Optimizing your content will help you to earn more.
Our recommendations are based on years of data and research into what performs the best, not just from an advertiser perspective, but also from the reader’s point of view. Making your content easier to read, particularly on mobile devices, will help you to keep readers engaged longer, increases their average time on page, and even increases pages per session.
All of these little details will help you to earn more, but they will also help you to create a better user experience for your readers.
Content Length
Longer content has several benefits. You have more words on the page which gives search engines more to go on when they are pulling your content into their results. Longer content provides the opportunity to give readers more detail. Longer content also creates more space for monetization. Here are a few tips for increasing content length.
1. Write more.
We recommend aiming for a word count of 500-800 words, but that’s just a general guideline. Some content needs to be MUCH longer. Other content can be shorter and still helpful.
Try to anticipate reader questions as you draft, or edit posts after the fact to add answers to questions from comments or social media.
Write for your AUDIENCE (not algorithms) to have staying power.
2. Break that writing up into shorter, more frequent paragraphs.
Shorter paragraphs are easier on the eyes, particularly on mobile devices. On most sites, the majority of the audience is on mobile.
Increase the likelihood that a reader will continue scrolling and actually read by breaking paragraphs into smaller pieces. On a small screen, three sentences can make for an entire screenview, depending on font size and line spacing. Use hard returns and short paragraphs to give readers a “pause” on the page.
Those pauses also create spaces where ads can be placed.
The formatting of this article is an example you can use.
3. Increase font size and line height spacing to be at least 18px tall and 1.6px respectively.
This can be dependent on your chosen font (anywhere between 18-21px can work well for body copy), and some themes inherit line spacing from the default settings, so check to see that these two details are balanced.
Increasing font size in particular is a no-brainer when it comes to adding length to your overall content, and is usually one of the easiest site-wide changes you can make!
Pro Tips
- Beware of going TOO far with font size. Fonts that are too large can have the opposite effect. Instead of making the site easier to read on a small device, tipping the scales too far can actually make it more difficult.
- Check your posts on desktop and mobile after changing font size and line height to be sure it has actually changed in both places.
- If you have recipe or how-to cards, check to be sure that the font size changed there along with the rest of your site.
Content Length and Your Sidebar
The ad that lives at the bottom of your sidebar and then sticks as the reader scrolls is one that advertisers pay a premium for. Viewability is great with this ad (when your site structure allows it to perform) which increases CPM, and impressions are high because this is an ad unit that refreshes.
The logic of this ad is that it comes into view when a reader scrolls down the page enough to reach the end of the sidebar. That ad stays with the reader (in the sidebar) as they scroll down the page, and read.
The longer a desktop reader has the sticky sidebar ad in view, the more it will make you.
Longer content increases the likelihood of refreshes as the reader scrolls.
The TL,DR. Writing more content, in shorter paragraphs, does the following:
- Makes readers happy with easier to read content. Shorter paragraphs are friendlier to mobile readers.
- Gives you more real estate to allow for more in-content ads.
- Gives your sticky sidebar ad better performance by making your content as "tall" as possible.
Other Top Tips:
- Include images where possible. The internet is a visual place, and images can help to keep the reader's interest. [Note that images need to be your own original images or properly licensed stock images]
- Keep an eye on the width of your content container (this is the part of your website that contains the content). Container width will ideally be between 728px and 1024px. Content that is too wide can have the effect of making your content shorter, and it can also make it more difficult to read. (Think about the standard padding in a Google or Word doc that narrows the content so it’s easier to read!)
- Skip the page builders. Page Builders can impact HTML structure, and will make that structure inconsistent across your site. This can impact the ad targeting, but page builders are also known for being very heavy and slow. They are not recommended.
- Avoid grouping blocks unless you definitely do not want ads to appear! Block editors give you the option to group blocks together, and these groups will wrap the content inside them in HTML that will prevent ads from interrupting. If you change strategies later on this can be a very manual thing to undo, so be sure grouped blocks are intentional, and use hard returns between paragraphs and images as a best practice.