The essentials for SEO include:
- A properly optimized website or blog
- Fast loading speed
- And tons of high-quality content
That’s the most essential factors you must have. And they don’t seem that hard to achieve.
But why so many people find it extremely hard to get their content on top of Google’s SERP?
The biggest culprit, for most of the part, is the content.
In modern SEO, content quality has to be high. In fact, if you’re pushing tons of low-quality articles without content curation, you’re inevitably going to lose in the long run.
How many published articles can you call top-quality?
And what are the factors you’re considering when evaluating your blog posts?
What exactly makes an article of high quality?
For most people, it’s the length. The higher the word count the better.
Which is completely incorrect.
First, you’ll need to understand what is the difference between ordinary and long-form content.
There is no cap on how lengthy or short your blog posts can be. But most marketers emphasize of blog posts that are longer than 1500 words.
So, if your articles are longer than 1500 words, they are long-form content.
There is no relation between the article’s length and its success. Well, it depends on how you measure success after all.
If you aim for getting high search engine traffic, content length does play an important role. But it is entirely possible to rank blog posts that are under 1500 word count.
Take my articles for example. I have got a blog post about CleanTalk anti-spam service. It is 800 or so words and still ranks in the top 3.
How?
I optimized it for readability and on-page SEO. That’s all you really need if you know your stuff. Meaning if you have knowledge about the topic you’re writing on.
Contrary to what is popular right now, not every long-length article can be classified as a quality article.
This trend has also made freelancing hard. Highly successful content writing freelancers know the value of words, so they charge per article.
But beginners and low-quality writers charge per word. And they will do absolutely anything to go beyond 1000 words per job.
They don’t write for readers, they do so for search engines which ultimately leads to silly articles with fillers and unnecessarily long sentences filled with pronouns and verbs.
The information inside the content has to be to the point and as much accurate as possible.
Doing thorough research will allow you to write an in-depth blog post. Without wasting words and using fillers you’ll be able to create a valuable piece of content.
So make sure you read a bunch of articles, watch lots of youtube videos and take time to write an article. Don’t rush as it ruins your creativity.
Your article should be the last article your readers have to read. If your article delivers exactly or more than what you promised in the headline, then there is no need to write a single more word.
Finish your article when you’ve written enough that its purpose gets fulfilled.
Take enough time before hitting the publish button. Analyze what you’ve written ad what you wanted to write.
Is the message clear?
Is the sales pitch persuasive enough?
Have you clearly demonstrated how the problem can be solved?
Ask these questions before publishing your articles.
What about you? Have you been writing long-form articles out of pressure?
Let us know in the comments.
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