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On-Page SEO: Article Size Affects Your Rankings More Than Anchor Text

by robertnost
29 replies
  • SEO
    • |
If you type the "HostGator Review" keyword phrase in Google you'll see the the first 2 articles from the SERP's are also the vertically largest articles from all the rest of the results.

The Yoast article ranking #2 in Google doesn't even contains the "Hostgator review" keyword phrase in the article nor in its anchor text profile and still is ranking very high.

To prove these thesis I made DO NOT LINK TO YOUR SITE . On the first article I added more words and on the second I added more comments. I wasn't quite sure which from the 2 aspects may be affecting the rankings so that's why I tried both.

Results:

Both articles ranked really high! This means that the content nature wasn't so important as it was the actual vertical pixel size of the article.

Keep this ranking factor in mind...test it on your page and please share the results with us.
#affects #anchor #article #onpage #rankings #seo #size #text
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    On-Page SEO: Article Size Affects Your Rankings More Than Anchor Text
    It's like that saying, can't see the forest for the trees.

    The amount of text is irrelevant for ranking pages. As always with these types of threads, If your aiming to rank multiple keywords per page, fine, having those keywords on the page helps rank but text volume isn't doing anything on it's own.

    If text volume ranked pages I would have 10 million word pages (silly). Instead I'm ranking pages that average around a sentence of text per page.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      I am testing it right now in a real simple way, just an empty line between each sentence or in other words just 1 sentence paragraphs as well as a larger font size.

      However at the moment I made too many changes on other fronts as well so it's a bit of a bad moment to test, will have to do it again.

      It's already proven that article size affects rankings in a positive way, Moz did that I think.

      Another quick fix to increase pixel height is to narrow your content width in the theme you use.

      That's what Neil Patel and Backlinko are doing as well, very narrow content area with tons of images to get endless posts.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        It's already proven that article size affects rankings in a positive way, Moz did that I think.
        Stop...


        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        Another quick fix to increase pixel height is to narrow your content width in the theme you use.
        ...the...


        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        That's what Neil Patel and Backlinko are doing as well, very narrow content area with tons of images to get endless posts.
        ...madness!
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Yes. The height of the words on a page is a huge ranking factor. This post is now SEO optimized.

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          • Profile picture of the author yukon
            Banned
            Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

            Yes. The height of the words on a page is a huge ranking factor. This post is now SEO optimized.
            You'll need another 950 words to rank that BIG text, lol.

            [edit]
            Don't forget the images.
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            • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
              Originally Posted by yukon View Post

              You'll need another 950 words to rank that BIG text, lol.

              [edit]
              Don't forget the images.
              I don't have time for that. I'm changing all the content containers on my websites to be only 20px wide. Need to make them tall. #GoBigOrGoHome
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            • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
              Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

              Yes. The height of the words on a page is a huge ranking factor. This post is now SEO optimized.
              Originally Posted by yukon View Post

              You'll need another 950 words to rank that BIG text, lol.

              [edit]
              Don't forget the images.
              You 2 ain't ranking nothing without the embedded YT video and 250x250.png. And no doubt you will get hit by the "sites that don't link to wikipedia penalty".

              Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

              That's what Neil Patel and Backlinko are doing as well, very narrow content area with tons of images to get endless posts.
              There's a lot more being done and spent by both those individuals when it comes to publications. It's like that saying Yukon mentioned, can't see the forest for the trees.

              Patel spends tens of thousands per post sometimes, and I doubt that was the bill for large font.

              I guess what I'm saying is there's a world of difference from your 3000 word article to theirs respectfully. Both in research and user experience. (LinkBait).
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              • Profile picture of the author nik0
                Banned
                Originally Posted by Kevin Maguire View Post

                Patel spends tens of thousands per post sometimes, and I doubt that was the bill for large font.

                I guess what I'm saying is there's a world of difference from your 3000 word article to theirs respectfully. Both in research and user experience. (LinkBait).
                I ain't arguing that my content would be on the same level. Did I say that anywhere?
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                • Profile picture of the author yukon
                  Banned
                  Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

                  I ain't arguing that my content would be on the same level. Did I say that anywhere?
                  If I remember correctly from other threads your content was spun Amazon pages? The same stuff you've complained isn't ranking.





