I had some really good blog posts ranking on page 1 for years but now they are sliding off page 1 The only thing different about these blog posts is that they are 4000 word + Well written content (not ai or spun) My other blog posts (on the same site) are still doing great Maybe Google hates long content now? PS: I found this while searching info about the google helpful content update. What are your thoughts?
When was the last time you updated these posts in question? Is your article more in-depth than competitors? *Word count doesn't automatically equal more in-depth There can be many reasons for a drop in rankings. The metrics are always changing (not static) as people change/update their content and/or new competitors entering that search query, and algorithm updates where they may change the weighting of certain factors. It's also on a query by query basis. Competitors could have developed better topical relevance over time for that query than you, better technical SEO, on-page SEO, backlinks or off-page SEO or more in-depth coverage of the query as a whole, better (CTR, Bounce rate, Time on-page) for that query, etc You would have to do some research on the results that are on page one to see possible reasons why. Everything you need to know to rank on the 1st page, can be found on the 1st page results. As far as G not liking long content, they want to provide the best possible result to the searcher. Whether that takes 5k words or 1k. I tell my writers to use the least amount of words possible and get to the point as quickly as possible, no opinions, no unneccesary words or fluff.
Here's some questions you can ask yourself about your site and whether G sees your site as a quality site. More guidance on building high-quality sites | Google Search Central Blog | Google Developers
Visit duration and bounce rate are very bad indicators. 1. Visit duration - I visit your site and find an answer within 5 seconds, it means that your website is actually good because I found my answer so quickly. 2. Bounce rate - again, we all love shopping around. Just because I want to check 5 sites and compare prices doesn't mean your site is crap. It can actually be the best. So it's not as straight forward as some "pros" want us to believe. For example, I believe ahrefs have some good and insightful articles but I don't have time to read all their fluff so if I don't get my answer within 10 seconds I leave and visit other sites.
These are actually great indicators and are on a query by query basis. They're only compared to the same query results of a query. If the other results for that query on page one have an average of 60-120 seconds and you're at 5 seconds that will send the search engine a negative signal. In some cases it could mean they found their answer quicker or your content had a better structure to find information quicker. Again this is on a case by case basis, but to consistently have a lower dwell time over many queries against competitors is likely a signal of content lacking something. If you search "stock price" it will only take a couple seconds to see the result, yet the other query results wil also be in-line with a couple seconds dwell time for that query. Having interesting content, images, well structured articles can help dwell time. Again this is on a query by query basis. Your example is a result for "buyer intent" in which shopping sites will be compared to shopping sites for that query. You can also have "informational intent" compared to each other for a query. One tactic people often overlook (or under value) to help decrease bounce rate (& increase dwell time) is internal linking to other relevant articles within their site. This can improve both metrics at once. These metrics are not straight forward as they're not static. Ex. you can see competitors have an average of 2-3 H2 headers, you can add a 4th to your's because Headers don't change very often, like dwell time/bounce rate metrics can change by the second if there's enough search volume for the query. I use a TOC (table of contents) above the first H2 header on every article for this very reason, even though my content contains no fluff. My content is more in-depth than my competitors. I use it for UX purposes as well as better query result CTR, as it shows jumplinks in search results, which helps your result standout from others results.