Can you have too many words in a hub?

1. 67

   easyspeakposted 15 years ago

   I know more the words the better...but can you have too many words in a hub?

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      Sally's Troveposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      The important question is, "Do the numbers of words I use convey my meaning?"
      
      600 to 1,000 words are a good goal to set. But all of those words need to make your point.
      
      Do you have something of value to say? If you do, you can convey it in those numbers.  If you have nothing original to offer, then it doesn't matter whether you publish 100 or 1,000 words.
      
      If you feel you have too many words, then maybe you need to think about breaking up your ideas into a number of Hubs.
      
      Hope that helps.

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   2. 56

      yenajeonposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Yes. Personally, I like to read through lots of different hubs so when I see a very, very long block of over 1000 words of text, its intimidating so I usually move on!

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2. 0

   Website Examinerposted 15 years ago

   They say about 400-800 words is the normal range, so if you have say 1,600 words you will typically be better off splitting them into two and then linking them together. The longer the hubs, the more important with images and other enhancements to keep your readers interested. Hopefully this helps.

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      Sally's Troveposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      You are right about the longer the Hubs, the more important images and other enhancements to keep the reader interested. It's a balancing act.

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      WriteAngledposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      When I read something for information, I like to get full details on the subject in question. Unless it is a poem, humorous interlude, short recipe, quick definition of a concept or very superficial summary with exhaustive links and references to proper information, an article of 400-600 words or so leaves me feeling cheated and dissatisfied and I am unlikely to read anything else by that author in future. 
      
      I know that I am not typical of the average Internet reader. I was brought up in an era where information providers catered to the literate rather than to the illiterate. Unfortunately, the latter now seem to be in the majority and writers everywhere prostitute themselves to cater to such an audience.

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         Website Examinerposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         You are making some good points, and some of the most succesful hubbers do recommend longer hubs than what I quoted. The original poster may want to research the issue further, but I still believe that there is an upper limit before a hub gets too long.

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      2. 68

         Mishaposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         Somehow I always thought that talented writers use less words to get their message across. I know this is not typical for an Internet writer though

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            WriteAngledposted 15 years agoin reply to this

            Hi Misha,
            
            Conciseness is a virtue, I agree. I got by successfully with a PhD thesis of 120 pages, when contemporaries in the same field were producing well over 200 pages. However, limited word total at the expense of fullness of information is wrong.
            
            My problem is that people seem to think 500 words or should be sufficient to treat a complex or large-scale topic. For example, another (awful) writing site I know suggests its raters should penalise articles that go over 400-500 words. However, it then goes on to suggest article titles such as "Introduction to the Solar System". Hmmm, that leaves only 50 words or so per planet, with no extra left to cover other phenomena.

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            1. 68

               Mishaposted 15 years agoin reply to this

               LOL You sounded so righteous I could not resist to pull a little fun at you
               
               And yeah, it makes sense of course to use as many words you need to cover the subject - unless you are writing something designed to make money, as Richard perfectly explained

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               1. 87

                  Sufidreamerposted 15 years agoin reply to this

                  That is the beauty of Hubpages - there is room for many approaches, from the wonderful conciseness of Richard and Nelle, to the longer tales from CJStone and CindyVine.
                  
                  I tend to go for 1000 - 1500 words because that is ideal for 'portfolio projects,' although it is not set in stone.
                  
                  Like WriteAngled, I prefer to read longer Hubs, but that is purely a personal preference.

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               2. 85

                  WriteAngledposted 15 years agoin reply to this

                  I'm an intellectual snob and proud of it!

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            2. 99

               Sally's Troveposted 15 years agoin reply to this

               I write for a site that imposes wordcount minimums and maximums to write something meaningful about the titles they give you.
               
               First, the titles they give you are often faulty, as they are based on keyword searches with no context behind them. So, "How to paint walls" could mean anything from painting murals to painting bedrooms to painting 500,000 square feet of industrial space.
               
               As a writer, you are in the not so enviable position of teasing out the context when you write for sites like these.
               
               "Introduction to the Solar System" does not need to explain anything about the planets that orbit our sun.  Instead, the focus in 500 words could be on the history of how we came to understand our solar system (like, once we thought the world was flat).
               
