SEO optimization is essential for garnering traffic to your website. While there are different ways to improve SEO performance, the predominant factors involve the keywords and phrases that you use in your posts. Do shorter blog posts hurt your site’s SEO?
Shorter blog posts can occasionally hurt your site’s SEO, but the length of your blog post is not entirely determinant of the success of your SEO optimization. High-quality content that contains sufficient keywords and compliance with other SEO strategies leads to good SEO on your site.
Continue reading to learn more about whether short blog posts hurt your site’s SEO. With keywords and phrases playing an important role in SEO strategy, you might be convinced that, since a shorter blog post cannot use as many keywords, it will not perform well against larger blog posts on similar topics. There are other things to consider than keywords alone.
Do Shorter Blog Posts Hurt Your Site’s SEO?
Shorter blog posts can hurt your site’s SEO if they are not well-constructed. The most important thing to note is that a blog post can be short while containing important information. Improving your site’s SEO is more closely built from the quality of your blog posts rather than the quantity.
Years ago, bloggers and website managers realized that providing more shorter blogs packed with keywords would rank a website better than another with fewer longer blogs filled with fluff.
Since then, search engines have implemented different SEO features that require websites to do a bit more work to land their articles at the top of a page.
Now, the length of your blog posts is only a fraction of the reasons why your website may or may not be getting as much traffic as you want. Still, a blog’s length can have positive and negative effects.
How Does A Blog Post’s Length Affect Your Site’s SEO?
The basic idea that shorter blog posts can hurt your site’s SEO stems from a shorter blog lacking in information.
If you write a shorter blog – particularly on a popular topic – and it is competing with well-written longer blogs, you might run into trouble.
Even if your blog contains valuable information, longer blogs can contain more. The only thing you are doing wrong is not utilizing the space of opportunity that is adding information.
Those well-versed in SEO optimization know how to write long blogs that hit several points. These “if, then” scenarios can be tricky, because you may notice that your shorter blog has more in-depth information than a larger blog with fluff.
As you will learn shortly, there are other reasons a longer blog may or may not surpass your website’s progress.
All in all, many longer blog posts score higher on search engine pages because they are well-written to the extent that they contain loads of information and very few areas of fluff.
In most cases, a longer blog packed with keywords and information will beat out a shorter blog with related information but fewer words about the subject.
Other Factors That Affect Your Site’s SEO
Countless factors can help or hurt your SEO ranking. From user experience to how your website is set up, it takes immense knowledge of the industry to understand how to improve your site’s SEO. However, there are a few considerations that play a larger role in your progress.
Indeed, many articles that rank high on a search engine do so because they are long and contain a large number of keywords and phrases, but it is not uncommon for small blogs to boost a website’s traffic. Other factors in play include:
- SEO optimization
- The current authority of your website
- The quality of the content
Below, you will learn more about how you can continue writing shorter blogs while maintaining or improving the success of traffic to your website and your site’s SEO.
SEO Strategy
SEO encapsulates an immense amount of rules, but at least covering the basics will help you improve your site’s SEO. Your blog posts must contain keywords and keyword variations to show the search engine what your writing is about.
When you can utilize different words that rank high in the topic on the search engine, you will improve your website traffic.
You must also consider the popularity of the topic you are writing about. If several big-name websites have posted blogs about the same topic, you will not be able to rank first on the page immediately after posting your blog.
Website Authority
As mentioned, popular websites already have the traffic they want.
Regardless of the length of a blog post, a well-known website is typically going to rank high and easily on a search engine because that site has a track record of producing good content.
It can afford to miss on a couple of blog posts now and then because people already know it has valuable information elsewhere.
In this case, you should aim to focus on adding useful information to a long blog. Even a shorter blog that has excellent information may not do well against websites that essentially have a monopoly over a search engine.
Shorter blogs may not be as useful as you would hope in this circumstance.
Content Quality
As you have read several times already, the quality of the content produced in a blog is essential to improving your site’s SEO.
A longer blog post that contains little value and instead is long for the sake of appearing sophisticated is not going to do well in SEO rankings. A shorter blog that covers the topic efficiently and without fluff will rank better than the former blog post.
At the same time, a shorter blog post that contains good information but certainly has room to add more will not hold up against longer, higher-quality posts. Y
ou should not publish a shorter blog post simply because you think it fits well with your website. If there is vital information that should be discussed, you should be the person adding that information.
Keys To Boosting Your Site’s SEO Through Shorter Blog Posts
You can have shorter blog posts that progress and maintain your site’s SEO. However, different topics require various types of research. You cannot rely on keeping the same format for each blog post and expect it to do as well as your other posts.
You must recognize which websites discussing similar matters are ranking high on the search engine. Are they posted by a notable company?
Are they long and do not seem to miss any subtopics of the topic discussed? From what you can observe, why are the top three posts from the search ranked as high as they are?
Keys to improving the SEO ranking of a shorter blog post include:
- SEO optimization
- Quality content
- Comments section
Of course, you must follow SEO optimization guidelines like the ones discussed above to have a blog post rank well and improve your site’s SEO.
Additionally, you must produce high-quality content, ensuring that, although your post is short, it contains the vital information necessary to the topic.
One way that many people do not realize a short blog post can be improved is by adding a comment section for readers. In a way, this can lengthen your blog post because it opens discussion amongst yourself and other readers, allowing more information on the topic to be shared. When a search engine recognizes this, it can rank your post better.
Takeaway
Shorter blog posts hurt your site’s SEO if they are not well-constructed. So, too, can poorly written longer blog posts. The defining factor in how your blog post affects your site’s SEO relies on the quality of your content and your competition. You can write shorter blog posts and find success in SEO rankings.
