SEO
Which Is Better for SEO?

Long-form content isn’t necessarily better for SEO than short-form content. As with many things in SEO, it depends.
Sometimes, long-form content is overkill and a waste of resources. Other times, it’s necessary to stand the best chance of ranking.
In this guide, you’ll learn a simple way to figure out how much to write on a topic-by-topic basis.
But first, let’s get our definitions straight:
Short-form content is roughly anything under 1,000 words. This is how we choose to define it, but definitions vary. You may only consider something under 500 words to be short-form content, and that’s fine.
Long-form content is roughly anything over 1,000 words. Again, this is how we choose to define it. You may disagree and only see something as long-form content if it’s over 2,000 words. It’s up to you.
If you’re asking this question in the context of SEO, then what you’re probably asking is, “Do I need to write thousands of words to rank for this keyword? Or can I write something shorter?”
Fair question. But you shouldn’t decide this by setting an arbitrary word count.
Instead, ask yourself, “How much do I need to write to satisfy searchers?”
Here’s a straightforward way to answer that question in five steps:
1. Look at what’s ranking
Pull up the search results for your target keyword. You can do this in a couple of ways.
If you’re an Ahrefs user, use Keywords Explorer and scroll down to the SERP overview:

If you’re not an Ahrefs user, search on Google in an incognito tab and use Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar to view results for your target location.

2. Pick a content format
Your content is unlikely to rank unless it aligns with what searchers want, regardless of how much you write. This is why it’s usually best to choose a content format that is already ranking.
Here are a few popular content formats to look out for:
- Guides
- Listicles
- How-tos
- Tutorials
- Reviews
- Definitions
- “Vs.” posts
For example, if we look at the blog posts ranking for “ecommerce seo,” they’re pretty much all guides…

… so it’s clear that we should also write a guide.
If we look at the posts ranking for “keyword cannibalization,” we see a mix of definitions and how-tos:

This is known as a mixed intent keyword.
With mixed intent keywords, it’s up to you which format to create. Just keep in mind that some content formats will give you a better opportunity to promote your business than others.
For example, since you’re able to find keyword cannibalization issues using our tool, it makes more sense to write a how-to than a definition post.
3. Create a search-focused outline
A search-focused outline is a barebones plan for your content that takes inspiration from similar top-ranking content. The logic here is that similar top-ranking content is clearly satisfying searchers, so analyzing it can help you understand what they want.
The best starting point for a search-focused outline is a content gap analysis.
Let’s say we want to create a guide targeting the keyword “pour over coffee.”
If we take the top-ranking guides and plug their URLs into Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool, we see all the keywords that one or more of those pages rank for in the top 10. By eyeballing these keywords, we can start to pluck out subtopics that we can include in our outline:


If you need more inspiration for your outline, visit the pages themselves and eyeball their subheadings. This will also help you better understand how to structure your content and may unveil subtopics you missed.
For example, if we open two top-ranking guides for “pour over coffee” and use Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar to view the subheadings, we see they both talk about equipment:


This is likely an important thing to include.
We can also see that both guides start with a definition. This makes total sense and is probably the best starting point for any guide to pour-over coffee.
Here’s what our final search-focused outline may look like for this topic:

4. Start writing
It’s finally time to put pen to paper and transform your outline into “content.”
This is where you get to unleash your creativity and share your knowledge with the world. Just remember not to stray too far from your outline, as it’s there to ensure you cover what is needed to satisfy searchers.
Don’t worry about word count or length at this stage. Just focus on getting your thoughts down.
Here are a few useful tips if you’re struggling:
- Freewrite – This is where you write and don’t stop. No backspacing to correct spelling mistakes. No rewriting sentences. Just write. You’ll probably find that your content flows better if you can master this.
- Use the Pomodoro technique – This is where you write for 25 minutes before taking a five-minute break. Repeat this process as many times as necessary to get your content done. (Here’s a free Pomodoro timer.)
- Use a distraction-free writing tool – Bear is my favorite, but there are a few similar apps.
Whichever app you use, I don’t recommend using one that shows the word count as you type. It’s too distracting and may cause you to slip into thinking, “Hey, this is getting long” or “Hey, this seems too short.”
This is the kind of thinking you want to avoid. You just want to write as much as you need and no more. Don’t even look at the word count.
5. Trim the fluff
Regardless of whether your content ends up being short-form or long-form, your first draft will always be way too long. It’ll have run-on sentences, points that nobody cares about, and overly long paragraphs.
That may seem bad, but it’s exactly what a first draft should look like. You’ll find it much easier to trim and refine your ideas once they’re down on paper than to obsess over them as you go.
Here’s how to do that in three steps:
The first step is self-editing. This is where you go through your first draft and cut any unnecessary fluff. You should also rewrite any meandering sentences and make sure things are as concise as possible. Tools like Hemingway and Grammarly can help with this.

