Someone was offering me advise on how to write better hubs. He said mine needed to be longer. When I first joined HP I was like a kid in a candy shop... Woah! So many great articles to read, you could get lost in this site. But there were SO many, I didn't want to spend all day on one. I like to get in, get the point and get out, but I like concise communication anyway, so maybe that's just my personality.
Sometimes I think we tend to ramble, I catch myself scrolling down to the bottom of someone's hub just to see how much more time I'm going to have to commit. In my opinion, it's not the length of the article, it's the substance. If you can say what you need to say in one paragraph, why use two?
What do you all think?
Hello, Beth.
Limiting the time you are willing to invest in a hub seems like a disservice to both you and the author. If you have to scroll down, the author has already lost your attention and the ultimate length is not important. In fact the length of a hub is neither a measure of its quality nor a sign of its shortcomings. The length is a matter of necessity.
Professional writers are often assigned a topic and a length and must deliver both. Sometimes they have to pare and sometimes they pad if they want to be paid.
On the other hand, literary lore claims Earnest Hemingway wrote a short story containing six words. {1} I doubt Hubpages would accept it today as a hub.
{1}http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/babyshoes.asp
Hi Beth, I think sometimes it is to do with keeping the search engines happy and that would be to do with the time the visitor spends on the page, which is said to be something that they factor in. But who knows, when Google often communicates its preferences in slightly mysterious ways.
I think some hubs depending on the topic need to be cut and dry, and to the point. I agree with you Beth - I will scroll down at times when hubs seem long to see "how long is this thing?" I find myself writing my hubs and then rewriting a few more times to ensure I am not rambling.
I agree with you Beth, I too find some articles longwinded.
There are some exceptional writers on hubpages and you can read through their articles and not even realize how long they were. The 1500 word count makes the writer's job that much more trickier to take an article like "snow shoes" and turn it into a attention grabbing hub that will take you to the end. I wish HP had a table of contents where you can just click on what you want to know and it will take you right to the spot. wikipedia has it so does Wikinut--it's a great feature.
I like short articles that get to the point. I like to find the info I need quickly.
There's some good research out there now that 'long form content' (i.e. above 1,500 words) does better on Google and readers find it more engaging. You can read more about it here:
http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/20/t … nversions/
Hope this helps,
Paul.
by carol stanley 11 years ago
Do you think it is a good idea to turn in articles less than 500 words?I have read some really short hubs lately that must have gone up really fast. Do you think this is a bad idea? Does it affect the views?
by Brian Leekley 10 years ago
In their teachings on writing stellar hubs, the HubPages staff has sometimes said that an ideal hub is 1,500 words long and has sometimes said that an ideal hub is 1,150 words long. Numerous hubs by hubbers on hubbing have recommended that a hub should be at least circa 400 to 500 words long, at...
by Melanie Palen 5 months ago
Is there some number where large word length starts to hurt articles in search?I'm writing an article and it's quite lengthy already. I'm not running on and on, I just want to cover everything.Is there some number that is just too much and starts to negatively impact SERPs?
by Susan Ng-Yu 14 years ago
I was just wondering, if you were doing research, would you prefer reading long articles or short articles? I tend to like short, to-the-point articles better. When I open an article and it's really long, I tend to just skim over the beginning and end looking for a summary or recap. Or...
by Sallie B Middlebrook PhD 11 years ago
What was the length of the last Hub you read? Short, medium, or long?With shorter being 500 or fewer words; medium, 500-plus, and long, 1,000-plus words. It is always interesting and useful to find out more about fellow Hubbers' reading habits.
by Peeples 11 years ago
When googling something are you looking for short easy to read or long very explained answers?I'm confused. We are encouraged to write very long hubs. However I have always been the one when googling something to look for the shortest easiest (but of course understandable) answer. To me google is...
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