There are two schools of thought among marketers. The first school believes in publishing as much content as possible (quantity). The second school says quality trumps quantity anytime. This article will show you why the debate about quality versus quantity in content marketing is no longer relevant.

In the old days, quantity got you a lot of traction on search engines. You could publish lots of short blog posts and articles (maybe a few hundred words each), and you would find yourself at the top of Google search results. However, this strategy doesn’t work anymore.

If you check the first page of Google search results (for any keyword), you’ll find that the articles in the top 3 spots average 2,000 words. And that’s just the average!

‘Skyscraper’ content is gaining in popularity. Brands and businesses are competing for the top spot by publishing long-form articles. So if you want to score well in search engines, you need to start publishing long-form articles.

But don’t just string together a bunch of sentences and paragraphs to come up with 2,000 words. The quality of your content is very important too. To rank high in search result pages, your content cannot be all fluff and no substance.

Search engines have become so much smarter nowadays. It’s harder to game the system; blackhat SEO tricks in the old days don’t work anymore, and could potentially backfire on you.

These days, search engines can detect the amount of time people stay on your site. If people bounce far too quickly, that tells Google that your content is no good.

Therefore, when creating content make sure you don’t just do it for the sake of search engines. Rather, you should always put your target audience first. Make sure your content is relevant and engaging so they’ll spend time exploring your site. The longer the average time spent on your site, the better quality Google deems your content to be.