Short Content Outranking Long Content - SEO Requires Less Work

0:00in my recent video about Google's March 2025 core update I got a lot of comments like this people are now getting their answers from AI or here's another people don't do content articles clown company killed it another if Google is encouraging people to write non aai content and they simply crawl and recite that content without any meaningful credit to the author then the authors will be less and less inclined to contribute further originality in the future another one my articles were hit they stopped ranking I shouldn't be smiling at that that's terrible so lots of people are saying writing top of funnel content basically is a waste

0:39writing articles explaining how to do things and putting up those articles purely for SEO is a waste if you've been listening to this show for a while you know that that's something that I've been saying for pretty much since I started this show 620 days ago we're in episode 620 days we're on episode 620 of this show 620 days days in a row doing this thing and I want to share this relevant thread from the search engine optimization subreddit from five days ago it's called Google preferring shorter content now and this person said ha have any of you noticed Google shifting their preference from long posts 2,000 to 3,000 plus words to

1:21Shorter content I've seen some signs of this but nothing I could really confirm at this point could be just some keywords so I'm going to read some of the interesting comments from this tell you what the other seos are saying and then I'm going to give you my own experiences and my opinion on this by the way this is going to be a really exciting week I have two very big seos coming on the show Barry Schwarz the founder of search engine Roundtable who a lot of seos just get their news from I get a lot of my SEO news from Barry Schwarz he is a legend and then hey Tony

1:54you might you might have seen hey Tony on Instagram or Tik Tok hey tony. agency is his handle he's a pretty big SEO name as well and he'll be coming on the show too so this's going to be a good week well let's talk about shorter content length for SEO so this is the top comment and I really agree with this comment Google tries to match intent to answer questions what question can possibly need 3,000 words who even reads that now obviously there are some questions that require a lot of words more technical questions for example but most questions that people are putting into Google they don't require 3,000

2:34words in fact another person said I fully agree but for years it's been that way overly long info Pages took top the top three spots in many competitive niches for many Search terms now just a few 100 words of actual content would be best so a few 100 words of actual content is best now but what are other people saying long form content definitely helped with ranking a keyword SL page for years but after the helpful content update they started giving shorter content higher preference funny enough a bunch of the websites I track who have tons of long form content got whacked by the hcu however the good news

3:17is now some of them are seeing upticks in rankings that they lost and I shared that actually recently on the podcast some of these sites that are seeing upticks that are that are reporting recoveries they actually did things to get those recoveries they changed the content they didn't they didn't make it look like all the other all the other long form content that's out there they updated it they removed a lot of the fluff pruned it removed redundancy all right here's another more conclusive one I've definitely noticed this we have a bunch of product landing pages that ranked well with between 2,000 to 5,000 words with assorted content to answer

3:56technical questions about the products so you can imagine a product page and you have the product and then you just have thousands and thousands of words answering questions about the niche and how the product works and it's not and it's literally not the specific product like it's not the specific brand it's just how the product works in general and it's very top of funnel and people who are already getting to this page a lot of them know it already probably a bunch of it is relevant is irrelevant there's a lot of fluff and so here's a result of these 2,000 to 5,000 word product landing pages the result is our

4:30landing pages have been hit hard by recent Google updates dropping from page one to Pages 3 through 4 whereas our sister company that sells the same stuff in a different part of the country their landing pages are incredibly brief sometimes one to two sentences and they're in the top five spots on Google at the moment it boggles my mind so that person had a very concrete experience that shorter content performs better somebody else said with AI pumping out long posts everyone's doing the same so Google might be shifting towards shorter more direct answers if users prefer Quick Info it makes sense but it probably depends on the topic some needs

5:14depth and others don't so I want to share my uh I'm going to share my opinion now and you know if you've been listening to the show you know what I'm going to say you know that I prefer shorter content and not writing top of funnel content for SEO anymore more not really doing article-based SEO but instead doing SEO where you're actually selling stuff where you are making landing pages that sell products or services and when you make landing pages that sell products or Services you don't need to write 1,000 2,000 3000w articles or Pages they can be 400 to 500 words sometimes less and in Niche after nich

