Article Length

1. STAFF

   Larry Slawsonposted 4 years ago

   Hi everyone!  Hope everybody is staying safe during the pandemic! 
   
   Just a quick question I had...  what is the average length of your articles?  Do you find that longer articles tend to do better on here?  Or do shorter articles have the potential to do fine as well?  On average, most of my articles are 3,000+ words.  However, I do have a few that exceed the 5,000 word range.  While many of these longer ones do exceptionally well (in regard to traffic), the amount of time it takes to write a long article seems to outweigh the benefits.  For example, I have a few articles around 1,000 to 1,200 words that get a steady 20 to 30 views a day.  On the other hand, some of my lengthiest articles (in excess of 3,000 to 4,000 words) only bring in 5 to 6 views a day on average.  Its kind of disheartening to spend several days researching (verifying facts, organizing material, and researching keywords for SEO), only to have the article do terrible.  Almost all of my articles are moved to network sites and have scores in the 85 to 97 range (so they are meeting the standards of HubPages).  But in regard to long versus short, it almost seems logical to pursue the latter.
   
   With all that said, do you guys feel it is better to focus on short, high-quality articles?  Or do longer articles seem to be the best route?

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   1. 94

      OldRosesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Most of my articles are less than 1,000 words and unlike a lot of hubbers, my traffic has been steadily growing since January.  Rather than counting words, write as much as you need to to get your point across.  Don't compare yourself to other authors and don't compare articles.  Each one should stand on its own merits.

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2. 58

   MitaraNposted 4 years ago

   It's realised in the stellar quality of your content, and the traffic brought in.
   
   Sometimes expanding too much, causes spammy, duplication and if the article is not gripping, attention to the article lessens with boredom.
   
   Key is finding the right balance to the themed article.

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3. 90

   Jodahposted 4 years ago

   Hi Larry,
   Most of my articles are 1200 words or less. I wrote a couple of 4000 word articles years ago they did well for awhile but now get virtually no traffic. I find people are busy and get bored easily and usually won’t even both to read an article if it looks too long (unless it is the specific subject they are looking for at the time.)

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4. 95

   DrMark1961posted 4 years ago

   I realize all of us have different reasons for being here, and I think that in order to determine whether it is worthwhile or not you have to decide why you are writing. My advice: Longer articles tend to be more helpful to the reader. If it is too long, and most readers are only looking to read the fact they need at the moment, you can add a table of contents and hyperlinks so that the reader can find what they want immediately.
   For instance, I recently wrote an article on jaundice home care for dogs. It is not a commonly searched problem so there are never going to be a lot of readers. I did however try to make it as comprehensive as possible, even though it took a lot of time, and if a reader does not feel like he needs all that information he or she can use the TOC to find information fast.
   If you are writing mostly to earn, longer articles do tend to rank higher with Google since they have more keywords. The reason that the articles you mentioned seem to get less traffic is because there are fewer searches for the keywords you have selected. (Or they have poor ranking because of heavy competition. Your new BC article is an example. There are many other pages out there with the same info so even if it is good it will not have many page visits/day, at least for the forseeable future.)
   After seeing some of the results from people who try to put out an article a day, I would recommend that you write fewer articles but make them longer and more substansial.
   (I had shorter articles here from 2012 and 2013 but they performed poorly and I have deleted almost all of them.)

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