Does Word Count Really Matter Or Are Other Writing Trends More Important For Success?

For the most part, size really doesn’t matter

Since Google’s John Mueller has clarified that word count isn’t a ranking factor, the best rule to follow about story length is to write until you’re done, no more, no less. Don’t aim for a particular number, or when writing on Medium, a particular number of minutes. Just make sure you cover your topic fully, whether that takes 500 words of 5000.

As writers, we sometimes get a bit obsessed with rules. You’ll hear people say things like “Write what you know,” or “Show don’t tell” as if these things have been passed down by an oracle. Yet rules change and no rule applies 100 percent of the time.

One of the other rules we hear, especially now, is that length is crucial for articles to be successful. We see this emphasis even on Medium with the shift from focusing on fans to focusing on read times for calculating earnings. Common questions you’ll see in content related forums are things like, “How short is too short?” and “How many words minimum should an article be?”

In SEO related stories, you’ll also see a discussion of content length and there’s a myth that there is an absolute word count that Google considers it’s “sweet spot,” this being about 2500 words per post. Regardless, this number has been bandied around and many writers shoot for this number as a minimum length for their stories.

How Much Does Word Count Matter in 2020?

Many writers continue to believe that an article’s performance is largely determined by word count. To determine the degree to which this is the case, internet marketing guru Neil Patel examined the ideal word count for different industries and determined it could be anywhere from 300 to 2700 words depending on the type of post.

Yikes. So what does that mean for those of us trying to produce content that will gain a good following?

After reading Patel’s comment above, it may feel like there is no one answer for the ideal length for a story. That’s because there isn’t. There is no magic word count to try to reach when it comes to the length of your posts. Yet, at the same time, longer blog posts do perform better than short ones in terms of search results and Google rankings. In fact, there are correlation studies that show that there is a positive association between page length and Google rank. So, what’s the deal?

Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst for Google, John Mueller, says not to bother trying to analyze search results to determine what word count Google prefers for different areas and types of writing. He has gone so far as to debunk the myth that word count matters in 2020, saying unequivocally that word count is not a ranking factor for Google.

Yet, he didn’t say that word count doesn’t affect other ranking factors. The higher the word count, the greater the chance to comply with the reader’s intent and the larger the opportunity to generate backlinks, both of which are ranking factors. Longer posts also are more likely to be perceived as more solid because of the breadth and depth of information included about a topic. This helps to establish authority, something readers look for when searching for information.

The Factors That Help Your Content Succeed

While Mueller has said that just trying to reach a certain length in order to match the word count of content found on top ranking sites won’t help your content’s performance, he has also said that there is an overlooked nuance to word count. This has to do with relevance.

Lengthy posts that are written in an attempt to reach some arbitrary word count tend to drift off topic. Sometimes this is due to trying to be comprehensive by including material other articles don’t or simply trying to reach a certain word count that seems optimal. Whatever the reason, the content becomes about something other than the topic intended. This leads people to stop reading, as the article no longer fulfills their needs or the expectations they had when they chose the article.

In regards to this, Mueller says it’s important to stay relevant and to understand what readers want when reading an article on the topic you are writing about and what they hope to gain based on your title. If you are going to try to analyze search results to help you write an article that performs better then focus on what readers mean when they type a search term. Google refers to this as need beneath or the latent question. These phrases refer to the hidden meaning of the search term a reader types.

For example, if you type in the phrase web traffic the results will be largely stories about ways to generate traffic to a site. From Google’s point of view, when you type that phrase, you might as well be asking, “How do I increase traffic to my website?”

In other words, if you want to write a story on the topic of web traffic, writing about how it’s defined is not likely to be of interest to many people. Discussing the three top ways to gain the most traffic to posts about psychology would. Mueller says this is the kind of thing that is more important than overall word count.

The goal is to write with an eye towards answering the reader’s question or intent. If your topic calls for more information you should provide it, writing a longer post. If it doesn’t call for a lot of information, then provide just what is called for and don’t add fluff in an effort to lengthen it to a particular number of words.

Take Away

The length of a post in and of itself doesn’t impact it’s effectiveness. When considering word count, it is the case overall, that stories that are too short or too long can affect the number of readers it attracts and that posts ranking. Yet other factors are just as, if not even more important than word count.

Remember, if your post isn’t useful to your reader in some way, then your readers will likely turn to other articles for what they are looking for. With Google’s new focus on what is communicated in a story over length, making sure your article is substantive is also important for ranking.

Don’t shortchange your topic but also don’t use more words than is necessary to fully cover the subject. If you say what needs to be said, no more, no less, you’ll find you don’t have to focus on word count. Your story will automatically be the right length, no matter what the word count is. And that won’t just please search engines. It will please your readers.

Natalie Frank has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and often writes about how to create a more satisfying and successful writing life. She is an editor for The Partnered Pen & One Table, One World and is Editor in Chief for Promposity & Mental Gecko, both of which she created. She is also the Managing Editor for Novellas and Serials at LVP Publications.

You can find links to my other work on Medium and follow me here. Thanks for reading and for supporting Mental Gecko!