John Mueller of Google answers questions about SEO best practices for news websites, especially when it comes to posting shorter articles.
News sites shouldn't be too concerned about article length, Mueller says, as shorter articles sometimes work for the given query.
This point was discussed during Google Search Central's SEO Hangout on February 19.
SEO Named Lene Hegland, Who Runs A News Website, Asks Muellerwhat are the risks of having short articles considered light content.
She mentions that she is even considering not indexing short articles, which can be a single paragraph, in case that helps her site in the search rankings.
Its concerns about light content are legitimate, as Google has been known to downgrade light content.
The update of the Panda algorithm is designed to reduce the prevalence of lightweight content with little or no added value.
What should Hegland do about the short articles on his news site? Should it not index them so that Google doesn't see the light content?
Here's what Mueller recommends.
Google's John Mueller on Short Articles
To put a noindex tag on short articles, Mueller says that the decisionZion comes down to whether the site owner wants the pages to be indexed or not.
Mueller says he doesn't think a noindex tag is needed just because an article is short, as sometimes smaller stories may be fine.
Hegland says yes, she wants the articles to be indexed in Google search, but she is afraid of sending five signal negati with light content.
Mueller tries to reassure her by saying that Google doesn't care about the length of the content:
Short content is not automatically considered light content. Google doesn 't rate the value of content solely based on its length.
Long articles run the same risk of being considered light content if they are full of spam or if they do not contribute to anything unique to the web.
Content that is duplicated or extracted from other sources, without adding new information, isother forms of lightweight content.
A short article can add value if it brings something new and useful to the web, such as an update on breaking news that other sites do not have.
Short content may also be suitable if it responds to the user 's request. Google aims to deliver the best results for every search, not the longest.
Listen to Mueller's answer in the video below:
For to learn more about this hangout, please see the articles below:
