Every few months we get some new advice from a blogging guru saying that our blog post length needs to be longer, or shorter, or that they should be broken up into 10 pages of bite-sized chunks… it can make you crazy. Let’s talk about this. How long should your blog posts really be?
The Blog Post Length Magic Number
It would be great if there was a magic number that guaranteed best results, wouldn’t it? But that’s like asking someone to tell you how long your conversations with other people should be. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a few words or sentences; sometimes you have a nice long talk. It all depends on how much you have to say to each other, doesn’t it?
The same approach works well with your blog posts. Sometimes you’re sharing just a quick tip or a recipe for example. In that case something around 200 to 300 words will do just fine. Add a pretty picture and call it good.
Other times you want to go into a little more depth. You want to cover different aspects of a topic, share some examples and give your readers as much information as you can. In those cases make it as long as you need to make it. Long posts are great. They help establish your authority and if the content is great, they are often shared on social media. Plus long posts give the search engines a lot of text to sift through and give you more chances to rank for long-tail keywords.
Mix up Your Blog Post Length
The best advice is to mix longer and shorter blog posts. It will make your blog seem more natural and organic. Don’t force yourself to reach a certain magic word count if you don’t have that much to say on a topic. Keep it short and to the point. Your readers will thank you.
If on the other hand you have a lot to share in a different post, go for it. Break the longer content up into small paragraphs and help your readers stay on track with subheadings and bullet points. Make it easy to scan longer posts so your readers can get an idea of what the content is about before they commit to reading it all.
And if you’re finding yourself writing a few thousand words, consider breaking it up into a series of blog posts instead. That certainly is a blog post length that is just too darn long (for most people to read…) It will help both you and your readers from getting overwhelmed with one long post. Link from one part of the series to the next to make it easy for your blog readers to follow along.
Above all, enjoy the process of writing and pay attention to what your readers prefer. If your short posts tend to do better, consider keeping your posts short and to the point. If you’re getting a lot more engagement and social media shares on longer posts, combine a few of the shorter blog post ideas into a longer one. And whatever you do, don’t get hung up on a number of words.
Some folks think that the a longer blog post will slow down the load times of the page. While technically that is true, the additional time is negligable. You can read more about WordPress Load Times in this post.
A Real Example
On another one of my websites, the shortest blog post has 5 words, Gratitude Log, and longest blog post is A Thanksgiving Tradition with 2743 words!
What Do You Think?
So, after all that, what is the length that YOU have heard? Do you try to keep to a minimum limit? Share your length in the comment section below!
(By the way… this blog post is a total of 638 words!)
So, I think there is a sweet spot.
I don’t let a post hit 1200 words. And, those are special occasions. I generally keep my posts way under 1000 words. With a sweet spot between 445 and 805 words. Because it’s not the “word length”, but the reading length that counts.
No post should take more than 4 minutes to read. The more abstruse the subject, the slower one reads. Which means the length needs to be somewhat shorter. Which, admittedly, is a problem when you want to explain difficult subject.
I agree, Roy – sometimes too long is simply too long. The best length is the amount that is needed to get the message across. In many cases, a video can be more effective than a long lengthy and wordy post!
Hi Paul
A useful post (all 368 words)
I agree with you – keep your posts short and sweet and to the point, this way you have the better chance of social media sharing. Its also worth keeping in date when google and word press keep changing their goal posts
All the best
Barry
I stopped playing the ‘Please Google’ game a while ago. I don’t necessarily write for the search engines – never have, and I don’t think I ever will. I write for my readers. Now, with that said, I do apply good SEO techniques to my blog posts (most of the time). I have never been ‘Google Slapped’ or hit becuase of a change in a search engine algorithm.
I definitely agree with mixing it up. I definitely like to have the longer posts with a load of high value content (1000+) but not every post required that length and some of my post barely touch 300 words.
I try not to get too caught up in things like this and focus on creating content that will be helpful to my readers.
Perfect, Wendy! It is all about providing valuable content to your readers!
I don’t really have a length in mind when I write, but I do try to make sure they aren’t too long. Yours, today, was just right. But I was surprised to find it had that many words in it. That’s encouraging, because it means if a post is interesting enough, it can be 600 words without being too long. And I would have been happy to read more on the topic. Thanks! ~Jeanine
That is an interesting point – when we get absorbed by the material and it captures us and resonates with what we are looking for, the length may not matter. Thanks, Jeanine!
I like your fresh perspective Paul. I tend to go for longer articles but you are right. My articles don’t need to be any particular length. I should stop when stopping feels natural. Great advice! I featured this article on my weekly “This Should Go Viral” link post on my blog!
Thank you, Keesha! I appreciate you! Longer works sometimes, as does shorter. Just deliver the content that people want to hear about!