SEO in 2019 - Long Articles Rank, What to Do With Short Articles?
On my site, I write helpful articles about things people may like about Japan.
These are nice, long-ish articles covering each topic very well. I know Google likes this sort of content.
But I'm also creating tiny articles I call "references." They explain very specific things, for example:
Negi = https://tokyospark.com/reference/negi-ねぎ/
It's a small article, like 200 words. It's helpful. It tells the visitor exactly what it is, a bit about the Japanese words for it, etc...
All the SEO advice out there is saying "long-form, long-form, long-form." But I don't want to expand these reference articles -- and I suspect visitors don't want 1,800 words to explain negi either.
Should these tiny articles be set to noindex then? Will they hamper overall SEO if left as-is?
I don't expect them to rank on their own, but I was sending people away from my site for more information on these things, so I started creating my own explanations of them -- so I could keep visitors on my site, and add extra value.
Sorry for the long message... I couldn't seem to find good answers to this.
Thank you!
I've encountered quite a few sites with very short content on specific topics while googling (e.g. https://riptutorial.com/r/topic/3388/missing-values). Most times I've seen this, it's reference-type material.
Your site seems like similar content, so it might do well if you have a bunch of those reference pages.
Good point. Thank you.
Great article !
Also check mensis.ro
If it's helpful, keep it!
Don't combine them or add fluff. It's really not longform articles that are ranking, its actually useful content thats ranking.
It just happens to be so that longform articles usually hold more useful info compared to short articles (wich is why these are ranking) But
i can show you numerous examples of short articles outranking longfrom fluff.
Hi Chad,
One thing I would consider doing is collating these small references into larger categories, for example:
https://tokyospark.com/reference/vegetables/
https://tokyospark.com/reference/fruit/
https://tokyospark.com/reference/etc......./
Then adding all references related to let's say vegetables on a single page.
In regards to these short articles hampering your overall SEO effort they won't and there is no need to noindex them, they are just unlikely to rank well in their current state.
That’s an excellent idea. I can do a roundup by type of reference, then have a table of contents and “sub-link” directly to each reference on the same page.
I could then be more concise in my definitions and explanations and not worry about adversely affecting SEO (which I may not need to worry about at all anyway).
Thank you!