                  Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

                  I already gave up a long time ago about this topic.

                  The self proclaimed experts think they know it better, that will never end, no matter what legit arguments you come up with like user experience, bounce rate, LSI richness.

                  In their minds it's all nonsense.
                  I'm all for talking SEO, let me know when you start because the stuff you first posted at the top of this thread is nonsense.
                  • You know a guy (moz)?
                  • Pixel height (what the heck does that even mean for SEO)?
                  • Tons of images to rank a page?

                  BTW, I deal with a lot of images (years), I know my way around ranking images If that's what you mean. Having a bunch of images isn't doing anything on it's own.
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                  • Profile picture of the author nik0
                    Banned
                    Originally Posted by yukon View Post

                    If I remember correctly from other threads your content was spun Amazon pages? The same stuff you've complained isn't ranking.

                    I'm all for talking SEO, let me know when you start because the stuff you first posted at the top of this thread is nonsense.
                    • You know a guy (moz)?
                    • Pixel height (what the heck does that even mean for SEO)?
                    • Tons of images to rank a page?

                    BTW, I deal with a lot of images (years), I know my way around ranking images If that's what you mean. Having a bunch of images isn't doing anything on it's own.
                    Yes I know you like to base your opinion on snippets what once might've been said in the past. For the record none of my affiliate sites use spun content.

                    We also know what you think about Moz so that you don't agree there doesn't suprise me at all but you simply can't deny facts, the proof is out there.

                    Then you start to ignore other things that I pointed out like user-experience so it's just like talking to a wall here.

                    Narrowing down the content area and using paragraphs that consist of one sentence are techniques often used by professional sales copy writers, to keep the reader hooked, which also happens to result in more pixels, now I don't know if that has anything to do with it but as said, if it decreases bounce rate the rankings will increase. Fact.

                    Placement of images on a page do affect rankings, see my other post where I removed large images at the start of a post and from non ranking to ranking in top 50. Again Fact.

                    I always build Amazon sites in batches of 10, right now I have 30 of them in total so it's pretty easy to test things. A lot of them dropped during Panda 4.0, I made the changes that I thought were needed on the first batch of 10 sites and guess what? They all came back and rank better then ever. All changes were based on image placement, reducing affiliate links and getting rid of read more snippets. All things that have nothing to do with rankings according to many. What a suprise they all recovered while the 20 sites that I didn't change are still stuck. Coincedence?
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                    • Profile picture of the author yukon
                      Banned
                      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

                      Yes I know you like to base your opinion on snippets what once might've been said in the past. For the record none of my affiliate sites use spun content.

                      We also know what you think about Moz so that you don't agree there doesn't suprise me at all.

                      Then you start to ignore other things that I pointed out like user-experience so it's just like talking to a wall here.
                      I guess by past you mean one week ago (9th June 2014) complaints about not ranking Amazon pages.

                      You brought up moz & even claimed some silly stuff they did, what did you expect.

                      No offense but based on what you've described in your Amazon site threads I kinda doubt you really care about user experience.
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                      • Profile picture of the author nik0
                        Banned
                        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

                        I guess by past you mean one week ago (9th June 2014) complaints about not ranking Amazon pages.

                        You brought up moz & even claimed some silly stuff they did, what did you expect.

                        No offense but based on what you've described in your Amazon site threads I kinda doubt you really care about user experience.
                        Yes but how come you relate poor ranking Amazon pages to spun content (which I haven't used in ages for my main Amazon sites)?

                        I didn't bring up Moz in that thread btw, so your mixing all kind of things together here.

                        I only brought up Moz in this thread that content length has an influence on rankings.

                        I don't give a **** about user experience if I have to be real honest, user experience was only used to explain why it might not be the vertical height or word count but it doesn't always matter what you say, it's often more about how you present it (layout/design wise) and then the vertical height, narrow thing comes to light again.

                        Anyway quit mixing things up that have been said months or years ago (spun content), even back then I said that it was something that I was trying out while I try out tons of things on regular base so your assumptions could create even more crazy stories that are miles away from the truth.

