Our client's organic traffic dropped 40% after we switched from long form to short form content

I mean, we had this client in the home decor space who was killing it with 2500 word blog posts. Then we got a new account manager who insisted Google wanted shorter content now. Over 6 months we slimmed everything down to 800 words max. Their traffic went from 15k monthly visitors to around 9k. The worst part is the client is blaming us for the drop. Has anyone else seen something similar happen when you try to follow the latest Google trends too fast?

2 comments

2 Comments

white.seth18d agoMost Upvoted

I actually see it the other way - if your long form was ranking well and driving traffic, why would you change it before testing shorter stuff on new pages first? Google hasn't really said long content is bad, they just said make sure every word counts (which short content doesn't automatically do).

michaeljones18d ago

Yeah I totally get where you're coming from with that "test shorter stuff on new pages first" point. I actually remember reading some SEO case study a while back where this agency did almost the same thing you described - they had a client ranking well with longer guides and switched everything to short posts overnight. The traffic tanked just like here. What stuck with me was the guy saying Google's algorithm had already learned to trust those long form pages for specific keywords, and changing them basically reset that trust. It's like Google saw the shorter pages as less helpful for the same topics. The whole "every word counts" thing is real, but that doesn't mean 800 words automatically counts more than 2500 words. Sounds like that account manager jumped on some headline without reading the full story. I'd bet if they had just kept the old posts up and started new short ones on fresh topics, they'd see what actually works in their niche instead of guessing.