               Use your critical thinking skills to tease out these sometimes ridiculous requirements from writing sites and then decide if you want to work there for slave wages or do something more productive with your time. (I share that decision making process with you.)

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            livewithrichardposted 15 years agoin reply to this

            Plus, it depends on the type of writing you are doing.  If you're doing product reviews or trying to optimize for Adsense then you don't want to "give away the farm," so to speak.  You wan to give just enough information for the reader to click through your affiliate link, or an Adsense link to leave your hub.
            
            For other types of writing not specifically targeted to be commercial, then write as much as it takes to make your point or tell your story.

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            1. 99

               Sally's Troveposted 15 years agoin reply to this

               This is valuable advice. You need to structure your Hub to achieve your purpose.

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            Ghost32posted 15 years agoin reply to this

            So much for War and Peace!

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               lyricsingrayposted 15 years agoin reply to this

               

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                  Denno66posted 15 years agoin reply to this

                  Hey there!

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            2. 71

               earnestshubposted 15 years agoin reply to this

               That redhead must be treating you well Ghost!

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   3. 76

      IntimatEvolutionposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah, that's where I like to leave things.  Great advice.

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3. 80

   Rafiniposted 15 years ago

   oooohhhh  I need to remember this.  When I start writing I don't pay attention to how many words I use.  Thanks for the info!

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4. 72

   Cagsilposted 15 years ago

   Good size for hubs is between 800-1200 words. I personally have several that are well over that amount.
   
   Several of my hubs break 2000-3000 words. I've even a couple of hubs over 4000 words.

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   1. 0

      lyricsingrayposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      I typically am like you Cagsil though I should look at editing more than 1 or 2 times in each hub, I don't want to lose the readers attention

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   2. 67

      easyspeakposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      cagsil, do you hubs over 2000 fair better or worse in the search engines?

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      1. 72

         Cagsilposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         Don't actually know. Haven't bothered to check.
         
         However, I do have pretty good traffic to all my hubs. I just recently broke 20,000 views, without being back linking to anywhere. I know a couple people have shared my writing with others.
         
         I do get a lot of traffic from Google and Yahoo search.

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5. 78

   Shadesbreathposted 15 years ago

   It depends on what you have to say, and how well you say it.  Too short will get its score dinged by HP.  The rest is entirely dependent upon style and content.

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6. 57

   Sab Ohposted 15 years ago

   I often worry about having too many words in my hubs

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7. 99

   Sally's Troveposted 15 years ago

   If you look at numbers of words as they are related to marketing, including meeting some kind of standard for what a Hub ought to be, that's one thing. If you look at the numbers in terms of getting your meaning across, that's another.
   
   As I said, it's a balancing act. Write an original Hub to give the reader valuable information, and do it according to HP's and Google's standards.  That's pretty much it.

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8. 80

   thisisoliposted 15 years ago

   I tend to aim for between 1000 & 2000, but if it becomes too hard to write on one particular subject for more than 500 I leave it at that.

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9. 76

   Edweirdoposted 15 years ago

   A couple of weeks ago I wrote a hub of travel tips that ended up at over 2,400 words! I thought that I should probably break it up into 2 hubs, but it's a "Top 10 List" sort of hub so I decided against splitting it.
   
   Then last week I got nominated for a HubNugget for that hub, and the traffic for it has skyrocketed over the past week!
   
   I think if I'd split it up it would not have made the HubNugget cut and would just be sitting there.
   
   I did split another travel hub of mine into two parts, and the first part gets all the traffic, so I probably should have kept that as one hub, too...
   
   So in all I'd say if it takes more than 2,000 words to say what you want to say, then so be it!

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10. 0

    Denno66posted 15 years ago

    I go for the 'less is more' route, myself.

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       Sab Ohposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       A fine route it is!

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11. 61

    Alotaposted 15 years ago

    I have read some great Hubs already, I am no expert (understatement) but I think that I enjoy the shorter more interesting hubs the best....lyrics, tantrum, prettydarkhorse, tatto Guy, Hokey, justine76, too many to mention, pics are also great, I think interesting but short for me.

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12. 67

    darksideposted 15 years ago

    I believe Sally's Trove summed it up well with "The important question is, "Do the numbers of words I use convey my meaning?""

