Short answer: yes. Too much content can actually scare potential clients and readers away. If they have to wade through a pool of different content to get to the meat of your website, they will run away very fast. “When is content considered too much?” you ask.
Let’s discuss this and how to avoid publishing or creating overwhelming amounts, and as a bonus give you some ideas on how to use your content to tease readers into wanting more. So, get your thinking caps on and get ready to learn about The Day of Too Much Content.
How Do I Know I Have Too Much Content?
If you start noticing that you are losing readers and visitors it is a very good indication that your content might be overwhelming. We know that you have spent countless hours preparing your content and we know that is pretty awesome, too. Just because the content is great and has had a lot of preparation does not mean that your customers will like it, though. Less really is more when it comes to content writing.
Business2Community suggests self-examination when you start realizing your website is losing readers. We are going to unpack what this means in the following section.
1. It’s a Tough Crowd, Charlie Brown. Just ask any comedian – audiences are hard to please. When you are writing your content, you need to know your audience and what they expect from you. If you aren’t talking their “language” you are going to lose them quickly. If your audience is in the tech world, you shouldn’t write things that aren’t related to that field. If your audience doesn’t know much about tech, don’t write about tech. Simple as that. Too much of the wrong content will hurt your company.
2. Are You Living up to Your Expectations? You have expectations for your company; everyone does, but are you living up to them? If you aren’t, it is time to re-evaluate your content strategy and re-evaluate what you expect from it. You may think you’ll go viral if you post a ton of photos a day on your social media site but instead you realize that your page likes are going down. This means you need to stop sharing so much and start sharing small, impactful photos or updates. Don’t spam people’s newsfeeds.
3. Where is Your Audience Going? Are you sending them to your front page or to a specific landing page? If you’re sending them to your homepage, you should know that they will feel very overwhelmed. Most front pages are packed with information, photos, links, ads, etc. and that gets very confusing and overwhelming. Tweak your landing pages to bring in customers to a specific place. You can use a landing page to give a brief description of your company, encourage people to sign up for updates, and give links to your social media sites. A landing page is crucial to a successful website and company.
Tease Audiences into Wanting More
If you want to bring in more people, you have to tease them, not overwhelm them. Here are a few ways you can do this and start gaining back your readership.
1. Giveaways. People love getting free stuff and giveaways are a perfect opportunity to build relationships with clients. You can use giveaways to keep your existing clients but you can also use them to bring in more readers and promote your company more. Giving people the ability to get extra entries is one of the ways to do this. Tell people they get one entry simply by commenting but can get X amount more (chose how many entries you’d like to give) by sharing on social media sites and blogging about it. People will do whatever they can if there is a potential to win, so take advantage of that!
2. Spoilers. If you have a big announcement coming up, think about spending a few days/weeks prior by vague tweeting and updating. This will start garnering interest because curiosity is a major part of human consciousness. Occasionally let something “slip” to make people chortle at your “mistake” as they attempt to solve what the big news is. You can even implement giveaways into this and give a prize away if someone guesses the big news (just don’t tell them until you have announced your news!).
3. Ask for Input. Your clients and readers are the best resources to utilize to find out if you post too much content. Send out questionnaires and make a web poll for them to access. You could create an anonymous tip box where people can freely tell you what needs to change. Take their suggestions and start implementing them into your content creation and you will see tremendous growth in visits to your website. Creating client participation is very important to all businesses.
Make Changes and Succeed
Creating enough content that isn’t overwhelming will save your business and will bring in more clients. Stay away from making common mistakes with your content and begin to be more personal with your readers. This isn’t the time to feel bad that your site isn’t drawing in readers; it is time to take action and make changes!
At Express Writers, we serve nearly a thousand international clients monthly by providing content pages that are 99% web-based (utilized on blogs, as landing pages, website articles, etc.). This means that we have to keep up on the latest and greatest know-how to provide our clients with the best, highest quality content possible—closely tied in to how well the content will perform on Google and search results.
If you’re an Internet Marketer, you most likely know very well by now that the Internet is ever-changing, and Google’s guidelines for ranking web content have significantly re-formed in the past 12 to 24 months. Big names in algorithm updates were Google Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird.
Since these algorithm updates, we’ve seen some solid trends favoring specific attributes of content that were previously overlooked in rankings. Specific attributes now being favored by the SERPs include:
Long content is given preference above shorter content
Less focus on keyword-optimization in the content and more of a real-world, researched, and reader-friendly oriented focus
Well-formatted and visual-oriented blogs that get shared
Let’s delve into the first attribute. Why and how, exactly, is longer content preferred and given a front row seat by the SERPs versus the previous standard of short, 1-page content?
What Is Longer Content?
Before we can successfully make an educated comparison of long versus short content, we need to fully comprehend just what long content is. Copyblogger first put a finger on it by writing a blog, “How to Write the In-Depth Articles that Google Loves,” in mid-2013. They called it “cornerstone content.”
Cornerstone, or longer content, is the kind of content that is both thoughtful and in-depth. It is well researched and presents a battery of proven facts, much like an essay. Long content comes in different styles, strongly dependent on the company or brand creating the content. It is primarily conversational, educational, and informative. Some of the most SEO successful long content pieces range from 2,000 to 2,500 words, which is approximately a 5-page piece of writing. Let’s see what some experts think about long vs. short content.
