How long should blog articles be to get the best SEO results?

With recent Panda updates, most people in the SEO world claim that longer is better.  Often quoted stats say if you want to rank a post, go for 1200-2000 words.

But a secondary questions is: does your article need to be that long?

As a writer (and reader), I can think of nothing worse than writers making articles longer just for SEO.  In fact, quality writing revolves around the opposite:  concise, to the point, clear.  If you can say it in fewer words, all the better.

One of the most egregious mistakes in writing is deadwood:  additional words and phrases that add no value.  One of the main jobs of editing a draft is to cut out deadwood and tighten the piece.

Not doing this lowers the quality of the writing, which also impacts SEO.

An interesting response to this conundrum is called the Quartz Curve, posited by Kevin Delaney.   This states that two lengths, less than 500 words or more than 800, do best with SEO and online engagement.

The idea is that most pieces are either short, punchy, and too-the-point, or they’re researched, detailed, fully developed articles.  In between is those trying to be both, often with poor results.

From the vantage point of a search algorithm, this makes sense.  Clearly not every article needs to be thousands of words.  Furthermore, most see huge improvements in the quality of the writing if they’re shorter.

And a quality experience is what Google’s really after.

Make your articles as long as they need to be.  Not one word longer.