The second step is to get a friend or colleague to provide feedback. This can be a tricky one, as most people won’t want to hurt your feelings. I recommend explicitly asking them for feedback on things you can cut or shorten. This should make their feedback more focused and reduce their anxiety about offending you.
The third and final step is a round of self-edits based on your friend’s or colleague’s feedback.
Whatever your word count is now, that’s how long your content needs to be. Maybe it’s long-form; maybe it’s short-form. It doesn’t matter. What matters is you’ve written what is required to meet searchers’ expectations.
Is it really this simple?
Kind of—although there are a few other factors to keep in mind that may influence your decision.
You shouldn’t repeat yourself
Let’s say you’re researching subtopics for a content piece and find one that you’ve already covered on your site.
For example, our beginner’s guide to link building primarily targets the keyword “link building.” If we plug two top-ranking guides for this keyword into Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool, we see that searchers want to know about link building strategies and techniques:

But here’s the thing: We’ve already published dedicated guides about most of these strategies:
For that reason, we decided not to regurgitate everything in this guide and make it unnecessarily long. Instead, we chose to keep things brief and link to our guides on each tactic in case the reader wants to learn more.

Then in each “sub-post” about an individual tactic, we added a link back to our link building guide.

This is known as a topic cluster or content hub, and there are a few reasons why it can be beneficial to SEO.
You can write multiple posts targeting multiple intents
Let’s take a keyword like “guest blogging.”
If you look at the SERP, it’s a mix of definitions and guides:

The definitions are generally short-form, and the guides are long-form.
Although you could pick one format to create here, you might also want to consider creating multiple posts in different formats to try to win multiple rankings. In this case, that would mean creating a short-form definition-type post and a long-form guide.
Yoast did this successfully for the keyword, “canonical URL”:

You may want to approach competitive keywords differently
Let’s say that you’re targeting a super competitive keyword like “SEO.” We see a mix of definitions and guides in the SERP, but pretty much all of them have backlinks from thousands of websites:

Most of these pages are old, have accumulated their backlinks over many years, and continue to earn backlinks thanks to the vicious cycle of SEO:

Bottom line: If you want to rank for this keyword, you’re going to need a ton of backlinks.
In this case, you’ll probably struggle to do that by following the crowd with a search-focused piece of content. You’ll stand a better chance of attracting the links you need by publishing something interesting or innovative (and ideally then doing outreach for links).
Note that this doesn’t mean you need to publish long-form content. Long-form guides can be link magnets, but so can short-form pieces.
For example, take Aleyda’s LearningSEO.io:

The original version of this (pictured above) was published in February 2021 with just 114 words on the page. Yet it’s managed to attract links from over 560 referring domains in only nine months:

My guess is that Aleyda isn’t trying to rank for anything here (especially not “SEO”) and simply created this to give back to the community. But the point remains: If you want links, it’s not about short-form vs. long-form. It’s about creating something that resonates with people and putting it in front of them.
Final thoughts
Focus on satisfying searchers, not hitting some arbitrary word count.
If you’re working with freelancers and need to give them a ballpark figure because you’re paying by the word, let your search-focused outline guide you. If there’s not much ground to cover, tell them to keep it short and sweet. If there’s a lot to cover, give them a rough limit and have them tell you if the content needs to be longer. Giving a bit of flexibility is key here.
Got questions? Disagree? Ping me on Twitter.
SEO
Google Updating Cryptocurrency Advertising Policy For 2024

Google published an announcement of upcoming changes to their cryptocurrency advertising policies and advises advertisers to make themselves aware of the changes and prepare to be in compliance with the new requirements.
The upcoming updates are to Google’s Cryptocurrencies and related products policy for the advertisement of Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts. The changes are set to take effect on January 29th, 2024.
Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts are financial products that enable investors to trade shares in trusts holding substantial amounts of digital currency. These trusts provide investors with equity in cryptocurrencies without having direct ownership. They are also an option for creating a more diversified portfolio.
The policy updates by Google that are coming in 2024 aim to describe the scope and requirements for the advertisement of Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts. Advertisers targeting the United States will be able to promote these products and services as long as they abide by specific policies outlined in the updated requirements and that they also obtain certification from Google.
The updated policy changes are not limited to the United States. They will apply globally to all accounts advertising Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts.
Google’s announcement also reminded advertisers of their obligation for compliance to local laws in the areas where the ads are targeted.
Google’s approach for violations of the new policy will be to first give a warning before imposing an account suspension.
Advertisers that fail to comply with the updated policy will receive a warning at least seven days before a potential account suspension. This time period provides advertisers with an opportunity to fix non-compliance issues and to get back into compliance with the revised guidelines.
Advertisers are encouraged to refer to Google’s documentation on “About restricted financial products certification.”
The deadline for the change in policy is January 29th, 2024. Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts advertisers will need to pay close attention to the updated policies in order to ensure compliance.
Read Google’s announcement:
Updates to Cryptocurrencies and related products policy (December 2023)
SEO
SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore In 2024

