Answer
May 14, 2024 - 08:57 AM
We often get this question and it's important to know the answer to. The answer on how long your answers should be is this......put yourself in the mind of the customer and answer it effectively in order to give them a satisfactory experience (whether that be short or long).
Since featured snippets are on average 40-60 words, in our tips to how to answer questions we cover that we'd recommend at least 40 words since even if you could answer with a "Yes" that isn't a great experience, you can give a bit more context showing off your unique expertise and experience for almost any question that leaves the person with a "wow, that person knows what they're talking about and why...and I can trust their answer. But....it's really as simple as what is going to best satisfy the question. That is what you should do.
There is a lot of nonsense out there when it comes to SEO and you'll even find articles written by "SEO Experts" who say that your pages/articles should be no shorter than 800 words or 1200 words or whatever that person has decided to make up (perhaps to justify their own job). The fact is.....not every query requires an 800 word blog post, and many times the searcher doesn't want to read that long of an answer....they want a concise and easy to understand answer and then they can choose to do a deeper dive if they want. Google communicates clearly in their Search Raters Guidelines that even very short answers can and should achieve the "Highest Quality" content score. They instruct their raters saying this:
"There is no length requirement for Highly Meets results. Sometimes what makes a result satisfying is that it is short and easy to understand. Other results may be very satisfying because of the depth and richness of content.” - Section 13.3 Highly Meets (HM) - Search Raters Guidelines
So, Google loves short content, Google loves long content.....Google loves any content that will satisfy the intent of the search...and that is what it will continue to optimize towards finding and displaying.
Since featured snippets are on average 40-60 words, in our tips to how to answer questions we cover that we'd recommend at least 40 words since even if you could answer with a "Yes" that isn't a great experience, you can give a bit more context showing off your unique expertise and experience for almost any question that leaves the person with a "wow, that person knows what they're talking about and why...and I can trust their answer. But....it's really as simple as what is going to best satisfy the question. That is what you should do.
There is a lot of nonsense out there when it comes to SEO and you'll even find articles written by "SEO Experts" who say that your pages/articles should be no shorter than 800 words or 1200 words or whatever that person has decided to make up (perhaps to justify their own job). The fact is.....not every query requires an 800 word blog post, and many times the searcher doesn't want to read that long of an answer....they want a concise and easy to understand answer and then they can choose to do a deeper dive if they want. Google communicates clearly in their Search Raters Guidelines that even very short answers can and should achieve the "Highest Quality" content score. They instruct their raters saying this:
"There is no length requirement for Highly Meets results. Sometimes what makes a result satisfying is that it is short and easy to understand. Other results may be very satisfying because of the depth and richness of content.” - Section 13.3 Highly Meets (HM) - Search Raters Guidelines
So, Google loves short content, Google loves long content.....Google loves any content that will satisfy the intent of the search...and that is what it will continue to optimize towards finding and displaying.
