Blog Post Length: How Long Should Your Blog Articles Be?

 

What do you think is the perfect blog post length? How long my blog posts should be? If you are a blogger, you ave probably asked this question hundreds of times to your editor. And most of the time, you will hear an answer that sounds something like this: “How long the blog needs to be”.

Here we will discuss some essential topics on blog post length:

What is Blog
What Is The Purpose Of a Blog
Myth: “Shorter Is Better In Blog Posts”
Do you want more traffic from Google for your blog?
Why do people think long blog posts are better for SEO?
Why blog posts should be as succinct as possible
How to write a high-quality lengthy post

Let’s dive into it….

What Is Blog?

A blog is an informational website or online journal displaying information in the reverse chronological order, with the new posts appearing first, at the top. It is a platform where a group of writers shares their views on a particular subject.

What is The Purpose Of a Blog?

There are various reasons to do successful blog writing for personal use and only a handful of strong ones for business blogging. Blogging for projects, business, or anything else that might help you earn money has a very straight purpose- to rank your website higher in SERPs, a.k.a boost your visibility.

1. Drive Quality Traffic To Your Website

One of the ways people find your site is by typing your business name right into their browser.

For one second forget that you are a small business, and people find you by typing in your site URL. Even then, that is an audience that already knows about you! You are already on their radar but that does not assist you to get new traffic.

Another method to get your hand noticed by people is to:

Generate traffic by placing many paid ads.
Buying an email list and blasting the innocent visitors with many sales emails every week.

So how to boost traffic that does not stop the second you go out of money?

Yes, blogging is the answer you are searching for.

When you regularly post content on your blog, it indicates to search engines that your website is active and they should check it out more often to see your new content.

2. Convert That Traffic Into Leads

So now that good traffic is coming to your website, it’s time to convert it into leads.

And blog posts can assist you to do that too. All you have to do is add a call-to-action button to every post you make.

The key is to make a content asset for which people would want to exchange their information. It must be a high-quality content that will help them. And a CTA button is how you will convert them into leads for your sales team.

It should be noted here that even though the aim of a blog is not selling your product, it can still encourage people to make the final buying decision.

3. Business Establish Authority

One aim of a blog that some business owners think about is to answer common questions their customers have.

Can you assume how many more leads a salesperson could close if their target customer explores that the blog content is written by their sales team? Just imagine the impact of sending an informational blog article or post you made to explain consumers?

This is a pretty powerful thing.

For instance, you wanted to be a beautician and was looking for an academy where you can enroll. If this is your first time going to a fashion academy, you are obviously clueless about where to begin. So, you googled “fashion academy near me” and you were overwhelmed with the results. With many professional beauticians and websites, who will you contact? Then you stumbled upon the blog of a professional beautician working in an academy. The blog has many articles to help beginners like you to start. Will it affect your decision in selecting the academy to enroll in?

You see, if prospects find answers to their common questions through blog posts written by you or your team, they are more likely to convert into paid customers as they already trust you, because you have assisted them in the past- even before they made a decision to buy anything from you.

If you are consistently churning out content that is helpful and useful for your target audience, it will assist you to establish you as an authority in their eyes.

As a business, you depend on consumers to keep purchasing your products and services. As a new business, you depend on blogging to assist you to get potential customers and get their attention. Without blogging, your site would remain invisible, whereas running a blog make you competitive and searchable. So, the aim of a blog is to connect you to a prominent audience. Another one is to increase your traffic and deliver high quality leads to your site. It is one of the organized ways to create backlinks.

The more better and frequent your blog posts are, the higher the possibilities for your site to get visited and explored by your target audience.

Now, there are many myths about blog posts, one of those myths is discussed below.

Myth: “Shorter Is Better In Blog Posts”

The majority of expert bloggers perpetuate the myth that shorter is better, that blog posts should be completed within 600 words. They explain that online readers do not have much time and don’t want to read long articles. The only method you can get more readers, they say, is to write posts that are sweet and short.

Don’t give importance to their words.

Honestly, after being in this field for so many years, I have learned that more often the opposite is true: the longer, the better. In fact, you will see on the internet that some of the best-read blog posts are over 1,500 words.

Many of you might think, how can a blog help you in gaining traffic. So, here is some information about that.

Do You Want More Traffic From Google For Your Blog?

Who does not want more traffic? One month I really got amazed by seeing so many visitors coming on my site through Google. I was confused, but then I found that it was my old blogs that were attracting the audience to my site. A blog post is one of the powerful sources of building qualitative links.

