How Long Should A Blog Post Be? (The Controversial Truth)
Blog post length is one of the most debated topics I’ve come across in my more than 10 years working in SEO and content marketing.
You’ll find all sorts of people recommending arbitrary word counts because of correlation studies.
I could give you an arbitrary word count and tell you to go for around 1,500 words but I’d be doing you a disservice.
The truth is that correlation studies are pretty worthless and there’s more to consider.
In this post, I’ll break down the factors that determine how long your blog post should be. Particularly for SEO purposes.
Let’s get into it.
“How long is a piece of string?”
This was the seemingly unhelpful answer my middle school teacher gave when I asked how long an essay should be.
But she was right. There is no single correct answer to how long an article, blog post, or essay should be.
While some studies suggest that long-form blog posts tend to rank higher in search engines, this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Some long-form blog posts will still die on their arse. Especially if you put little to no effort into content promotion. That’s just a fact.
Ultimately, the length of your blog post depends on multiple variables. We’ll explore the main ones below.
Content length depends on several key variables
When determining the ideal length for a blog post, you need to consider the context and purpose behind the content.
Here are a few key factors to think about:
- How much can your audience consume? Not all audiences have the time or desire to read long-form content. If you’re targeting busy professionals, they might appreciate more concise posts, whereas an audience looking for in-depth tutorials may expect longer, more detailed articles.
- What does your audience want? Knowing your audience’s expectations is critical. Are they looking for quick answers, or are they seeking thorough insights? If the latter, longer content may be necessary to build trust and authority on the subject.
- What are your time constraints? Consider your ability to publish content within a given timeframe. Long-form content takes time and resources to produce. If you’re time poor, you may need to consider going for short blog posts or publishing less frequently.
- What are you trying to create? Are you attempting to write the ultimate guide on a topic, or is your post meant to be a quick update or comparison? For example, a detailed guide to on-page SEO will require thousands of words, while a simple news article may only need 500 or so.
- What are your goals for the post? Do you want to rank for a competitive keyword in search engines like Google? If so, a longer, more comprehensive article might be entirely necessary for you to have a chance of ranking in Google. However, if you’re simply aiming to inform your audience or deliver a quick answer, there’s no need to overcomplicate things.
- How does content length fit into your blog’s unique selling proposition (USP)? Some bloggers have made long-form, in-depth content part of their brand positioning. Others have made short-form content their focus. In these cases, sticking to one or the other can work to your advantage.
- How frequently do you publish? If you’re posting multiple times a week, it may be tough to maintain the quality of long-form posts consistently. Finding a balance between frequency and depth is crucial to avoid sacrificing quality or burning out. The latter is a lesson I learned the hard way.
Long-form content can have advantages, but it’s not always necessary
Some marketers tout long-form content as literally the only way to go.
This is because studies show a correlation between longer content and higher Google rankings.
But, this simply isn’t true.
Correlation doesn’t always equal causation. Just because a blog post is longer doesn’t mean that it’s ranking because it’s longer.
After all, content length is not a ranking factor in search engines like Google. It makes sense, right? If it were, you could just keep writing more words and rank higher. That wouldn’t be helpful to anyone.
Also, these studies are conducted using limited data sets. Even the larger data sets are still a drop in the ocean compared to the number of keywords people search Google for on any given day.
It could be pure fluke that these data sets didn’t include keywords where shorter content was ranking well.
This is why we have to consider blog post length on a case-by-case basis.
For example, if someone is searching for “What day is Christmas?”, you don’t need a 3,000-word article packed with images and details about the holiday’s history. A concise, factual answer will suffice.
On the other hand, a post explaining “How to build a content marketing strategy” will likely need more depth to provide real value to the reader.
It is worth remembering, however, that long-form content will usually provide more growth opportunities.
Long blog posts are perceived to be more valuable and as such, they’re more likely to be shared on social media and linked to from other sites. And as we learned from Google’s May 2024 algo leak, backlinks matter. They matter a lot.
However, there are no guarantees. Some long-form content may just not rank. There’ll be reasons for this but that’s a topic for another time.
How long should a blog post be for SEO?
Depending on how your content strategy is configured, you may have articles that you publish without any consideration for SEO.