                        Heck I even tried auto blogging only weeks ago. Does that automatically mean that all my Amazon sites are in fact auto blogs? Or could that mean that I dedicated only 2 domains to test that? (and yes those were based on spun / auto generated content obvious).

                        I am doing so much things at the same time Yukon (different sites / different projects), you have no idea what's going on here.

                        As I said before, instead of depending on Google's patents like dBurk does or on theories like many others here, including you, I test things myself and draw my conclusions from that. I never depend on what others say, sometimes that leads to learning it myself the hard way, however in most cases it results in better performing sites. It's just part of my job.

                        You have no idea how many times I advised to add more content to a page (eg thin ecommerce pages) and they almost instantly shot up in the rankings.
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          • Profile picture of the author dburk
            Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

            Yes. The height of the words on a page is a huge ranking factor. This post is now SEO optimized.
            Hi Mike,

            While I realize you made this post in jest, the funny thing is that you are at least partial correct. Font size has always been a core part of Google ranking algorithm.

            While I disagree with assertion that article length or "article pixel height" have anything at all to do with ranking for an individual keyword, there is a solid basis for font size as a ranking factor, just not in the way it is being suggestion by nik0 and robertnost.

            Fact is that Google has used rendered font size as a factor to distinguish keywords that might be more important and thus weighted more heavily within and article or piece of content. It is discussed in some detail in the original Backrub white paper published by Brin and Page.

            We frequently see references to h1 tags as a ranking factor which technically is not true, it always has been the font size, as rendered, and not the tag name that makes the difference. An h1 tag that uses CSS to make the font the same size as all the other text on the page provides no extra weighting in Google's algorithm, while relatively larger fonts in any html element do.

            Reference: Section: 2.3, Section 4.1, Section 4.2.5 Section 4.5.1 and Section 6.2
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            • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
              Originally Posted by dburk View Post

              We frequently see references to h1 tags as a ranking factor which technically is not true, it always has been the font size, as rendered, and not the tag name that makes the difference. An h1 tag that uses CSS to make the font the same size as all the other text on the page provides no extra weighting in Google's algorithm, while relatively larger fonts in any html element do.
              An old design document from Google's infancy does not prove your claim. Actually it's the opposite - just think how much both Google and the whole internet have changed over the years.

              Do you have any recent research from a trustworthy SEO practitioner? This kind of font play would be relatively easy to see if it was true.

              Google might use font size for something somewhere, but they're talking about correctly formed HTML documents in their support documentation. Like marking your article titles as such. Maybe they could fall back to font sizes when everything else fails? Still, it's harder to do than just using the document structure, and more prone to errors and manipulation.
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  • Profile picture of the author mkgg
    Don't you think the fact Yoast has a pagerank of 6 anything to do with it ? Like just even tiny tiny bit ?

    The word review can be found at least 12 times on the page in sidebar/comments/elsewhere. So yeah nothing out of the ordinary there.

    PS: Also their reason for not using hostgator sucks, i am a long time customer of HG and have been very happy with their service. Avoid hostgator because a stupid plugin doesn't work..really thats their reason. /rant
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  • Profile picture of the author petermei
    I always try to use minimum 350 words articles
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi robertnost & nik0,

      The minute Google starts using "article size" or "vertical pixel size of the article" as a ranking factor will be the same minute I quit using Google as a search engine.

      I'm still using Google, so I am almost certain they do not use article size as a ranking factor.
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

        Hi robertnost & nik0,

        The minute Google starts using "article size" or "vertical pixel size of the article" as a ranking factor will be the same minute I quit using Google as a search engine.

        I'm still using Google, so I am almost certain they do not use article size as a ranking factor.
        Maybe it increases time of people on site as it's more pleasent to read an article that is made out of snippets with images in between and other rich media instead of a whole lap of text? Bounce rate is a ranking factor.

        Then there's the LSI thing, making a page more relevant, the more content you have the more LSI keywords you end up with.

        So yeah it doesn't specifically have to be the vertical pixel height as ranking factor to benefit from more content.

        Robert claims in his article that he tested it and he saw jumps in rankings so that's some sort of proof, although there could have been a mini update that caused the increase, however not that likely of course.