Search Engine Optimization is a very tricky business, and while the outcomes for getting it right can be very high, concentrating too much on it can be a huge loss of time. However, what blog post length is perfect for getting Google and other search engines to take notice of your blog?

Blogging tip: Want more traffic from the web? Write longer, massively researched posts 2,450 words long.

Search engines like authoritative, long posts, especially when they are focused on solving a pressing issue for readers. Longer posts might not get so many comments, and they might even be shared little less than average on social media, but if you can wait until Google takes notice, you might just get lucky and observe a big increment in search traffic.

With this, we come to how long blog posts are better for SEO.

Why Do People Think Long Blogs Are Great For SEO?

Many studies present a correlation between content length and the thing that you link with effective SEO performance. But before you write anything, make sure you know what is valuable content writing.

However, correlation does not prove causation.

So let’s discuss some more common things.

1. Longer Content Gets More Backlinks

Backlinks are the most essential Google ranking factor.

People know this because they are the foundation of the PageRank algorithm. Google also talks about backlinks in the matter of ranking useful pages.

If you look at the relationship between backlinks and word count there is a strong positive correlation.

a) Why Might You See This Correlation?

Let’s begin with the most obvious reason: longer blog posts just look more impressive, and that is why more people link to them. But before you write any long post, first know how to write valuable article.

Although that might look like an obvious claim, there are much data that does not back it up.

You can take another example that cuts off at 1,000 words. For posts, longer than this, you can actually find a strong negative correlation between backlinks and word count. In other words, the average number of backlinks from different sites begins to decrease after 1,000 words.

So what’s the issue here?

The theory behind this is that the correlation at least partly comes down to the balance between succinctness and thoroughness.

Let me explain:

Generally speaking, longer content tends to involve more worthy links. But it also buries those essential “need to know” points among much less important “nice to know” information. The outcome is a piece of content that some people read all the way through, meaning that some people actually come across the included link-worthy points. And if some people come around them, fewer people will link to you. Just like comprehensive link building services, longer contents are also beneficial.

It is also true that the majority of people are not going to link to a blog post they have not read. And there will be some of those people if your post takes three hours to read.

b) What Should You Do About It?

Keep your blog posts fluff-free and concise while making sure to include essential link-worthy points.

Making sense. But how do you know what adds up to a link-worthy point?

One way is to paste the URL of a top-ranking post for your target keyword into tools like Ahref’s Site Explorer. Then, head to the backlinks report and analyze all the links anchor and surrounding texts for trends.

For example, if you do this for the top-ranking posts for SEO copywriting, you will see that a disproportionate amount of links will come. With this, you will ensure that guest blogging is on the right track.

Because we know that section is responsible for so many links, people can make sure to include something similar when they write about the same topic.

2. Longer Content Gets More Organic Traffic

As per the analysis of the pages, there is a moderate positive connection between organic traffic and content length.

But again, it is not wise to assume causation.

a). Why Might You See This Correlation?

Let’s first consider the thought that Google is biased towards longer content. As an outcome, longer content ranks higher and attain more organic traffic.

Google’s John Mueller agrees. In 2019, he said that word count is not a ranking factor.

So let’s go through some convincing reasons why the correlation might exist.

First, there is a positive correlation (up to 1,000 words) between backlinks and word count. People already know this, and you know that backlinks are essential for ranking.

Second, longer content tends to be more thorough and naturally covers many subtopics. For that reason, longer content mostly ranks for more long-tail keywords.

Just take a list of Google search operators. As per the Ahref’s Site Explorer, it ranks for about 7,200 keywords. Furthermore, you can use a guide to blog SEO.

Many of these keywords are some other methods of searching for the same thing such as Google search commands and Google search modifiers. But the page also ranks for the related terms such as Google file type operator and Google inurl.

This happens because your post is thorough and mentions both the operators.

If your blog post were less through and did not talk about these things, it would not rank for those keywords. You see that happening with a competitive post about the same topic. It only mentions twelve search operators, so it does not rank for many related keywords.

b). What Should You Do About This?

Instead of writing tirelessly until there is no chance that you missed anything essential, begin by researching what’s vital. That way, you can keep your posts succinct by involving the essential and ignoring the unimportant.

A convenient way to do this is to move your eyeballs to the top-ranking pages for commonalities.

For example, both of the top-ranking pages for keto diet discuss what the keto diet is.

Top ranking pages keto diet

And what type of food you should eat.

Top-ranking pages keto diet foods

The fact that many top-ranking pages are discussing these things convey to you that they are likely more important points. Furthermore, to rank higher you can also use cost effective organic SEO services.

