Similar Several Articles or One Article

[kitoks]

I have a Q&A project having content of many different topics.
My question: writing several articles on the same topic will up my rank? For example I work on keyword "Rhassoul clay". So if I write 5 topics about rhassoul clay (400 words) will it be a plus for my webpage or not? Or it is better to write one article with 400 x 5 = 2000 words instead of splitting it into 5 articles?

[EGOL]

I would write one authoritative article that is the best on the web for this topic.  It would have lots of high quality photos and be clearly divided into subheadings so that a person scanning can find what he is looking for.

An article that immediately impresses people with images, breadth and length has a better chance of being shared than a large number of articles that cover only snippets of the topic.

Long articles also pull in nice amounts of longtail traffic because they have a huge diversity of words on a page.

[StelinSEO]

Hi Paulius,

This is a good question and one I've come across a lot. There's a lot of messages out there about quality of content, length of content and keywords in content, but I think the purpose of the content is being lost on people. The purpose of content should always be information that is useful to the searcher.

That might mean a 2000 word page, or 4 x 200 word blog posts, a slideshare presentation, an infographic or a 5 minute video. It's really up to you to decide who this content is for and what's the most useful way for you to communicate it to them. If in doubt, check out what other people are doing and what their engagement is like. If you see 2000 word article with 2 shares vs a 5 min video with 70 likes, the video would be the better option... but you might not deliver it right! Experiment, test, get advice and see what works for your brand and your content.

The best content strategies are the ones that are consumer-centric, not search engine-centric.

Stel

[Chris.Menke]

Paulius,

It doesn't much matter what any of us have to say about this--it has more to do with what the person who would want to link to, or share any, of those articles has to say.  That's because, before Google really gives a hoot about whether you wrote six of one or a half dozen of the other, it wants to know if anyone actually found the articles worthwhile. I'd recommend that instead of asking us, go out and research the folks who would be reading your article as well as the ones who could likely link to it and ask them.

If you did that, they may say "You know  Paulis, we really don't need another article on Rhassoul clay, there are already a bunch of them out there." Or, they may say, "You know Paulis, I've read everything out there and what I still don't know about Rhassoul clay is ........."  Or,  they may say, "If you researched and wrote an article about the ancient trade routes the clay was carried to culture outside Morocco, I would definitely link to that from my blog."

In either of those cases, It wouldn't really matter how long the article was, if it was well written and engaged the audience.  One share or one link to an article of 50 words is worth more than an unshared or unlinked article of 5000 words.  Words are cheap. Shares are what you're going for.

[ofw12387]

I would write just one article.

If you write 4 articles competing for the same keyword the link juice will by divided by four

I did the same mistake in the past and as a result google was not really sure which url should rank for that specific keyword

Hope this helps