Nowadays, there are no constraints on digital media, as compared to the print media. There is no limit to the physical resources available, ...
Nowadays, there are no constraints on digital media, as compared to the print media. There is no limit to the physical resources available, there is no cost for writing extra stuff, etc. Indeed, there is little limitation to what you can do to your content online. This liberty comes at a cost, however. For a lot of bloggers, especially new ones, the question as to "Where to stop?" can be challenging. You see, there are no clearly demarcated boundaries that dictate how long a blog post should be. You might be able to convey your message in 200 words, or you might need more than 2000 for the same purpose. So how long should your blog post be? In my opinion, it's more a matter of best practices than it is of predefined do-and-don't rules. So let's talk about how an ideal blog post should look like.
What to consider?
While writing a blog post, there are a few things that you should consider. First of all, your niche. I wouldn't say there's a limit on blog post length, but I'd definitely say that length is niche dependent. Generally, sites that aim to inform have a lower average post length than sites that aim at interacting with people. Latest news websites don't need to have a lot of words, as the aim is to provide the most headlines to the readers in the shortest space possible. Technical and review websites have to be more detailed, since readers are looking for each and every detail about a product.
So it's really a matter of what niche your website is. This very blog you are reading of course is in the blogging niche, but in a broader spectrum, it falls under the 'inform and educate' people category, along with the technical and (sometimes) review categories. Hence, over here, we need to generally write long posts.
There one more important thing. Decide on your average word range, and try to stay close to it. That way, your blog will gain consistency. This does not mean you should restrict yourself to a word limit. Play around with those numbers, and check your analytics for any pattern. Once you decide on a suitable range, go with it!
What we recommend, and why?
I know I said there's no fixed rule, but you should set yourself a target. For most starting bloggers, this target should be around 500 words. And if you get a grip on things, you should set up a higher target. Here at MBT, we have set up a target of at least 800 words. Many people ask me why we have such high limit. Well, there are many reasons for this
Why...?
First of all, the latest Google updates have been all about content quality. Google's penalties have made it necessary that webmasters give more value to content by offering more text than other media such as videos etc. Crawlers and search spiders can be considered like readers. When they see a post that is short, alarm bells start ringing immediately. Short posts are usually seen as spam by search engines. People post short posts on other websites they own, and links those posts to their main website to increase backlinks. Hence, short posts can be seen as spam. You don't want search engines to get that bad first impression.
Secondly, Google is all of a sudden emphasizing a lot on spam. It's all about quality now. Who knows Google might start edging out short, spamy posts in future updates? For that, you need to have a decent amount o words, so that you can safeguard yourself against future update penalties. At some level, the Panda and Penguin updates have also penalized websites that lacked quality and had short posts.
Another advantage of having a sizable post length is, it will have the perfect keyword density. Too long a post will mean too many keywords, while a short post will have too few. The 500-600 range is perfect for optimizing your keyword density. Such a post can be adequately formatted and given proper structure easily, without making it too boring. This makes sharing on social media easy.
Last, but not the least, posts around 500-1000 words are reader-friendly. They aren't too long to be boring, and not too short so much so that readers might them inadequate and spam. In my opinion, this is the perfect post length range.
And in the end...
Before we leave off, there are some tips I want to share with you. These are more like guidelines than tips. And I wanted to include them here because I've seen a lot of people violating the 'writing code'.
First of all, always use headings. Use just one h1 per page, and use multi-level headings and sub-headings to your content. This makes it more interesting, and easier to scan and read. Readers like things that are organized.
Secondly, break your content into short paragraphs. It's more interesting that way. And if makes things easier for you, keep your sentences short. I've read countless articles where people try to express their chain of thought in one fluid sentence, but those sentences end up making little or no sense at all. This is something that will come with experience.
Finally, check your grammar. Blogging environments might have spell-checks (which you should always use), but most don't have grammar check. WordPress does have a simple grammar check, but it's not very efficient. Blogger has no such thing. But hey! Most of you use Microsoft's Word right? If you have the 2007 or later edition, then that's pretty cool. Paste your text in it, and run a grammar check. It will remove redundant, out of place, fragmented words. It will even check the punctuations for you. Hence, it is a neat little tool which you use to improve your post quality.
That's all for this post. And the series as well, since this was the last post in the series. Thank you for staying with us :) Oh, and do let us know what's your average post length, so that we can compare averages. Thank you :)
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