Most SEO trends fade quickly. But some of them stick and deserve your attention.
Let’s explore what those are and how to take advantage of them.
If you give ChatGPT a title and ask it to write a blog post, it will—in seconds.
This is super impressive, but there are a couple of issues:
- Everyone else using ChatGPT is creating the same content. It’s the same for users of other GPT-powered AI writing tools, too—which is basically all of them.
- The content is extremely dull. Sure, you can ask ChatGPT to “make it more entertaining,” but it usually overcompensates and hands back a cringe version of the same boring content.
In the words of Gael Breton:
How to take advantage of this SEO trend
Don’t use AI to write entire articles. They’ll be boring as heck. Instead, use it as a creative sparring partner to help you write better content and automate monotonous tasks.
For example, you can ask ChatGPT To write an outline from a working title and a list of keywords (which you can pull from Ahrefs)—and it does a pretty decent job.
Prompt:
Create an outline for a post entitled “[working title]” based on these keywords: [list]
Result:


When you’ve written your draft, you can ask to polish it in seconds by asking ChatGPT to proofread it.


Then you can automate the boring stuff, like creating more enticing title tags…


… and writing a meta description:


If you notice a few months down the line that your content ranks well but hasn’t won the featured snippet, ChatGPT can help with that, too.
For example, Ahrefs tells us we rank in position 3 for “affiliate marketing” but don’t own the snippet.


If we check Google, the snippet is a definition. Asking ChatGPT to simplify our definition may solve this problem.


In short, there are a near-infinite number of ways to use ChatGPT (and other AI writing tools) to create better content. And all of them buck the trend of asking it to write boring, boilerplate articles from scratch.
Programmatic SEO refers to the creation of keyword-targeted pages in an automatic (or near automatic) way.
Nomadlist’s location pages are a perfect example:


Each page focuses on a specific city and shares the same core information—internet speeds, cost, temperature, etc. All of this information is pulled programmatically from a database and the site gets an estimated 46k monthly search visits in total.


Programmatic SEO is nothing new. It’s been around forever. It’s just the hot thing right now because AI tools like ChatGPT make it easier and more accessible than ever before.
The problem? As John Mueller pointed out on Twitter X, much of it is spam:
I love fire, but also programmatic SEO is often a fancy banner for spam.
— I am John – ⭐ Say no to cookies – biscuits only ⭐ (@JohnMu) July 25, 2023
How to take advantage of this SEO trend
Don’t use programmatic SEO to publish insane amounts of spam that’ll probably get hit in the next Google update. Use it to scale valuable content that will stand the test of time.
For example, Wise’s currency conversion pages currently get an estimated 31.7M monthly search visits:


This is because the content is actually useful. Each page features an interactive tool showing the live exchange rate for any amount…


… the exchange rate over time…


… a handy email notification option when the exchange rates exceed a certain amount…


… handy conversion charts for popular amounts…


… and a comparison of the cheapest ways to send money abroad in your chosen currency:


It doesn’t matter that all of these pages use the same template. The data is exactly what you want to see when you search [currency 1] to [currency 2]
.
That’s probably why Wise ranks in the top 10 for over 66,000 of these keywords:


Looking to take advantage of programmatic content in 2024 like Wise? Check out the guide below.
People love ChatGPT because it answers questions fast and succinctly, so it’s no surprise that generative AI is already making its way into search.
For example, if you ask Bing for a definition or how to do something basic, AI will generate an answer on the fly right there in the search results.




In other words, thanks to AI, users no longer have to click on a search result for answers to simple questions. It’s like featured snippets on steroids.
This might not be a huge deal right now, but when Google’s version of this (Search Generative Experience) comes out of beta, many websites will see clicks fall off a cliff.
How to take advantage of this SEO trend
Don’t invest too much in topics that generative AI can easily answer. You’ll only lose clicks like crazy to AI in the long run. Instead, start prioritizing topics that AI will struggle to answer.
How do you know which topics it will struggle to answer? Try asking ChatGPT. If it gives a good and concise answer, it’s clearly an easy question.
For example, there are hundreds of searches for how to calculate a percentage in Google Sheets every month in the US:


If you ask ChatGPT for the solution, it gives you a perfect answer in about fifty words.


