If you're a freelancer and you haven’t heard about article lengths according to the main SEO keyword, don’t feel bad. I just heard about this a few weeks ago, and my reaction was probably pretty close to what yours is right now. What the hell is that, and you have got to be kidding me! After all, as freelancers, we want to turn out high-quality web content and promotional and informative articles that cover the topic in however many words it takes to get the job done properly. The best-case scenario is that the client gave a word count range that allows that to happen. In the worst-case scenarios, the word count isn’t long enough and important pieces have to be cut, or the word count is too long and fluff has to be added. Unfortunately, the new trend is to base an article-length off of the main SEO keyword.
Understanding the Relationship Between SEO Keywords and Article Lengths
Like with most things SEO related, this is an estimate. The client, blogger or writer looks for sets of SEO keywords. Then, the individual does his or her best to try to determine the most common article length that includes that keyword.
For Example:
Let’s say you’ve chosen the keyword Back Pain. Once you know that’s the keyword you want to focus on in your article, you try to determine the average word count lengths of the articles that are currently posted online. Then, you attempt to make your new back pain article that length, neither going under that word count or significantly over it.
Why Article Length According to SEO Keyword Is Now a Thing
It’s all about beating that Google Algorithm and fast-tracking a website to the top of the search engine results, and this is a metric in the Google Algorithm. In order to show you the best possible results, somewhere in that algorithm is a piece of code that ranks results according to the article length of everything else that’s out there. Presumably, if you can manage to calculate the word counts of the most popular articles according to X keyword, you’ll rank higher in the search engine results.
Why Would You Rank Higher in Google with a Longer Article?
The assumption here is that a longer article has more valuable information in it, and for the most part, that’s true, if your hired writer stuck to the topic. The idea is that with the longer article, the writer dug deeper into the topic, and there are details included in the long-form article or blog post that don’t exist in the shorter pieces.
For Example:
Most of the articles on StaceyCarroll.org range between 800 and 1,500 words and are written to be extremely informative and actionable. I wouldn’t be able to do that with shorter pieces in the 300 to 500-word range. If you’re curious about where I rank, according to Google, I show up on page 4 in most search engine results in my industry. That’s nothing to sneeze at, so I must be doing something right to spite never having calculated my article-length according to my keyword.
How do You Calculate Article Length According to Keyword
This is where it gets messy. I have yet to see a keyword finding with a metric for average article length. If this particular thing catches on widely, they’ll start appearing. You can bet your wallet on it. However, it all has to be done manually as of this moment.
Find Your Keyword and Estimate the Word Count
The first thing you have to do is determine your preferred keyword. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to use ‘Reasons to Remodel Your Home’. That’s a topic and a long-tail keyword. To calculate the word count range, I have to plug that in and pull the first 5 or 10 results. I’m going to pull the first 5, regardless of whether or not it’s from an authoritative website, copy the text into my word processor and look at the word count. For the record, I use DuckDuckGo as my search engine, not Google. I feel like their results are more accurate. With that being said, the first result was from a mommy blog. As a freelancer, I’m never going to use that as a source.
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Article 1 – 563 Words, and in my opinion, the topic was not covered well
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Article 2 – 769 Words with slightly more information than in the top ranking article
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Article 3 – 1,369 Words with highly detailed information
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Article 4 – 804 Words result is off-topic, reasons to NOT remodel your home
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Article 5 – 879 Words, nonstandard reasons listed, mostly detailed financials
As you can see here, the word count ranges from 550 to 1,400 with an average word count of 877. Using just the SEO keyword versus article-length metric, you would need to have your freelancer create an article on this topic of between 800 and 900 words. If you wanted a higher word count and a more detailed article, the maximum ranges would be 1,000 to 1,400.
What Is the Current Article Trend?
The current overall article trend is for longer posts. This means that very few companies are opting to get content in the 300 to 500-word range. Instead, they are looking for content in the 800 to 1,500-word range, which is mostly illustrated here in the fact that only one of these articles is at 500 words.
The Cost Considerations When Thinking About Ordering Longer SEO Content
If you’re looking for a freelance writer to write your blog posts and articles, longer word counts mean more money. Prices for freelancers can range from less than a penny a word to $2 a word. The prices here start at .35 cents a word with decreases according to how much content is ordered, which is pretty average for an experienced freelancer.
Lowest to Most Expensive Prices
It’s important to understand that the lowest prices are often found on content mills, which are where new freelancers and individuals getting into freelancing typically start. The higher amounts are for independent freelancers with decades of experience.
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300 to 500 Words - $2.10 to $1,000 per article
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500 to 800 Words - $3.50 to $1,600 per article
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800 to 1,000 - $5,60 to $2,000 per article
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1,000 to 1,500 - $7.00 to $3,000 per article
Midrange Prices
Most independent freelancers call within these ranges for their posted prices on website content, if they post prices on their websites. Most independent freelancers want you to contact them for a quote.
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300 to 500 Words - $105 to $500 per article
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500 to 800 Words - $175 to $800 per article
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800 to 1,000 - $280 to $1,000 per article
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1,000 to 1,500 - $350 to $1,500 per article
Should You Use the Article Length According to SEO Keyword Method?
That is up to you. If you feel like this would help you rank higher on search engines, you can certainly try this method. If you want an estimate for a good article length, I would recommend 700 to 1,000 words. That word count will typically cover almost any topic so that it provides value to your readers and website visitors.
Article Stats According to This Method
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What word count was this post? 1,237
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What’s the long tail SEO keyword? Article Length According to SEO Keyword
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What’s the average word count of similar posts? 1317
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Did I do any of this method prior to writing this article? No, I checked it after the fact
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The average cost of getting a similar article written. $433.00
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The most expensive price you’d pay for this article. $2,474
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The least expensive price you’d pay for this article. $8.66
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The quality of existing articles/research on this topic. Thin and fluffy, slightly to completely off-topic. I didn’t find them extremely useful or fact-loaded for this metric. With that being said, I obviously found enough information to cover this topic.
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Number of research articles used to write this. Six