The Conundrum: Long vs. Short
According to the Rank Correlation 2013 Study on ranking factors in 2013, published by SearchMetrics.com, “Content factors correlate almost entirely positively with good rankings and were apparently – when compared with the previous year – partially upgraded.” This fact proves that Google’s updates did indeed change, or upgrade, the system for ranking web content.
A good percentage of ranking factors in 2013 went to quality content. According to SearchMetrics.com, the average number of words in the text was 576, which was up from 2012. The trend of rising word count in content has continued into 2014.
A QuickSprout.com contributor, Neil Patel, decided to test out the new waters favoring long content. He swam to the newly popular deep end of the pool and created a test homepage of 1,292 words versus a second homepage of a mere 488 words. Both pages had a fill out form at the bottom. Although he initially thought the longer content would decrease his conversion rate, the results of his test were intriguing:
The long content converted 7.6 percent better than the shorter.
The leads resulting from the long content proved to be of better quality.
The long content boosted conversions and SERPs.
Patel concluded, through his research and case study, that longer content is indeed better for rankings, engagement and more versus short content. He also concluded that in 2014, content truly is king and if we’re wise, we’ll invest in the creation of well-written, authoritative, and engaging content.
The Express Writer’s Long Content Case Study
After identifying the trend to longer content and seeing what the experts had to say, we decided it was our turn to join the deep end of the pool. We put this trend to a wheel-grinding test just before Christmas 2013, by writing 2,000-word, highly researched, niche topic content blogs, and posting them on our blog. The results were phenomenal: Google loved our content and we gained significant keyword rankings that grew steadily.
Screenshot of our rankings Dec 2013:
Screenshot Jan 2014:
The rankings were closely tied to the actual blogs we posted, for example this blog on how to deliver compelling content, that was ranking for the keyword web content writing tips:
Lastly the Feb 2014 Rankings:
How Can You Jump Into The Deep End?
Now that the experts have waded into the deep end and shared proven results, the rest of us can jump right in. But how? Where’s the diving board?
One of the most common questions we hear businesses asking is how do I write long content without overdoing it (being wordy, boring, etc.)? If you’ve asked this question, you’ve pinpointed the biggest obstacle to long content: HOW THE HECK do we come up it? Even Internet Marketers are asking this question.
SearchEngineLand.com published eight means of creating what they refer to as long tail content for SEO. The article drives home the point that while SEO isn’t dying, it is evolving. You cannot create content merely for the sake of keyword searches and traffic. You have to “shift toward a more user-content-centric view of the world.” You can accomplish this feat and generate great long content by:
Gathering your best people and brainstorming. You know whom we’re talking about. Those elite few within your fold who have a talent for brainstorming fresh, cutting-edge ideas. Pull these folks together and start brainstorming content ideas. Let creativity get a foothold, and then move to the research phase.
Become familiar with the needs of your audience. Pinpoint the top 5 to 10 needs of your audience. Then, brainstorm topic ideas that allow you to cover each need and the solutions you offer in a lengthy, well-researched piece of content. When you delve deeply into the needs of your audience, you’d be amazed at how quickly you’ll compile pieces that exceed 2,000 or so words and need to be trimmed back or split into two distinct pieces of content.
Give your audience more than just your solution. Once you’ve pinpointed the needs of your audience and derived how you can provide a solution, research complementary products and services. At first, this might seem counterproductive. But remember that content needs to be “user-content-centric.” By introducing them to the part you solve, and pointing them toward complimentary avenues of solving an aspect to the problem you don’t, you build credibility and authority. The user will be impressed and see you as a business looking out for their needs over your profit margin. As a result, you’ll begin building trust and loyalty alongside sales conversion.
Check out the competition. It’s a good idea to research your competition. Your goal is to do better than they do. Avoid copying their content strategies. Instead, plan your own geared toward excellence.
Test the waters. Once you’ve brainstormed, researched, and planned, it’s time to test the water. Create a few pieces of content and an initial design. Test them with your audience. Use the feedback to improve before initiating your final content strategies.
Is Short Content Still Valuable?
We hear this question a lot; it isn’t, is short content still valuable, it’s where is short content still valuable? No lie—it still has its value. Not only will you still find short content all over the World Wide Web, but you’ll still be creating it in 2014. Here are some examples of where shorter is still better:
Specific marketing content, such as e-mails
Product descriptions
Social media posts
Video presentations
Podcasts
Webinars
Infographics
Today’s audience is pressed for time, which is why short content is still very much valuable. Yet, our audience also knows when to spend a little extra time reading content that presents value. And that is really what the long versus short content conundrum is all about. For years, we’ve stuck to publishing short articles and content, thinking it was the best way to blast a message to our audience and see results. It worked, for a time. However, today our audience is demanding more.
Case study after case study is proving that our time-strapped audience will not only take the time to read lengthy, well-written content, but they also demand it. As a result, Google is pushing the primary use of long content in 2014. There’s no doubt that we will continue to see the evolution of search engine optimization and content as the year progresses and the next 2 to 3 unfold.
Yet, based on the information we’ve just covered, we can state one thing with certainty: the ultimate trick to staying ahead is to always keep your audience at the center of every piece of content you create and publish. If you’ve done this from day one, adapting to the trending change of long tail, cornerstone content will be as simple as expanding word counts to offer even more user value. Continue to keep your audience as your true focal point, and you’ll easily transition as the Internet world keeps on evolving.
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