Google is constantly looking for the best quality posts to rank up at the top of their search results, right? So do you think and. handful of paragraphs at maybe 500 words would qualify as high-quality, relevant, and thorough?

Probably not.
Especially next to a 1500 word, thorough, relevant piece of content on the same subject.

This is why longer content ranks because more often than not it's of much higher quality and more thorough.

But it's about relevancy and answering the question more than it is about word count.

Make sure you cover your post topic sufficiently. Check for questions related to it "people also as" section under google search.

You can use https://my.jaaxy.com/search/serp-analysisn to find out length of your competitions posts. "View detail".

To help the reader in a hurry you can write a great summary paragraph first then go into the detail.

When first starting out it may seem difficult to write a post that long, but the more you know about your niche and the more you write, the more you will see that 1000+ words in not long at all.

always check out your competition....
the whole aim is to tempt google to replace one of the articles it has selected as it's top 10 with yours...
now why would it do that...
what would give it a reason to do it...
relevance...
make your article more relvant that the others in the top 10 and maybe for that keyword you will be highly ranked...
so make it more on topic than the others, make the contents more digestible, if they have written tons and you can see that a table could present the information in an easier manner then....
or a graph....
something scannable...
so do they have to be 1k worsd nope, but more content on topic means a more in depth article....
and if you have lots of subheads and write each one as an answer then it won't seem like a huge task to write 1k words....
5 sub heads at 200 words a piece ...1k plus words....
how long does it take to write 200 words....
add a relevant image for each sub head and.....
so plan out your article rather than just write...
create the subheads as relevant info ( and keywords if you can)
then fill in the text between....
and always have a purpose ...at the beginning trying to get signups to consume your info...
later to follow through and buy through your links...
have fun
phil
tha above answer is about 200 words....
so 5 of these and ......

With time and experience, I realize in-depth is better than light/fluffy, to answer what people are looking for is my conclusion (as short or long as it needs to be)

I'm on board with AbieAJ's answer! Your competition will tell you how long your post should be.