Long Articles or Short Articles For Driving Traffic?

How do you know if an article you’ve written and posted to your website is too long, or worse, too short?

I’m the first to admit that I write articles on established websites outside the guidelines I preach to others. While I still adhere to the rule of posting anywhere from 20 – 30 articles of between 250 – 350 words each for a new site I’m submitting to the Google spiders, when it comes to established websites like this one… I can get long winded.

I often begin writing and get on a roll, which is far better than having writers block which I sometimes encounter. The trouble is that when I’m done I often see that I could actually make two or three articles from the one I’ve written. Seldom do I break them apart, though. I do my best to be my own critic and would rather edit my article than have a visitor clicking a link in order to get additional information – which, by the way, goes against the grain of most seasoned webmasters’ advice.

As I said, this is only in reference to websites I have that are well established and rank in Google SERPs.

For new websites… where is the cutoff point?

If your article is too long and you don’t have established readership you may lose them after a few paragraphs. Especially when they see there is a full page left to read. Make it too short and they may feel you aren’t really telling them anything and are not interested in returning.

Though I try to get to the point as quickly as I can, I often think of some other important aspect of the subject I am writing about. That gets me in trouble. The worst thing I can do is bore people (is that a yawn out there?)

OK. So, in an effort to get to the point of this article, when you write keep these pointers in mind:

Your article should…

1. Not waste a lot of YOUR time. You should be able to write an article in about 15 minutes, having a lead-in paragraph or two, the main point of the article, and a closing paragraph or two.
2. Not cause YOU to become bored. If you’ve reached the point where you are having trouble thinking up another valid line – think about a closing paragraph.
3. Possibly include a teaser of information that hints you’ll be posting something even more relevant, or something interesting you’ve discovered on the Internet. This may bring back visitors at a later date.
4. (P.S. Did I mention I found a way to turn lead into gold?)

Understand that no matter how well you’ve written an article it is likely that visitors may only skim over it, picking out pertinent information they feel is relevant. Unless it is step by step instructions of some kind, most will never realize how great a writer you truly are. ;-)

My advice in closing? Write as much as you feel comfortable with. Longer is better than shorter when it comes to feeding the search engine spiders. Make the article original in content and reread what you’ve written the following week. This will often give you a new perspective of how well you’ve written it.