        Many people say this is no ranking factor, that is no ranking factor while I just switched themes of 9 Amazon sites of mine and got rid of a a ton of affiliate links and image gallery's that linked to Amazon and I doubled my revenue in a week time. More things then you think of play a huge role in rankings, afterall there are 200 ranking factors.

        Some of my posts had a huge sitewide image at the start of the post, pages didn't rank in top 500, as soon as I decreased size and moved the images further down the page I instantly ranked in top 50 for those pages, again many will claim it has zero effect on rankings.

        I'll rather test things myself and let others who haven't tested it scream that it has no influence
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  • Profile picture of the author robertnost
    I'm not trying to convince anyone I'm just giving you a free tip from my long time of dedicated analysis and testing...

    Tip to the "I Know better than you" guys: Read a book!
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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      Originally Posted by robertnost View Post

      Both articles ranked really high! This means that the content nature wasn't so important as it was the actual vertical pixel size of the article.
      Can you please elaborate on how you reached this conclusion? You don't seem to back up the assertion that it's the content "height" that helps you with SEO. I, for one, can't follow the logic.

      Because of the aforementioned that "just a free tip" comment really annoys me. It's not even a "free wild hypothesis" at this point.
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      Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

      What's your excuse?
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      • Profile picture of the author robertnost
        Originally Posted by infear_takao87 View Post

        I like your statement above

        Yeah I feel the same thing.. Google concern about bounce rate. Logically, low bounce rate show that website have better quality of content that can make visitor stay longer and keep searching another content
        Originally Posted by nettiapina View Post

        Can you please elaborate on how you reached this conclusion? You don't seem to back up the assertion that it's the content "height" that helps you with SEO. I, for one, can't follow the logic.

        Because of the aforementioned that "just a free tip" comment really annoys me. It's not even a "free wild hypothesis" at this point.

        The HostGator Review ranking #6 on the first page is my article. If you check its backlink profile you'll see that has the lower amount of backlinks and still ranking better than other articles that have thousands of backlinks below me. One thing that helps for sure its the size. Its also on this article that I did most of the testings.

        I had a chance to closely observe the change of positions for the Yoast article and while doing that I notice that once the number of comments increased the rankings went up even tough its backlink profile was still the same. -This is only another fact that sustains my theory of the vertical pixel size factor.

        Another fact: Measuring the url vertical pixel size is easier than counting the number of words the article has(from a data processing/mining stand point). The processing power needed for counting words on every existing url on the web would triple the server amount of Google and cost them billions. I can't confirm that Google is NOT counting number of words but if I would need to program a similar algorithm I wouldn't dare to count the number of words on the entire web (over and over again).
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        • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
          Originally Posted by robertnost View Post

          I had a chance to closely observe the change of positions for the Yoast article and while doing that I notice that once the number of comments increased the rankings went up even tough its backlink profile was still the same. -This is only another fact that sustains my theory of the vertical pixel size factor.
          How many tests did you run on this? What did you use to track the SERP positions?

          There's also the effect some call "Google dance", ie. Google moving stuff around in a seemingly random way. How old were the test articles? Could it be the "honeymoon period" for new content?

          Trying to see if there's enough data points, or if there's some obvious "contamination" in the results. Doesn't instill confidence when there's a strong and bold assertion in a situation like this. Google search is a black box with thousands of variables in play.

          Edited: Did find your site at about the position you claimed. Indeed the article is fairly new, about a month old according to Google.

          I know it's just an affiliate article and a little BS is to be expected, but just to make sure - you're not seriously comparing the hosts by timing their home pages? If I were a host I'd make sure my homepage would be on an overpowered server with a fat pipe. Just to check that this is not the kind of methodology you'd use with your SEO results.


          Originally Posted by robertnost View Post

          Another fact: Measuring the url vertical pixel size is easier than counting the number of words the article has(from a data processing/mining stand point). The processing power needed for counting words on every existing url on the web would triple the server amount of Google and cost them billions.
          You've got that backwards. Google is already indexing (storing) most pieces of content they come across so it's trivial form them to take a word count from an article. To take the height you'd need to render it in a browser, and if you want the "intended" height you'd need to do it with the CSS file that the author provided. Guess what - Google doesn't even seem to store the CSS files. I know that Google stores some thumbnails of sites, but just to make that clear...