You can also do a content gap analysis to analyze the keywords that various top-ranking pages rank for, then eyeball the report for important topics and subtopics. To do this, paste the URLs of some top-ranking pages for your main keyword into some popular tool and then leave the bottom field empty.

After that, run the report and search for subtopics.

Here, you can see phrases and words such as what is keto meals, keto diet, and keto breakfast.

Just those few keywords are sufficient to deliver you a rough outline for a blog post.

Why Blog Posts Should Be Succinct

Apart from the correlational data representing that the average blog posts get less traffic and fewer backlinks after a certain length, is there any other reason why you should keep content as succinct as possible?

The simple answer to this question is yes because nobody wants to read any more than they have to.

But is there any type of evidence for this besides the anecdotal?

Absolutely. When the medium studied the correlation between average reading time and post length, they analyzed that engagement begins to drop for posts with a reading time longer than seven minutes. For giving an effective experience to your readers accurate guest blogging is important.

As per a report, most people read at about 250 words per minute. That puts a 7-minute blog post at about 1,750 words.

Does this mean that your blog posts should never be any shorter or longer than that?

Obviously not. It will take more than 1,750 words to manage some topics thoroughly and less for others.

Saying that, even if there is much ground to cover, you should still make an effort to reduce unnecessary fluff from your posts.

One of the tools that can assist with that is Hemingway. It assists to improve your writing by making you know about all the essential words and fluff. According to professionals, it is easy to reduce your word count down by at lead 10% utilizing any tool. But then again, it might just be that your writing style is unusually convoluted.

It is also worth getting a colleague or friend to read your blog post. Why? Because other people are generally better at identifying when a point is essential and only caters to complicate the post. This is something people do for all the posts they publish.

How To Write a High-Quality Lengthy Post

So, extensive articles- written for people, not for search engines- might have few benefits over short posts. But while you are writing posts with a high word count, it is even more essential to maintain the quality of the text at a high level. But what does that mean? Good quality is well-structured, readable, and contains original content and is one of the respective advanced link building strategies.

Writing high-quality content is difficult. Especially when your aim is to write articles with a high word count to increase your organic traffic. If you are a skilled writer, you can write very lengthy posts of about 1000 words. If you are less experienced, we would suggest you target around 700-800 words. In any case: ensure you keep the following aspects in your mind:

1. Write Readable Texts

The most essential thing when writing long posts is- write for your potential audience. That may sound a little obvious, but it is surprisingly convenient to get distracted and begin adding inappropriate information. So begin by thinking about questions a reader could have about the topic you are covering. Then, deliver clear answers to those questions. Obviously, the answers should be readable and well-written.

What should you do to make your content readable? You text requires to follow a logical line of thought. To get that, professionals suggest starting every paragraph with a topic sentence, i.e., a sentence that delivers off the main thought of that paragraph. Then, utilize the rest of the paragraph to explain the topic sentence. Make sure to keep your paragraphs and sentences as short as possible. If you find any unwanted words and sentences- remove them. Of course, you should connect the ideas you showcase in and between paragraphs. That is why it is great to utilize many transition words. And, to maintain the engagement of the audience, you should keep down the use of the passive voice.

2. Use Headings

One way of structuring your text is by utilizing headings. Headings within a text have two purposes. First, they represent a top-down hierarchy. You instantly see that a subject has, for example, three subheadings that elaborates on it further. Another thing is for scanning. You can make your readers know what a paragraph is about by utilizing clear headings. That also makes your content pleasant to read, as a heading says you what the next piece of content is all about. A pleasant content writing is also the most effective manual link building techniques.

3. Write Original Content

This is a difficult one. It is not that easy to write original content with so much content out there on the web. But, it might assist if you reflect on what makes your content unique. Think about how what you deliver is different and better than the services of your competitors. Then do some keyword research to determine what your audience searches for and what competitors are up to. Preparing with research can deliver you many ideas on what to write about and how to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

Final Thoughts

It’s the right time to stop obsession with word count. Rather, concentrate on developing concise but thorough blog posts that attract readers and follow SEO best practices.

And to do such a thing you need the help of professionals, who have a deeper knowledge of content writing as well as SEO. Being an entrepreneur, you definitely want best in the field and when it comes to best then no one could be better than LinkBuildingCorp. With spam-free, effective, and 100% genuine SEO services, we have gained the trust of many clients and have become the most trustworthy company. With our proficient services, you will be able to generate leads, boost revenues, attract traffic, and increase sales of your website.

Want to talk to our SEO professionals? Want eye-catching blogs? If yes then contact us now

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