This is the perfect example of a topic where generative AI will remove the need to click on a search result for many.
That’s probably not going to be the case for a topic like this:


Sure. Generative AI might be able to tell you how to create a template—but it can’t make one for you. And even if it can in the future, it will never be a personal finance expert with experience. You’ll always have to click on a search result for a template created by that person.
These are the kinds of topics to prioritize in 2024 and beyond.
Sidenote.
None of this means you should stop targeting “simple” topics altogether. You’ll always be able to get some traffic from them. My point is not to be obsessed with ranking for keywords whose days are numbered. Prioritize topics with long-term value instead.
Bonus: 3 SEO trends to ignore in 2024
Not all SEO trends move the needle. Here are just a few of those trends and why you should ignore them.
People are using voice search more than ever
In 2014, Google revealed that 41% of Americans use voice search daily. According to research by UpCity, that number was up to 50% as of 2022. I haven’t seen any data for 2023 yet, but I’d imagine it’s above 50%.
Why you should ignore this SEO trend
75% of voice search results come from a page ranking in the top 3, and 40.7% come from a featured snippet. If you’re already optimizing for those things, there’s not much more you can do.
People are using visual search for shopping more than ever
In 2022, Insider Intelligence reported that 22% of US adults have shopped with visual search (Google Lens, Bing Visual Search, etc.). That number is up from just 15% in 2021.
Why you should ignore this SEO trend
Much like voice search, there’s no real way to optimize for visual search. Sure, it helps to have good quality product images, optimized filenames and alt text, and product schema markup on your pages—but you should be doing this stuff anyway as it’s been a best practice since forever.
People are using Bing more than ever before
Bing’s Yusuf Mehdi announced in March 2023 that the search engine had surpassed 100M daily active users for the first time ever. This came just one month after the launch of AI-powered Bing.
Why you should ignore this SEO trend
Bing might be more popular than ever, but its market share still only stands at around ~3% according to estimates by Statcounter. Google’s market share stands at roughly 92%, so that’s the one you should be optimizing for.
Plus, it’s often the case that if you rank in Google, you also rank in Bing—so it really doesn’t deserve any focus.
Final thoughts
Keeping your finger on the pulse and taking advantage of trends makes sense, but don’t let them distract you from the boring stuff that’s always worked: find what people are searching for > create content about it > build backlinks > repeat.
Got questions? Ping me on Twitter X.
SEO
Mozilla VPN Security Risks Discovered

Mozilla published the results of a recent third-party security audit of its VPN services as part of it’s commitment to user privacy and security. The survey revealed security issues which were presented to Mozilla to be addressed with fixes to ensure user privacy and security.
Many search marketers use VPNs during the course of their business especially when using a Wi-Fi connection in order to protect sensitive data, so the trustworthiness of a VNP is essential.
Mozilla VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN), is a service that hides (encrypts) a user’s Internet traffic so that no third party (like an ISP) can snoop and see what sites a user is visiting.
VPNs also add a layer of security from malicious activities such as session hijacking which can give an attacker full access to the websites a user is visiting.
There is a high expectation from users that the VPN will protect their privacy when they are browsing on the Internet.
Mozilla thus employs the services of a third party to conduct a security audit to make sure their VPN is thoroughly locked down.
Security Risks Discovered
The audit revealed vulnerabilities of medium or higher severity, ranging from Denial of Service (DoS). risks to keychain access leaks (related to encryption) and the lack of access controls.
Cure53, the third party security firm, discovered and addressed several risks. Among the issues were potential VPN leaks to the vulnerability of a rogue extension that disabled the VPN.
The scope of the audit encompassed the following products:
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for macOS
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Linux
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Windows
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for iOS
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Androi
These are the risks identified by the security audit:
- FVP-03-003: DoS via serialized intent
- FVP-03-008: Keychain access level leaks WG private key to iCloud
- VP-03-010: VPN leak via captive portal detection
- FVP-03-011: Lack of local TCP server access controls
- FVP-03-012: Rogue extension can disable VPN using mozillavpnnp (High)
The rogue extension issue was rated as high severity. Each risk was subsequently addressed by Mozilla.
Mozilla presented the results of the security audit as part of their commitment to transparency and to maintain the trust and security of their users. Conducting a third party security audit is a best practice for a VPN provider that helps assure that the VPN is trustworthy and reliable.
Read Mozilla’s announcement:
Mozilla VPN Security Audit 2023
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Meilun
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