I have personally established that the sweet spot for my article length on my website is between 600 and 2,400 words
long.
With that said, can you just put up a wall of text and expect to drive tons of long tail traffic with every article? Of course not.
Here is how I would recommend that you structure your content in order to maximize long tail traffic, based on what we already see that is working well:
1) Use subheadings throughout your article.
You know, the little tags with the h3 in them? Use those for your subtopics. There are a couple of different ways that you can find different keywords for your subheadings, as outlined in our program. One of the quickest ways is to simply do a Google search for you keyword, and then scroll to the bottom of the page and grab the “related searches,” using each of those keywords as a subheading. Quick and easy.
2) Encourage comments at the end of your post, and have them enabled on your website.
While I would tend to cut off article length at around 2,500 words max, there is nothing wrong with having a “comment storm” on your post. Google seems to love that, and a lot of comments always goes hand in hand with a lot of long tail traffic. Having a long trail of comments just gives the Google bot more content to munch through, and gives you more potential long tail phrases.
3) Use long, keyword rich post titles.
My best article for long tail traffic has 16 words in the post title. To me that seems like it is a bit longer than average, but obviously it is working great, because that particular article receives 3,000 visits each week. At the same time, you don’t just want to have a robotic post title that is stuffed with keywords for no reason.
Let’s look at some examples:
Bad for long tail traffic: “How to Buy a Blender”
Good for long tail traffic: “How to Buy the Perfect Blender or Kitchen Appliance to Fulfill all of Your Mixing Needs at an Affordable Price”
Bad for long tail traffic: “Optimizing for Long Tail Traffic”
Good for long tail traffic: “3 Website Optimization Tips for Structuring Your Content for Maximum Long Tail Traffic”
Bad for long tail traffic: “Buying the Best Vacuum Cleaner”
Good for long tail traffic: “Get Massive
Suction Power by Buying the Best Vacuum Cleaner for a Decent Price”
Notice that in each case, the longer example still does a good job of trying to grab reader interest, rather than just being stuffed with keywords for SEO value. The longer titles are optimized for both readers and search engines. The shorter post titles are leaving potential long tail traffic on the table.