Why Shorter Content Often Performs Better in Search

Gone are the days when creating and publishing content longer than competitors was considered a good approach to rank high in SERPs. That approach is no longer effective, as both search engines and readers have evolved so much. 

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Readers now prefer to-the-point content that answers their queries without any vagueness. In this blog, we’ll discuss why short and clear content performs better in search results. 

Apart from this, we will also explore how to add conciseness and clarity to content. So, without any delay, let’s dig into the details.

Reasons Why Short Content Usually Performs Better

There are numerous reasons why shorter and clearer content ranks higher in the SERPs. Some of the major ones are explained below.

1. Matches User Intent More Precisely

The attention span of the online audience is decreasing day by day. According to research, online users now have an attention span of around 8 seconds.

So, when your content is concise, precise, and readable, there is a strong probability that the visitor will quickly find the information they are looking for. This will ultimately help improve two things:

• Your bounce rate will decrease because readers will stay longer reading your content.
• The overall engagement metric of your content will also improve.

Reduced bounce rate and improved user engagement will send positive signals to search engines. This will ultimately help increase your chances of ranking high in SERPs.

2. Improves Readability

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Online readers expect information in a way that is easy to scan and understand. They don’t want to go through long paragraphs and complex sentences. Plus, lengthy content loaded with unnecessary details also causes readers to lose interest quickly.

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When your content is short and delivers the intended information clearly, readers find it helpful. As a result, readers get exactly what they want without feeling overwhelmed. Moreover, your content will be more accessible to a wider audience, especially those looking for quick answers. 

3. Increases chances of appearing in “AI Overview.”

Search engines have started relying heavily on AI to entertain their users. This is why we now see “AI overview” at the top for some of the queries we search online. 

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Short and clear content is easier for AI algorithms to process and understand. When your content delivers information in a well-structured and concise way, it becomes more suitable to be featured in “AI Overviews.” 

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This ultimately helps increase the visibility and authority in search results. 

Tips to Make Your Content Concise & Readable

Here are some of the effective tips and tricks that can be adopted to keep the content short and easy to read.

1. Remove Unnecessary or Filler words

To achieve conciseness and readability in your content, you need to find and eliminate all the unnecessary filler or repetitive words. Such words and phrases add no value to the content. They just increase the overall length.

However, you need to make sure the original intent stays the same after removing fluff. Try to focus on shortening sentences while maintaining clarity and natural flow. 

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If you’re having a problem finding such unnecessary wording, you can read your content out loud. This technique has shown to be effective in spotting words or phrases that are unnecessary. 

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2. Limit Paragraphs to a Single Idea

Short paragraphs not only contribute to better comprehension but also help maintain user attention to enhance overall rankings. 

Therefore, it is highly recommended to address one point, argument, idea, or perspective in a single paragraph. And then discuss the other one in the next paragraph.

Following this approach will make the content focused, concise, and easy to skim. All this can then lead to improved search engine rankings.  

3. Get Assistance from an AI Tool

There are tools for every task. Nearly everything on the internet is being performed with the assistance of AI because it saves both time and effort.

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To make your content concise and readable, you can use sentence shortener to make content impactful and easily digestible. AI used in this tool analyzes your text and then condenses long sentences into shorter versions without damaging the original context. It performs better than long-form and gives instant gratification to users.

So, these are some useful tips that you can implement to make your content short and clear for your audience. 

Final Words

In the past few years, the algorithms of search engines have evolved a lot. Now, short and clear content has more chances of ranking high in SERPs. There are numerous reasons behind this, as such type of content quickly provides visitors the required information, reduces bounce rate, and increases engagement. This blog post has explained all these in detail. Hopefully, you will find the information helpful.

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