Stop Writing for Search Engines and Start Writing For People.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been training people for over a decade that “Content is King”. To that end, YES, content is and always will be king. But does every article have to be a book or ten paragraphs? Not to take anything away from professional, skilled writers, but if Twitter has shown us anything, they have shown us that quick blurbs are not only popular, but they get the job done. Take note that Twitter is one of the largest websites in the world and they have accomplished this by writing sentences not full page articles.
Even this article is too long, but in this case it takes a few more words to get the message across. Nowadays with so much information and content overload no one has time to read a ten paragraph article. They read the headline and want to get immediate information on the subject they were intrigued by. Most articles write a compelling headline or title, but take ten paragraphs to get to the point of the subject or leave you unfulfilled after readings the article because they never really even got to the point of the headline at all.
Sometimes it is necessary to write multiple paragraphs, but usually every thing you need to say to get to the bottom line can be summed up in two paragraphs or less. If you want to write really good wordy articles and pages, write a book. Then people know going into it that it is going to take a while to get to the point. Otherwise, serve the people visiting your site better by getting to the point and answer as quickly as possible. Then you don’t waste their time and they will come back more often.
If this sounds contrary to popular SEO edict, it is! But don’t worry, the search engines will eventually be smart enough to figure out that you are not trying to spam them and rather simply offering quality, quick, to-the-point content for your visitors. You don’t have to do their job. Just do your job and write good, clear, concise, to-the-point articles that have purpose and value and make your visitors happy that you didn’t steal their time.
Done!
