One of the first questions that many people come across in the world of content marketing is word count. What’s the ideal length for a blog post?
Should blog posts be long? Should blog posts be short?
Does it really matter?
The long and short of it: word count matters a lot.
The length of a blog post can determine everything from its position on search engines to how likely it is for readers to share it on social media.
Hit the nail on the head with blog post length, and you could be in for a wild ride of high traffic, links, and social shares.
Before we dive into defining the ideal length for a blog post, there’s one important factor that needs attention: quality.
More important than the length of your blog posts, is the quality of your blog posts.
Great writing, great value, and great readability are essential elements of producing a successful blog post.
To this end, it’s unlikely to come as a surprise that the ideal blog post length is a blog post long enough to satisfy the reader…
Long-Form Content Is King
There’s a time and a place for short-form content, but if you’re after results, then long-form is your safest bet.
According to research by Eyemagine, short-form blog posts generate 9x less leads than long-form blog posts.
Long-form content can offer more to readers as with a short blog post you run the risk of circumscribing the topic and not providing readers with the information they need.
Longer blog post writing can provide real depth and leave readers feeling like they’ve just read something of value – you answer the reader’s questions and satisfy their need to understand a topic.
Long-form content delivers what the vast majority of readers want: scannability.
79% of people scan content – all the subheadings, lists, and images in long-form content make for a great reading experience.
An educational and informative blog post should be the only blog that the reader requires on the topic.
That being said, there’s a difference between writing for the sake of it and writing because the topic requires it.
Putting quantity over substance is a recipe for disaster!
How Long is Long Enough?
Depending on what you consider to be the ‘perfect’ outcome of your blog post and which research you look at, the ideal blog post length can differ slightly:
2250-2500 words – An analysis of 6,192 HubSpot blog posts showed that this is the optimum word count for organic traffic.
>2500 words – In the same HubSpot analysis, this was the optimum length for social shares and links.
7 minutes – According to Medium, posts of this length have the longest average reading time.
1890 words – After analysing 1 million search results on Google, Backlinko discovered that this was the average word count for first page results.
3000 – 10,000 words – In an analysis of 100 million articles by BuzzSumo, this length received close to twice the average number of social shares as short-form articles (<1000 words).
While there’s some variation in ideal length, blog posts of around 1500-2000 words seem to achieve better results all round.
Are Shorter Blogs Redundant?
Short-form writing can absolutely feature in your content marketing strategy and be extremely successful!
As we’ve mentioned, there’s a time and a place for short-form blogs.
Take the question: How long does it take to boil an egg?
What are the chances that the reader is going to want a 2000-word article charting the history of egg boiling practices over the last few centuries? It’s more likely to be the case that the reader wants to know quickly exactly how long it takes to boil an egg.
It’s essential to let the topic determine the word count!
Shorter blog post writing is straight to the point and great for connecting with and engaging the reader.
Longer content performed better in the BuzzSumo article analysis, but as there were roughly 16x more shorter articles (<1000) than longer articles (>2000 words), the impact is still there.
The Takeaway
A good blog post of roughly 2000 words or more has the potential to deliver great things.
However, given that Google has around 200 ranking factors – including everything from dwell time and backlink quantity to SEO and organic click-through-rate – other factors, and quality especially, are essential for a high-ranking blog.
If you produce unique content that people want to read, and optimise it for visibility and readability, then people will read it.
At Anglo Content, our blog copywriters understand the importance of quality. When you outsource blog content writing to our talented writers, you’re guaranteed to get blog posts that engage readers, no matter the length.