The Ideal Length of Blog Posts

Image Source

“How long should an ideal blog post be?” 

Bloggers, content writers, search engine optimization (SEO) specialists alike have all ask themselves this proverbial question.  This pressing question becomes a lot more imperative when these writers are under the employ of an SEO company as this company would utilize their posts in building links.
Though there is no precise approximation as to how many words you should put into a post, to obtain a successful amount of readership, shares, and comments, writers must have at least have an idea as to how to make their blog posts long enough to be comprehensive yet short enough to maintain their readers’ attentions.  

So, how do writers hit that particular sweet spot wherein a blog is long enough to cover all salient points yet concise enough as so not to bore the reader? Well, there is a multitude of techniques but the first thing writers must take into consideration is to dispel of the myth that their readers would prefer to peruse posts that are shorter. While this may be true for readers who are looking to pass the time, the same cannot be said for readers genuinely gathering as much information as they can garner. These readers are the ones who want a comprehensive view regarding a particular topic you may have the opportune avenue for writing. And nothing disappoints them more than an insubstantial piece they will come across online that barely scratches the surface. If these readers see that reading your entire article does not take more than at least two scrolls, they will dismiss your entire article and look for something more favorable. Needless to say, your post would not get that much-needed shares and readership either.

So, if it is a fallacy that post should be short, what then is the ideal length? 

Well, when it comes to hitting the perfect word count and length of a post, it all boils down to the type of entry or post you are writing. This means that the length of your post largely depends on what advantages you want to get out of your blog or post and what you want to accomplish. If you are looking to have more comments on your blog, then you will fare better if you have shorter posts (this is especially true if you are focused on asking your readers some questions in order to generate a discussion). Ideally, these posts should be no more than 275 words and your main focus should be a writing prompt that sparks a discussion.

A disadvantage of short posts is that they rarely get shared on social media and is not exactly the best thing for SEO, but if you are trying to build an audience,  try this tack.  However, if your goal is to have more social media shares then you must appropriately choose a topic that is incredibly relevant to your audience. Additionally, the quality must be excellent as articles that are sub-par or are written substandardly would only succeed in getting ridiculed online. For social media shares, the average length of your post should be between 600 to 1250 words. To really get your post noticed and shared, write a catchy headline with a compelling premise—steer clear from writing articles that bait your reader into reading your post though as they would not take this too kindly.

And lastly, if you are looking to drive more traffic from Google to your blog, this largely means you are writing basically for search engine optimization (SEO). Writing for SEO remains to be the trickiest among all others, but the incentives are beyond great as when done right. Should you want more traffic from Google, write better-researched posts with at least 2450 words. This may sound a tad bit too demanding but long authoritative posts are the search engines’ friends—most especially if they are focused on solving a problem for the reader. This is the ideal number of words to get more traffic to your blog.

Concisely put, shorter posts are better for generating comments while longer posts are ideal for SEO and generating traffic.  However, do not limit yourself. Do not be afraid to write extensive posts that are over 2000 words or incredibly short posts that are less than 600 words. Do consider that there are topics you can cover as comprehensively as you can without sounding monotonous while there are topics you can sum up in a short post. The key is to vary your style and see what works best to your advantage. Do this and you may just come up with an ideal length for yourself.