Q: My pillar page is 1,200 words and ranks #9. Is making it longer actually the fix?

Q: My pillar page is 1,200 words and ranks #9. Is making it longer actually the fix?

Short answer: not length for its own sake, but coverage depth often is. A marketing site had a "email marketing" pillar at 1,200 words, position 9.

They didn't pad it. They mapped the top 8 results, found 9 subtopics those pages all covered, and expanded the pillar to address each one properly (it grew to about 3,100 words because of real coverage, not fluff).

Result in 8 weeks: position 9 to 2, and the pillar started ranking for 50+ additional keywords tied to those new subtopics.

In practice: word count is a side effect, not the goal. The win was covering every subtopic a searcher expects on that head term.

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