One of the business blog questions I get asked most often is “How long should a blog be?”
Yes, the length of blog posts matters. It matters for two reasons.
Firstly, you want to make sure the length of a blog post is right for the person who’s reading it.
Secondly, you want to make sure you’re getting maximum SEO benefit from the blog post, so the search engines pick it up and present it to people who want to read it.
What is the ideal blog post length for your tribe?
The best length of blog for someone who’s reading your blog is however long it takes to
- Describe the problem
- Express empathy
- Offer some solutions
- Shows how their life could look without the problem
- Drive them to take action in your business
If you’ve written your blog clearly, it offers value and is on a topic your reader is interested in, then any length of blog is the right length.
What is the ideal length blog for SEO?
Data (from people who nerd-out on researching this kindof thing) seems to indicate that for the best SEO a blog post should be around 2,100 – 2,400 words. Shorter blogs can also do well with SEO, but in both cases it’s also important to make sure you’re going after the right keywords, you’ve compressed images and used alt text (the words behind your picture) and included links to other blogs/pages in your site.
What is the shortest length for blog posts?
As I’ve mentioned already, as long as your blog clearly helps your tribe get a win, answers a problem and provides a solution then there is no blog that’s too short.
However, the SEO bots that come to look at your site like pages that contain at least 300 words. SEO tends to work better on longer pages because there’s more opportunity for the right words, phrases and synonyms to be used. Helping the SEO bots to understand and index your page.
How long should my blog be for social sharing?
Most people want to read blogs around 600-800 words
- For best SEO around 2,400 words
- 2,500 words if you want to use your blog to generate leads
- Foundation blogs that go deep into one of the core topics that your business deals with should be around 4,000 words. (My Foundation blog A Guide to SEO for Small Businessescame in at 4800 words)
- Listicles, or blogs with lists, should be around 2,300 words
- Instruction or “how to” blogs should be around 1,700 – 2,100 words
- Blogs that answer the question “what is…” can be shorter at 1,300 – 1,700 words
- Blogs shared on social media are best around 300-600 words
How to work out how long YOUR blog posts should be
You write for your tribe. You know them. So all this talk about how long a blog post ‘should’ be is just to give you an idea.
- NEVER aim for word targets if the content is waffly, hard to read and boring.
- ALWAYS cover off the SEO basics for blog posts.
Think about how much time does your reader have to appreciate the blog? If your audience is new mums then time may be precious. Showing them regular really long blogs may be difficult for them to find the time to read. Where are they reading your blog? If it’s for work, during work hours, will this affect how long they have to read your blog?
Mix up the length of your blog posts. When you check the analytics of your blogs on Google Analytics, make note of the length of the blog post. Which blog length does best for you?
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