Several years ago, Brian Dean, owner of the popular Backlinko blog, analyzed the results of 1 million Google search results in partnership with Eric Van Buskirk and several data partners, trying to understand what it took to rank a piece of content in the organic SERPs.
One of the team’s findings was that longer content tends to rank higher in Google’s search results – in particular, that “the average Google first page result contains 1,447 words.”
Dean’s recent research backs up the value of longer content. During his analysis of more than 912 million blog posts, he found that long-form content performs better, with longer articles capturing more backlinks and social shares on average than shorter pieces (interestingly, the “sweet spot” for social shares was a length of 1,000-2,000 words):
Taken together, you’d assume that this means every piece of content you write should hit that magical mark around 1,447 words, right? Not so fast. In …