Forum Moderators: not2easy
The more I think about it, the more I decide to ignore this advice. Obviously, I don’t ignore as a matter of principle. The text I wrote above fits the “ideal” model.
Why do I disagree?
Simple. I find that churning out short pages with chunked text and bullet points brings in traffic, but that traffic is generally “one-off” traffic with high bounce. The exception is when I have the best photo on the web for a topic that’s in the news or some such thing that lends itself to a short yet definitive article.
Long articles, however, are generally more successful by every measure I care about. I’m talking about information sites that aren’t necessarily looking to sell anything, so what interests me is (neologism alert) R4C
Time and again, I find an article that articles that elicit an R4C ;-) response are long, littered with h2 tags, chunked, of course, but often with long sections of unchunked text, and blather on far beyond what would be considered acceptable according to commonly mentioned guidlines for writing on the web.
Why does this work?
Long articles
How about Your Experience?
What’s your experience? Does it matter who your audience is? For you, what’s the long and the short of writing for the web?
I often find solutions to technical problems through searches. Where I find the ultimate solution is pretty even between software package official sites, message boards, and blogs.
I know right off that if it's a short article, it's likely not my solution.
If it's nicely-formatted, so much the better, but I'm willing to dig through dense, unformatted text if I have to.
One thing that particularly annoys me are the lazy bloggers that write something that is just plain WRONG, then, when it's pointed-out in a comment, say "thanks, I didn't realize that", and then DON'T BOTHER TO UPDATE THE ARTICLE.
I think the use of H2, bold and bullet points are great -- they help readers zoom in on the content that's relevant for them. Similarly, one document rather than many short ones is easier to skim.
What bugs me is length for its own sake. I have a hard time writing short, punchy prose. But I work on it because it's what I like to read, and I think it's what brings people back.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein
- write one definitive 3000-word article
- write ten short, snappy 300-word article, none of which is definitive or the best on the subject.
In my experience the short articles are good for sales copy and so forth, but bad for informational articles. It's good for traffic, but bad for building loyalty. It's good for getting new visitors, but bad at keeping them.
I see many "meta bloggers" (people who blog about blogging), who advise frequent publishing, but then when I read their blogs, they are filled with "me too" posts, short posts that add little to the conversation, and so forth. I also know someone who was trying to write snappy, lively, but long and definitive articles. She was advised by an outside SEO consultant to keep pages shorter (not because there was fluff, but just did not fit the consultant's ideas about page length, as in "Don't make people scroll too much" irrespective of topic).
I just think this is terrible advice: pages should be as long as they need to be in order to make it an excellent resource on the subject, and not a word longer. The first bolded part of that sentence is determined by the topic. The second bolded part is determined by editing and good writing (when asked if he had done many rewrites of Old Man and the Sea, Hemmingway said "I challenge you to find a single extra word in that book", or so I've heard).
>>If it's nicely-formatted, so much the better, but I'm willing to dig through dense, unformatted text if I have to.
>>What bugs me is length for its own sake
It should definitely be well-written and nicely formatted no matter what the length. That's a basic principle whether in print or on the web. I'm simply saying that I don't want to let format dictate content. I was thinking that when it comes down to it, I find visitors are really pleased that I took the time to sort through a complicated issue, cover it in detail, and give them the feeling that they're done, they can just close the other seven tabs they opened from their search results. It's those long-winded articles that often require screens and screens of scrolling that universally are the ones that motivate notes of thanks, mentions in print journals, "type-in" traffic and so forth, all of which are more important to me than one-time visitors.
>>DON'T BOTHER TO UPDATE THE ARTICLE.
A corollary - I have often read that you should not put the date on your articles because it makes them seem old. The problem is, when I'm looking for information, I will not necessarily ignore an article that's old (disclaimer: I'm a professional historian), but if it is not dated, it becomes almost useless in many contexts.
Of course, Seth says what I said, but with 1/5 the words. But the Seth is one of the very few people (the only one actually) that I know of who is consistently brief and consistently good. But then his role is usually not to answer questions, but to raise them.