5:53after Niche I see these Pages perform way better than the several thousand word pages that answer questions and now those clicks like the people said in my March 2025 core update video how those clicks are going to AI it's true or Google is just literally taking what you wrote the thousands of words that you wrote about how to do something and Google is just giving giving that to Searchers Now using gemini or using AI answers in the serps OR Chachi PT is giving that and even if they're crediting you even if Chachi PT is crediting you for the answer it's the the truth is people just needed one

6:32sentence of or one or two or three sentences of your 3,000-word article and that's all they're going to read from chat GPT I personally think writing several thousand word articles for SEO now that's a huge waste and I've said this so many times before I want to read something from the landing page of my SEO program compact keywords the thing on my shirt if you are watching the thing on my shirt and I said modern day cuz I think I summarized the problem really well modern day SEO is dead it used to be that you invested time and Research into what are called skyscraper technique articles 3,000 words The

7:13Ultimate Guide to doing so and so and the experts recommended top of funnel they recommended long form they recommended exhaustive work this was how SEO was done and this has become unraveled long form TOA funnel is getting wrecked by free AI chat Bots like Gemini and chat GPT people now get their answers from Bots not from blogs but it has become worse AI fired the first shot than was Google's March 2024 update content sites those that ried on long form and that was last year as March 2024 update but it's still applicable content sites those that relied on long form have been obliterated and this is literally like

7:57people in the SEO subreddit saying these content sites have been and they use the word obliterated their traffic is going to Reddit to quora to Ecom sites and purchase oriented sites because that's what works short content what's left is what digital marketers are calling demand generation keywords I call them compact keywords bottom of funnel keywords purchase intent keywords think about this Reddit is the third most clicked site in Google now it has just seen a tremendous rise in priority in in organic Google search what do answers look like on Reddit they're short people areen giving 3,000-word answers on Reddit and quora they're short people want short it's what people want it's

8:41what Searchers want Google knows that and if you're doing SEO my advice is to give the Searchers what they want I actually advise giving the your answer first of all doing SEO that sells stuff that can just that's focused on converting versus doing article SEO and then put putting the solution in the above the fold content literally before people start scrolling that's above the fold it's what people see before they start scrolling the way that you do it very simple you have your image on the right you have your H1 you have two to three sentences of copy under the H1 and then you have a big call to action

9:18button and then the rest of the page is a few sections explaining the product or service that is being sold on that page the H1 is your keyword you put your targeted keyword at the beginning of the page title the beginning of the meta description in the URL slug in the H1 and the beginning of the first sentence and this type of stuff kills it this is how I do SEO this is what is in compact keywords this kills it it kills it across all niches all Industries you just see it time and time again when a page is optimized when when you are targeting bottom of funnel keywords and

9:53you make a page that is optimized for that bottom of funnel keyword and it's a 45word page they Crush they Crush they rank well they convert well they make sales and I don't know a lot of seos like to fight me on this I don't know why seos want to die on this mountain of creating several thousand word Pages it's so much more work wouldn't you rather do less work and get more results that is literally what Google wants to Google wants to to give Searchers their answers fast so you make pages that give Searchers their answers fast fast and that's a lot less work and it performs

10:32really really well so that's my take on it and a lot of seos are now waking up it seems a lot of seos are waking up to the fact that Google is prefer preferring shorter content now like a lot of people said in the comments to my video don't do articles people get their answers from AI by the way chat GPT as I've shared on the show before chat GPT Gro whatever they're recommending my bottom of funnel SEO landing pages too because when you make actually I'll just read I'll read a comment that I wrote on my video to somebody to of funnel SEO content content that's designed to

11:08answer questions rather than directly sell is a waste now bottom of funnel content sells your products and services ranks really well with search engines and when AI trains off your work it is more likely to recommend your products and services because you make bottom of funnel content for them and because bottom of funnel ranks so well it also gets trained off of often shorter content it's less work it performs better that's where SE is headed but you know what I'm going to have some big names and SEO on this show and we'll see what they think too in the next week this is going to be an exciting week and

11:43that's all for episode 620 of my daily digital marketing show again 620 days in a row I am exhausted okay I have a great time I'm having a great time doing this show thank you so much for watching thank you so much for listening I will talk talk to you on the next one bye now