SEO Content Length: Longer Content Gains Higher Search Ranks

Long form content, which tends to be more comprehensive on a given topic, has a higher likelihood of providing the answers that users are searching for, without forcing them to perform a mini research project every time a piece of short content fallsâ¦ wellâ¦ short.
They'll always be space for "Top 7 Ways to..."-type posts. But insanely long list posts will forever stand out based on the volume factor. There's something inherently more shareable (and linkable) about a list of 100 items than a list of 10.
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Moral of the story:
Anyone can write a piece of bite-sized content in a short period of time with minimal experience.
They wouldnât. No matter how Goldfish-like their attention spanâbecause they want the best content available.
Letâs back up for a second.
Itâs clear that longer content tends to be more useful, more impressive, and more comprehensive than short content, causing it to earn more backlinks.
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But where do the backlinks come from?
Quality backlinksÂ are generated when Link Creatorsâpeople in your industry that have the ability to link to your contentâdeem your content (or a part of it) to be valuable to their audience, and link to it.
The key word there is âvalue.â Short, limited content often simply fails to provide enough value to entice link creators.
Just as you create content that adds value and helps your audience, link creators want to link to content that offers their audience a reinforcement of their ideas, comprehensive knowledge, or supplemental information.
Itâs in a link creatorâs best interest to link to the best, most comprehensive piece of content on a given topic.
300 words just wonât cut it.
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Longer Content Gets More Social Shares
And the numbers are pretty staggering.
Neil Patel of Quicksprout ran a study on how many social shares he earned with content longer than 1,500 words vs. content shorter than 1,500 words.
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He found that his longer posts received an average of 68.1% more engagement on Twitter and 22.6% more on Facebook.
The correlation between social shares and content length is very similar to that between content length and backlinks.
This suggests that the average social media user values the same things as link creators:
They want to consume and share content that is both useful and comprehensive.
Both of those factors tend to involve a higher word count.
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Google's RankBrain Rewards Long Form Content
Apart from backlinks and social shares, there are a variety of ways to understand why Google likes to reward long form content with good search positioning.
Based on Googleâs RankBrain algorithmâa machine learning algorithm used to sort search results and better understand search queriesâwe can determine some notable ways in which long form content has an advantage over shorter content.
RankBrain is Googleâs third most important ranking factor, so it has a massive impact on many aspects of search.
While RankBrainâs primary function is using Artificial Intelligence to help Google understand what people mean when they type in a particular search query, Google also uses it to measure an extremely important factor:
In other words, Google doesnât just interpret queries and send people to a relevant SERP (search engine results page), it also determines whether or not the pageâs users find hold content that satisfies them when they click on it.
Google uses a variety of metrics to analyze this, and they all just so happen to correlate with content length.
Letâs take a look.
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Dwell Time
Dwell time is a measure of how much time users spend on your site.
Itâs an important metric because it tells Google that your website (or a particular page on it) is worth spending time onâmeaning itâs providing users with what they were searching for.
A short dwell time tells Google your page was either irrelevant to the search query or just plain bad.
Content with a quality title tag and description tag will often have a better CTR than un-optimized content.
Ok, but what does content length have to do with this?
As we discussed earlier on, users react more favorably to impressive, original content that exudes utility and stops them from ever needing to seek out a similar resource.
Title tags and description tags appear directly on SERPs, and they are meant to be representative of whatâs inside the page while enticing people to click on the search result.
Therefore:
Having longer contentâand emphasizing the utility, comprehensiveness and value of that content in the pageâs title tags and description tagsâwill lead to higher CTR, better positioning in search rankings, and more eyes on your content. Â
And more eyes on your great long form content means more shares, backlinks and instances of high dwell time.
See? Itâs all connected!
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The Opportunity for Content Marketers
While internet users (and Google), have made it abundantly clear that they prefer long form content, the Content Marketing world seems to be lagging painfully behind.
Only 18 percent of companiesâ blog posts are 750 words or more. Not even close to the average length of content on the first page of Google.
So whatâs the problem?
Perhaps itâs related to the fact that 60% of content marketers say their biggest marketing challenge is creating engaging content.
That sounds like a pretty phenomenal opportunity for content marketers who choose to capitalize on what theyâve learned in this post (hint hint):
Google awards long form content based on the value it provides to users.
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The Catch: Your Content Actually Has to be Good
As weâve discussed, content length is part of the solution, not all of it.
Content length enables many of the factors that help to define quality content in the eyes of users and search engines:
Utility and value
Comprehensiveness
High dwell time
Compelling title and description tags
By harnessing these essential elements of quality content, and including them in a long form piece, content marketers can increase social shares, earn more backlinks and improve their overall search rankings.
Ultimately, average consumers of content will only have the attention span of a goldfish if they keep being exposed to the short, limited content that theyâre used to.
Wouldnât anyone?
If you provide them with something differentâsomething that answers their questions, solves their problems, and makes them feel compelled to link and shareâyouâll be reaping countless rewards in the form of user engagement, better search rankings, and brand visibility.
âPeople have the average attention span of a goldfish, about 9 seconds.â
Sounds like a bunch of lazy content writers coming up with excuses. Instead of pandering to short attention spans, why not create more actionable, comprehensive content that gets people to pay attention?
Long-form content gets higher rankings.
The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top ten results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The higher up you go on the search listings page, the more content each web page has.
The first Google result typically has 2,416 words.
more engaging
7:00
Posts that take about seven minutes to read are best for engaging readers.
The 10th Google result has 2,032 words.
This shows that Google prefers content rich sites.
more engaging
7:00
Posts that take about seven minutes to read are best for engaging readers.
more leads
9x
Long form blog posts generate nine times more leads than short form blog posts.
more backlinks
Direct correlation between the length of the content and the number of people who linked to it.
As you already know, the more links a web page has, the higher it will typically rank on search engines.
more shares
68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more Facebook likes.
When you take into account that search engines take social signals into account when ranking sites, it reinforces why web pages with lengthier content rank higher.
more leads
9x
Long form blog posts generate nine times more leads than short form blog posts.
more backlinks
Direct correlation between the length of the content and the number of people who linked to it.
As you already know, the more links a web page has, the higher it will typically rank on search engines.
more shares
68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more Facebook likes.
When you take into account that search engines take social signals into account when ranking sites, it reinforces why web pages with lengthier content rank higher.