          Web page is not a printed article with some definite length in inches or centimeters. It's just a "serving suggestion" by design. This is one of the major weak points in this whole thought experiment. It'd be hard to do and error prone.
          Signature
          Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
          Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

          What's your excuse?
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by robertnost View Post

          The HostGator Review ranking #6 on the first page is my article. If you check its backlink profile you'll see that has the lower amount of backlinks and still ranking better than other articles that have thousands of backlinks below me. One thing that helps for sure its the size. Its also on this article that I did most of the testings.
          There is so much wrong with this statement.

          Let's start with some obvious ones...

          You have no idea how many backlinks any of those sites have.

          The quality of backlinks matters a lot more than the quantity.

          The site at #10 (http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed....iew/hostgator/), is "bigger" than your page, has more images, and has a video. So if your theory is true about the size of the page playing such a big role, why is it not outranking you?

          If you are going to try to prove something like this, you need to duplicate the results over and over again. One single occurrence is little more than a coincidence.

          Originally Posted by robertnost View Post

          Another fact: Measuring the url vertical pixel size is easier than counting the number of words the article has(from a data processing/mining stand point). The processing power needed for counting words on every existing url on the web would triple the server amount of Google and cost them billions. I can't confirm that Google is NOT counting number of words but if I would need to program a similar algorithm I wouldn't dare to count the number of words on the entire web (over and over again).
          Except that none of that is a fact as nettiapina pointed out.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by robertnost View Post

      I'm not trying to convince anyone I'm just giving you a free tip from my long time of dedicated analysis and testing...

      Tip to the "I Know better than you" guys: Read a book!
      I already gave up a long time ago about this topic.

      The self proclaimed experts think they know it better, that will never end, no matter what legit arguments you come up with like user experience, bounce rate, LSI richness.

      In their minds it's all nonsense.
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  • Profile picture of the author John D
    I myself stopped mostly focusing on getting my content to rank and started focusing on producing content for my readers who access my content via social media and other syndicated channels. This allows me the flexibility to write as much or as little as I want and yet still get somewhat of an audience.
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  • Profile picture of the author inudu
    Both these pages get a lot of links. Yoast is always controversial and knows how to push people's emotional buttons, and the 1st result has lots of user generated reviews.

    Either way, you have to push emotional buttons to get Google to rank you high.

    Pixel size is important but you can no longer just write a generic review in a highly competitive niche.

    The content must "say something" different. Whether good or bad. It needs to be unique enough that people start searching for it naturally.
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  • Profile picture of the author infear_takao87
    Maybe it increases time of people on site as it's more pleasent to read an article that is made out of snippets with images in between and other rich media instead of a whole lap of text? Bounce rate is a ranking factor.
    I like your statement above

    Yeah I feel the same thing.. Google concern about bounce rate. Logically, low bounce rate show that website have better quality of content that can make visitor stay longer and keep searching another content
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  • Profile picture of the author danparks
    Originally Posted by nettiapina View Post

    To take the height you'd need to render it in a browser, and if you want the "intended" height you'd need to do it with the CSS file that the author provided. Guess what - Google doesn't even seem to store the CSS files. I know that Google stores some thumbnails of sites, but just to make that clear...

    Web page is not a printed article with some definite length in inches or centimeters. It's just a "serving suggestion" by design. This is one of the major weak points in this whole thought experiment. It'd be hard to do and error prone.
    That's well said and probably the most logical point in this thread.

    At first I thought the thread was just about "size" in terms of word count - that's typically what the "article size affects SEO" arguments are about. But thinking "size" in terms of number of pixels helps rankings?

    Google doesn't view a web page like an end user. They need the css to know pixel size of text. Would it make sense that Google would access the css file, look at the font-size property of the text on that one page, and then use that (and other factors) to determine the "height" of a page? And that Google would then think the "taller" (by pixels) page was somehow "better"?

    If you really believe this, then testing should be easy. On every site you're doing SEO for, do a global search and replace on the files. Check the current font size and replace. As in - replace all "font-size: 12px;" with, say, "font-size: 72px;" Then sit back and wait for the rankings to climb!
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  • Profile picture of the author Dr los3
    I think we are all being trolled in this thread. You cannot be serious OP.
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