My writer is going ballistic…

I hired a writer with a passion for the niche site of mine she’s working on. She’s going ballistic. At first I nearly asked her to ease up. But then I thought “let’s see what happens.”

What on earth am I talking about when I say a writer is going ballistic?

I’m talking about the articles she’s writing.

Calling them cornerstones is understating it.

They are tomes. Novelas in length.

I’m talking 10,000 to 16,000 word articles.

I never thought I’d publish this type of content.

I just sent her a list of topics and she went ballistic.

When she submitted the first one coming in a tad over 15,000 words, my initial thought was this is overkill. Actually, my first thought was “yikes, that article cost me $700+”.

Before I sent an email asking her to ease up, I thought “let’s see how this plays out… will this content dominate search?”

Since the first, she’s written 4 such articles. Each one takes her a full week to write.

The level of detail is incredible.

I love these articles.

Not only do I expect they’ll rank for the long tail keywords they target but in time they could rank for the seed keyword which would be tens of thousands of visitors per month.

In fact, on my older, larger niche site, I am ranking well for some high search seed keywords. These articles are detailed, long and well written. They’re my best. So it works. It doesn’t work every time but it doesn’t take many for some great traffic.

So I told her I really like the articles and to keep at it. In one year, I’ll have 50 such articles on this newer niche site.

Should you do the same?

Not necessarily, especially if starting out.

This length of content isn’t necessary to rank for the low competition keywords.

Moreover, I’m publishing a lot of other content on this site that’s not anywhere nearly that long. It’s not my sole content strategy.

It’s an experiment.

Whether it pays off is anyone’s guess.

If you’re newer to this biz, focus on low competition keywords. You don’t need 10K word articles to rank for those.

Build up your traffic and site authority.

Once you have cash rolling in, you have wiggle room to try new things.

My main strategy is still to publish plenty of good content in the 1,500 to 3,500 word range targeting low competition keywords by a cadre of writers. All my writers optimize articles with MarketMuse (lifetime deal = nobrainer).

The thing is, even with the very best content it takes many months to rank for higher search keywords. In some cases 18 to 24 months. I’m not kidding. That’s how long it’s taken me to rank for some seed keywords and that’s on a site with a ton of authority.

It’s baby steps.

1. Get some traffic.
2. Attract links.
3. Build up authority.
4. Rinse and repeat.

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In time, swing for the search engine fences with some content but continue with the strategy that worked in the first place.

Always continue with the strategy that works until it doesn’t. When you find something that’s working for you, you’re fortunate.