Best Hub Length

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   Benjimesterposted 13 years ago

   I've been experimenting with different hub lengths and was wondering if anyone has found what they consider to be the best length that a hub should be.  I'm experimenting with hubs that are between 1000-1200 words, whereas before I was publishing hubs that were between 600-750 words.  Has anyone noticed if there's a noticeable difference between longer articles and shorter in terms of traffic, indexing, or pagerank?  Thanks.

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      Dale Nelsonposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Good question. It has been debated a few times, but my opinion has changed over the last few months.
      
      My opinion is that persons searching for relief and answers to questions will generally be happy with 500 - 600 words if the solution is clearly available.
      
      Persons however reading general interest pieces and articles containing fact or historic reason, would absorb as much content as possible from one article.Therefore this is where aiming for lengthly content of 1200 - 2000 words would be spent.
      
      Product articles are better served in short succint lists of pros and cons and technical data with the focus being on product options once educated on the primary benefits of the product.

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         Benjimesterposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         I think I agree with you, though I would throw in the caveat that 500-600 word articles that are answering a question really would depend on the complexity of the question.

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         pisethzposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Even a 250 or 300 words is difficult for me as English is my second language, i don't see much impact from my article and aiming to reach 700 to 1000 words in the coming year. I hope to see better result in term of converting benefits.

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      Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      my hubs are reasonably long, but I break them up with photos etc to avoid long chunks of text.  I also try to use fresh text capsules regularly so people can quickly skim down to next portion if want. No-one has complained my hubs are too long.  One person said I might have gone a bit overboard with the number of links in my last hub (could cull a few)

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      David 470posted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I usually say 400-1000 is good. Try and make them at least 500. Sometimes 1000 words does not look like that much, but its just because text appears small.

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   CASE1WORKERposted 13 years ago

   the only one I have that earns a decent amount of money is quite long

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   katiem2posted 13 years ago

   Good question.  I think it is more about content.  You have got to provide the reader with good and interesting content.  They do like to learn something and your content earns their loyalty or not.  I must stick with the content answer.  Some things can be said in fewer words so a variance in length is do doubt a given.
   
   

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      Benjimesterposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      That's very true.  I agree that good content is very much more important than length and that often overly long content bores the reader.  However, I also wonder if there's a specific range of content that Google's algorithm seems to prefer to other lengths.  Most of my best performing hubs saw a nice boost in traffic once I added more sections and brought them up to around 1000 words each.  So I was wondering if that's a good practice right from the start.

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   paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

   The longer it is, the more secondary keywords there are.

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      Benjimesterposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      That's exactly what I was thinking, why I originally started the testing.  More long tailed keyword phrases.

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   Mikeydoesposted 13 years ago

   I personally skim to parts that look interesting, big walls of texts are too much reading for me in most cases when I'm searching. But I seem to be the only person who thinks that.

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      paradigmsearchposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      
      
      I agree.
      
      As a rule, I'm big on lots of small paragraphs.

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   Peggy Wposted 13 years ago

   Good content is naturally a necessity and long tracts of text are more interesting if broken up with photos, links and the like but I can't answer your question.  I'm also curious...so will be watching answers to your question.

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   Benjimesterposted 13 years ago

   Yeah, I really agree with long blocks of text being too overwhelming.  I'm thinking that having at least 1 new heading per 2 paragraphs is probably key.  In a 1000 word article, I generally have at least 5 different headings.  That probably breaks it up a lot nicer, both for the reader as well as for Google.  At least that's the hope. 
   
   I did a 3 month chunk of 600-750 word articles.  I'm going to write a month's worth of 1000-1200 word articles and see if there's a noticeable difference.  I'll let you know if there is Peggy.

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      Peggy Wposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks Benjimester!

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   july18posted 13 years ago

   Ah, the age old question: Does size really matter? Or is it more a matter of technique?

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      BRIAN SLATERposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      

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   Simone Smithposted 13 years ago

   At the first HubCamp, we recommended a word count between 250 and 1000, but the ultimate optimal count depends on the subject and content of the hub

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      wordscribe43posted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Wow, I don't even think I could describe my forearm in 250 words... 

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         Pandoras Boxposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         I'm blown away by that as well. 250 word hubs. *Recommended.*

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      saleheensblogposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      if it's not a poem or a how to type hub I don't think 250-400 words can create a quality hub. And those 300 words sales hubs are not quality hubs from my viewpoint.

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      Benjimesterposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      250-1000 words is a pretty huge margin though.  I mean in percentages, 1000 words is 400% larger than 250 words.  I can see how it would depend greatly on subject matter though.  I guess each hub is unique and needs to be as long as it takes. 
      
      I'm just a born numbers guy   I like to maximize my time, and if in general it makes no difference in traffic whether hubs are 600 words long or 1000 words, I'd just as soon try and maximize my time and write twice as many hubs.  But as an author who wants to give out quality information, it really all comes down to writing as much as it takes to fully cover the topic.

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    saleheensblogposted 13 years ago

    For me a quality hub contains 600-800 words, lots of small paragraph with a bold headline and at least a couple of relevant photos.

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    BRIAN SLATERposted 13 years ago

    hi- I would say it's about the content, but would add that hubs about 600-750 are ok for small sales type hubs- but for anything else i would look at 1450-1850 maybe even more.

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    deuxlaiposted 13 years ago

    Short hubs to build backlinks while long hubs for seo purposes. Just my 2 cents

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       ofmelancholyposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       is linking a hub to an other hub backlinking, or you link external sites on your hubs?

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          WryLiltposted 13 years agoin reply to this

          That is still considered backlinking but it is internal, not external. Internal backlinks do help as well so continue to do that.

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    WryLiltposted 13 years ago

    http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/50840
    
    That may help with the question of hub length.

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    akycrawlerposted 13 years ago

    Writing good content with longtail keywords sems to be the best bet from what I hace seen. Using many variations of this keyword sprinkled thru the text will certainly help.
    
    Adding additional capsules with subtopic headings for related search terms will help you rank for more then one keyword set if the content is good.

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