But if you want to rank in search engines like Google, you are going to have to consider the ideal blog post length from the SEO side of things.
This process all starts with keyword research and understanding search intent.
You’ll need to specifically look at your competitors in search and understand:
- What is the intent of the keyword? This is typically broken down into 4 groups; navigational, informational, commercial, and transactional.
- What type of content is ranking? And what types of sites are ranking? For example, you may find that video content and ecommerce sites are ranking for certain queries. In those cases, you might need to reconsider your approach.
- How long are the articles that are ranking? This will give you a rough indicator as to whether to go for short-form or long-form content.
- What unique insights can I provide that my competitors haven’t covered? Generally, you’ll need to cover the obvious things in any article but you need to be asking yourself how you can give your content a competitive edge and bring something new to the table. This will also make people more likely to share or link to your content. So, leverage whatever expertise or proprietary data you can and answer reader questions where possible.
These aren’t easy questions to answer but there are tools that can help you with some of these.
I like to use Frase for this. Type in your target keyword and it will pull in data from competing pages. We’re talking titles, sub-headings, word counts, etc.
You can use it to put together entire content briefs quickly. And you can then use the content editor to optimize your content so it’s more likely to rank higher.
It’ll also help you find relevant talking points and statistics to cover in your content.
I particularly like that it takes an average of word count of all competitors. This can be a useful starting point. It’ll never be precise but it can give you something to aim for.
There will be the odd article that will have higher than average word counts. These are outliers that can be ignored.
Watch this video if you want to see how it works:
Don’t write more for the sake of it
One common mistake is writing longer posts just to hit an arbitrary word count. Don’t write more just for the sake of it. If you find yourself stretching an article to meet a perceived “ideal” word count, chances are you’re diluting its value.
Content length alone won’t make your blog successful—it’s the quality, relevance, and value of what you write that matters most. So, when it comes to blog post length, the key takeaway is this:
The ideal blog post length is however long it needs to be to say what you need to say.
Use long-form content to support short-form content
In my experience, it can be really difficult to get short blog posts ranking in search engines. This isn’t because Google doesn’t rank short posts, it’s because they can be super difficult to earn links to.
But there is a workaround for this.
You’ll need to create linkable assets.
These are usually either long-form high value articles that cover a topic in so much detail that they become the defacto resource on that topic. Otherwise known as pillar pages.
Alternatively, they can be some form of interactive content like a calculator or a quiz that solves a specific challenge that a lot of people are facing.
A good example is Nicola Bleu’s song topic generator. It’s essentially a quiz that helps musicians to come up with ideas for their next song. They answer a series of questions and get a list of relevant ideas at the end.
Regardless of the form your linkable asset takes, it can be great for driving traffic, links, shares, and even email subscribers.
Now, some linkable assets will not rank in Google and won’t drive traffic from organic search.
I’ve got a bunch of long blog posts like this – 5,000+ words of content that only receives a dribble of traffic. Yet they each have 100s of referring domains.
But that’s not the reason to create this type of long-form (or interactive) content.
The point is to build links to them and then internally link to your shorter posts to help those rank.
Seriously. Some people just don’t want to link to short articles even if the insights are solid. People are weird, I guess.
Final thoughts
There’s no specific optimal blog post length. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.
I could say you should aim for 1,500 words. But there’s no way for me to know what topic you’re covering and whether you could do it justice in that word count.
The ideal length for a blog post depends on your end goal. What you’re trying to achieve, the message you’re trying to convey, and there may be SEO related factors to consider as well.
Longer blog posts have their pros and cons. And the same goes for short-form blog posts.
If you want to rank in search engine results and drive organic traffic, considering the average blog post length of competing articles can be a good start. But you’ll never need to hit that word count exactly.
Remember; blog post length can be part of your branding, too.
Some bloggers will focus on solving one specific problem in each blog post, in the most efficient way possible.
Others turn “deep dives” into their “thing” and that helps them build their brand.
Although this can make it a little more tricky to rank in search engines. So, it may be worth making exceptions to this approach for certain articles.
So, next time you’re wondering how long your blog post should be, remember: focus on what you’re trying to communicate, who you’re writing for, and why you’re writing it.
And never write more just to hit an arbitrary word count—write what’s necessary to say what you need to say.
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