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13. 67

    awareposted 15 years ago

    for me yes to long i aint reading the whole thing

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    1. 57

       Sab Ohposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Feel free to read mine then. It won't take a minute!

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14. 53

    DanPowersposted 15 years ago

    I think 1500 words is the limit - more than that and it's worth using the text for 2+ hubs. 1500+ words is boring to read online as well, even if the subject is interesting.

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15. 58

    codehubposted 15 years ago

    I think its best to be concise, and maybe spread a big topic over several hubs or pages

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    gm0nk3yposted 15 years ago

    I personally like to keep words around 500-700. Speaking myself, if I see an article that is too long, I might just hit the back button or skim through the whole article.

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17. 0

    Nelle Hoxieposted 15 years ago

    The length of a hub does seem to be important. At this point I have about 500 hubs, but all of them are less than 1 year old -many quite a bit less. Therefore I don't think this is a statistically valid sample yet. And a lot of my hubs are seasonal, which affects trend analysis.
    
    I have designed and run a mathematical model looking at length of hub, keyword placement and density, traffic, and estimated sales. (Sometimes it's hard to know what hub to attribute a sale too.) Any simulation model has it's faults but I try to get the clearest possible picture, so I don't waste my efforts.
    
    At this point the longer product hubs are more stable in attracting google traffic AND Yahoo and Bing. But it also appears that shorter hubs might actually generate more sales per 1,000 visits.
    
    So I don't think there is a clear answer to which is better.
    
    I'm reading psychology studies now about how the number of choices you give a person affects their ability to choose.

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       WriteAngledposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       I must admit that I have walked out of shops without buying because I couldn't cope with the huge number of products to choose between.

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    thisisoliposted 15 years ago

    I am actually pretty intrigued as to if you can prove your results with Hubs that match up to them Nelle, you should write a Hub when you have done a few and tell us if it goes to plan, without revealing your trade secrets of course

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19. 0

    Nelle Hoxieposted 15 years ago

    I don't know if statistcal modeling is provable and it will take years of data points with a lot more hubs. I've got a lot more playing around to do.
    
    I'm also using my other websites and webpages as well. So it's not just Hubs included in the model.
    
    There's this balance of what it takes to attract traffic on a consistent basis and what it takes to make a sale that fascinates me.

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20. 0

    Nelle Hoxieposted 15 years ago

    WriteAngled that's it exactly. It's also the way the store is arranged and how they present the products to you. And we have to think the same way when we design hubs.

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21. 56

    flread45posted 15 years ago

    My hubs with the most words bring more traffic..

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22. 61

    Jumpnessposted 15 years ago

    I am very straight forward and as simple as possible. I like as little words as possible. I hate when things are repeated, but using different words. My blogs are always short and to the point.

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       Cagsilposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Blog are not Hubs. There are differences between Blogs and Hubs.
       
       Creating Hubs that are like blogs, will get you penalized and won't do well.
       
       Just a thought.
       
       
       
       Edit: I would suggest that you go the Extreme Hub Makeover forum and post your 4 links. You could benefit from advice. Just looking at your Hubs....you surely could use it.
       
       Just trying to be helpful.
       
       http://hubpages.com/forum/23
       
       Above is the link to that forum.

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23. 85

    WriteAngledposted 15 years ago

    I think it depends why someone picks up on a hub.
    
    Suppose I'm thinking of buying a green widget. A hub that says, "look, here are the best three green widgets of all" is going to be helpful to me if I feel I can trust the author's judgement.
    
    A hub that shows me one or two each of the lowest priced, medium priced and highest priced green widgets and explains what might be gained by going for higher priced ones is also going to be helpful.
    
    A hub that shows me every green widget available is going to confuse me.
    
    If the first two hubs also say, "hey, you might be interested in this link to a similar hub on purple widgets", then I might be in total heaven if I had not realised that purple ones are available, but would actually prefer a purple one over a green one.
    
    On the other, if I'm looking for information about a topic rather than a product, I appreciate a nice long hub that treats the topic in some depth. Were I free to do so, I might even click on Adsense links that caught my eye while taking brief breaks from the text. However, I know I'm in the minority in liking meaty articles! I also love big fat books of 500-1000 pages

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