One of the most common questions we get asked by clients is, ‘how long should my blog article be to rank?’
Maybe you have asked this yourself at some point, or perhaps tried to help a customer or friend understand what is required to write an article that Google likes, and converts.
The official answer to this question is actually fairly simple. Your article should contain as much content as is needed to cover the subject completely, and provide answers to your readers questions. However, that is not really that helpful, so I tend to say that my blog articles are at least 1000 words long and are built to cover the subject without waffle.
But I hate the article subject, is there any way to make this easier?
That is all well and good if you have a passion for the subject, but what if the subject is not something you enjoy and you are struggling to find ideas for quality content to include?
Great question, let me show you what I do to build money articles that not only have enough words to cover the subject completely, but articles that Google loves and will bring lots of extra traffic.
This hack is simple to implement and will mean that you have so many ideas for quality content, that you never have to worry about what else to write, ever again!
Do you use Ahrefs?
You know I love Ahrefs, I constantly show different features and cool reports which make your life in SEO easier, and today is no different.
This simple trick is going to make you a ‘content master’ and take your articles to the next level, the level that not only Google ranks in the top 10, but that your readers love, and most importantly converts!
Part 4 – Content Hack
Load up Ahrefs in your favourite browser and follow the below steps.
1. Search for a broad topic in Keyword Explorer
Obviously we are looking for something related to your niche. In my example, I am writing an article about baseball bats (I know, who would have guessed, right?), so I entered ‘baseball bats’ as my search topic in Keyword Explorer.
As you can see from the screen shot, you get Ahrefs overview of the keyword phrase ‘baseball bats’, and you are presented with additional words and phrases you could rank for.
However, that is not very helpful. After all, my money site is not about clipart or drawing. So although there are some keyword phrases which might help ( baseball bat display case, how long is a baseball bat, or how to make a baseball bat), most are useless.
But do not give up just yet, this is where it gets interesting!
2. Click on the Having Same Terms report
Now we are presented with lots of helpful information like keyword difficulty, monthly volume, expected clicks etc, and there are a lot more suggestions that we could use to create a winning baseball bats article.
However, we only really want to go after the easy keywords, the low hanging fruit that we can rank for, without having to build additional links.
3. Add a filter to show a maximum difficulty of 10 and minimum monthly volume of 200.
With this filter applied, we are able to find keyword ideas for our article which are not only easy to rank, but will bring in extra traffic to our money page, and give us the opportunity to actually sell more products, or link to other money pages.
As you can see in the above image, there are lots of keywords which you can write about, that help you create a killer piece of content for your money page, and are not simply filler, they will bring traffic and sales.
Bonus Tip
Another great report you should be using is the Questions report. If you have not already seen it, take a look at my guide on how to use the Ahrefs question report to find extra content and traffic for your blog articles.
Conclusion
Thats it, play around with the filters to find content ideas that work for your article, and you will not only never be wondering how to cover a subject fully again, but you will be writing articles that rank and make you money.
Why fill up your articles with waffle and rubbish, when you can write winning content easily, with very little effort.
Good luck, and let me know how you get on.
