Key Takeaways
- Longer blog posts typically do better in terms of SEO
- The ideal post length is usually between 1500 and 2500 words, but anywhere from 700 to 1100 can be just as impactful.
- Blogs under 500 words are too short, and may be considered ‘thin content.’
Picture this: you’re laying out your blog calendar, having done the keyword research, peer-reviewed the topics, and created a few potential articles that you’re sure will help boost your site’s traffic for informational keywords. As you’re sitting down to write, you are faced with a question: how long should it be?
You might have heard that a longer blog post pleases Google’s algorithm, which is mysterious and complex to please as it is. But is longer always better, and is there a point where your Illiad-length blog post is too verbose?
Let’s look at how post length can impact your SEO, and see what the sweet spot for most blog content might look like. Plus, we’ll give a few tips on how to lengthen a blog post that’s not hitting your word count.
Does blog post length impact SEO?
Typically, yes. A longer post will typically fare better than a shorter one in providing valuable content to a reader and is more likely to generate quality backlinks. It also matters in the opposite direction—a short post, 500 words and under, might be seen as ‘thin’ content and skipped over by search engines.
What is the ideal post length?
Digital marketers often disagree about the ‘ideal’ post length. Depending on who you ask, you’ll hear anything from 1,500 words to 2,500 or even hyper-specific numbers like 2,450.
We’ll discuss post length in more detail below, but know that the minimum word count for a blog post should be 500 words. However, you should aim for 700 to 1100 for most topics. Most consider the “ideal” range to be 1500 to 2500.
Why do longer posts do better in search results?
Longer blog posts are better for SEO for a few reasons:
- Google will better understand your text. When Google crawls that page, the more information it has to glean from, the better it’ll shape an understanding of its purpose.
- They provide more value. Search engines want to give users the best results possible, so it stands to reason that a longer post will usually give a quality answer to a user’s query.
- Keyword ranking opportunities. Logically, as long as your blog post stays on topic, you will use the keyword and semantically related terms more often when you’re writing more.
- More time on the page. While time on page isn’t a direct ranking factor, it does signal to Google that a site offers a better user experience (UX) – which is a ranking factor. It will also reduce the bounce rate.
- More backlinks. We love backlinks here, and so should you. Long-form blog content typically nets more backlinks than shorter-form content.
What is too short for a blog post?
Blog posts under 300 words are almost always too short. They won’t be able to convey the information that your target audience might find helpful—at least in the context of a blog. Moreover, search engines consider this to be ‘thin content’, and will likely dismiss blogs of this length. Keep in mind that this length might be acceptable for landing pages, glossary entries, and FAQ pages, where users want to find the information they’re looking for quickly.
500 words is what we’d consider the bare minimum – it’s still not very long, but it’s just enough to provide a bit more context to a reader.
How to make a short blog post longer
If you’re stuck on how to ‘pad out’ your blog post and make it a bit longer, there are a few strategies you can look at. That’s not to say you should bulk up your posts with ‘fluff’ – irrelevant information or anecdotes that do nothing to provide additional helpful information to the reader. Keep it on-topic and valuable to the reader, and you’ll help prove to search engines that you’re an expert on what you’re writing.
Use cases
How can what you’re writing about be applied to different scenarios? For example, if you are writing about the benefits of your SaaS product, how can other industries use the software for various day-to-day applications? Or, how can one business use your product at different levels of the funnel?
If you have the information at hand, this can also become a miniature case study. Draw from your own real-world experience to convert a reader by showing them how your service helped someone like them.
Examples
What might your topic look like in the real world? If you’re penning a blog post about the way a brushless motor works, provide information about how it might operate differently in various applications. A brushless motor in an electric bike is going to look different from the one inside a computer peripheral, and they’ll both vary from the one inside a washing machine.
Context or history
Where did this thing come from? How did it start? How does it relate to your niche?
Be careful with this—if your target audience is already familiar with the basics, leave them out. Suppose you’re writing a blog post about how to fix an RV air conditioner; don’t pad out by defining an RV and an air conditioner. If your reader is searching for the repair topic, they definitely already know what both of those things are, and will be able to tell you’re just trying to bulk out the post.
Instead, context can be valuable for blog posts that answer certain “what is/are” questions. What is a scrum master? What is a thesis? What is Australia’s capital?
Frequently asked questions
Think about what someone who is searching the query you’re writing for might want to know – you can do this as part of your initial keyword research, too. Tools like SEMrush will include ‘questions’ as one of its keyword categories. You can also search for the term yourself, and check out the ‘People also ask’ SERP feature for some ideas. Make these questions into headings, and answer them within the text below.
What if I can’t think of anything?
If you’re finding you can’t think of a single thing to add to your blog post without incorporating too much fluff, consider if it should be a blog post at all. This topic might be best combined into a larger, more topically broad post, made into a glossary or FAQ entry, or repurposed onto your social media accounts.
What is too long for a blog post?
Long posts are helpful for SEO, but can they be too long?
The fact of the matter is that mega-long blog posts can be time-consuming for the reader and the writer alike. A blog post that’s pushing over 4000 words, especially one that isn’t well organized, can turn a reader away.
However, they’re not impossible. The best home for those word counts is ‘pillar’ posts—flagship informative posts that are laser-targeted to your brand and answer one of your ideal customer’s top questions. These should be the end-all-be-all definition, answer, and resource for the target keyword. They’re great for building authority and establishing expertise.
The key to making these posts work is to ensure they’re organized and relevant, and that you’re not hiding information in massive, unbroken blocks of text. Space out your paragraphs and use headings to help readers who might just be skimming find the section they’re after. If you want to make it even easier on your users, add a table of contents with jump links so they can hop right to what they need.
What really matters in blogging for SEO
From 500 words to this blog post’s final length of 1,455 words to 4,500-word epics, what matters most when you’re blogging for SEO is providing value and saying what needs to be said. A blog post should get a point across, answer a question, solve a problem, or inspire a reader. Adding as much or as little as you need to help do that is what will ultimately make a blog post ‘work.’ Excessive fluff on a post can be just as damning as a thin, 300-word, to-the-point post, because they reach the same end: the reader doesn’t get what they wanted.
Take the guesswork out of content
If you find writing long-form content too tedious or time-consuming, or if your writing isn’t quite reaching those all-important top ten results on search engines, you’re in luck: at Redefine Marketing Group, we love content. From researching to writing and optimizing, we have the resources and passion needed to create high-quality blog content.
Contact the team at Redefine Marketing Group today to learn how we can help your content strategy.
