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               DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

               Things change. I do not think the recommendations keep up.

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                  TessSchlesingerposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  Okay. Thanks. I find it difficult to write an article under 2000 words.

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                     DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

                     I wonder if that "rule" is not meant for newbies, not for writers such as yourself. I have read a lot of them that failed AP ad they seem to have trouble meeting the 750 word rule.
                     It certainly does not seem to be a problem for those who have something useful to say.

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                        TessSchlesingerposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                        That makes sense.

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5. 97

   eugbugposted 4 years ago

   Sometimes a short article can take off like wildfire and get lots of views. A math article with just over 1000 words I published in June last year had consistently 1500 views per day by September 2018 and for the whole of the month. Then the Google algorithm update at the end of September 2018 took the wind out of its sails and views dropped by 75%. It still gets about 1000 views per day (until the updates this month that is). Sometimes I think Google don't want popular articles to rank too high and reckon they want to cycle what articles appear at the top of SERPs to somehow maximise revenue from ads.

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      TessSchlesingerposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      You might be right about that. I have noticed that articles that are consistently top of the SERPS vary in the top 3.

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