I get this question a lot, so I thought I’d devote an entire blog post to answer the question of how long a blog post should be. Whether or not the post that answers the question will live up to the word count it promotes has yet to be seen. I do try to practice what I preach, but part of what I preach is that quality matters more than quantity so if the choice is between 1,500 words of excellent content and 2,000 words that includes 500 words of filler content, I’m going to go with the 1,500-word post.
First, let’s talk goals. With every piece of content you create (including your blog posts) you should have a goal in mind for that content. What are you hoping that piece of content will achieve for you? Are you hoping to get more people to your website? More social media followers? More newsletter subscribers?
The goal you have for each piece of content will determine everything else you do with that content, including the ideal length of that content, so start with the goal. Figure out where in the buyer journey your target audience is most likely to be when they encounter that piece of content so you can lead them to the next stage of the buyer journey.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some common blogging goals and what the ideal blog post length for each one would be.
Table of Contents
- The Ideal Blog Post Length for SEO
- The Ideal Blog Post Length for Your Keywords
- The Ideal Blog Post Length for Engagement
- The Ideal Blog Post Length for Lead Conversion
- How to Write Long Blog Posts Without Losing Readers
The Ideal Blog Post Length for SEO
Google has been promoting longer content for a while now. A few years ago, it said it would focus on prioritizing content with 500+ words over content with fewer than 500 words. A lot of people still think of 500 words as the ideal length for a blog post, but it’s not. It’s the bare minimum.
The average length of content that shows up on the first page of Google is more than 2,000 words long, according to Serp IQ. So, if the goal of your blog post is to show up on the first page of Google and get in front of more members of your target audience, you’ll need to make sure the content is much longer than 500 words.
The Ideal Blog Post Length for Your Keywords
It’s important to remember that looking at the average length of blog posts that rank on the first page of Google can be misleading because there could be some keywords in there that are really throwing the curve. You might find the average blog post length that ranks on the first page of Google for your target keywords might only be around 500 words. I know I’ve found short blog posts on the first page of Google after using certain search terms, so while there can be some value in researching the average length of successful blog posts, never forget that there are exceptions to every rule.
The Ideal Blog Post Length for Engagement
Getting people to your website is important for obvious reasons, but it’s just the beginning. If they get to your website and they don’t like what they see, they’ll click away and it’s likely you’ll never see them again. Not only does your content need to be well written, free of typos and grammatical errors, and engaging, it also needs to answer the question your audience is asking. If your content only answered part of their question, but left them wanting more, they’re going to click away to find more.
This is why longer blog posts tend to perform better than shorter blog posts. I hear a lot of people say they don’t have time to read 2,000 words, and therefore they find it unlikely that their audience has time to read 2,000 words, much less 3,000.
I get it. We’re all busy, and when we start scrolling through a blog post and see what looks like miles of content, it’s easy to imagine people deciding they don’t have time to read it all and clicking away.
But Medium measures the amount of time it takes to read a blog post, as well as the median amount of time readers tend to spend on each post, and they found that the ideal blog post length was 7 minutes, or about 1,600 words. Estimating word count based on amount of time spent with a piece of content is a bit dicey, especially since posts with a lot of images could bring the word count down to around 1,000 words, but it’s still worth noting that people are willing to spend 7 minutes with a single piece of content.
Moz also found that their longer blog posts got more links and shares on social media, so keep that in mind as an indication of how valuable people find longer blog posts to be. And don’t forget that backlinks to your content can affect your website’s search rankings, so in addition to gaining more organic traffic for you, longer blog posts can also help you rank higher for relevant searches.
This is where in-depth content comes in handy. As I mentioned above, if someone finds your blog post, but it doesn’t answer all their questions (or the one specific question they have on the topic) they’ll look elsewhere to get what they need, which is a big reason that longer blog posts tend to perform better, both in terms of search rankings and engagement.
So, don’t underestimate your audience. When it comes to something that interests them, they’ll take the time to read all about it, especially if your content is well written and engaging.
The Ideal Blog Post Length for Lead Conversion
Getting people on your website and reading your content is great, but at the end of the day, you need to convert those leads into customers … or at least into warmer leads who follow you on social media and/or subscribe to your newsletter. According to Bramework, 1,000-1,500 words is the ideal blog post length for converting leads because these tend to be educational without going super in-depth into a topic.
On the other hand, going even longer (2,000-2,400 words) can also help increase conversions by giving them a free ebok or PDF to download once they’ve finished reading the blog post. Alternatively, you can turn the blog post into a PDF or ebook and offer it as an enticement to get people to subscribe to your newsletter.
How to Write Long Blog Posts Without Losing Readers
While highly engaged readers might very well spend several minutes engaging with a post from their favorite blogger, the average reader only spends about 37 seconds on a blog post. That’s right. 37 seconds.
That means most people are just skimming these blog posts we spend hours painstaking researching, writing, editing, and promoting. They aren’t bothering to thoroughly read them at all.
We can throw our hands up in despair, or we can work with what we have. We know people are using search engines to find the information they need, and we know that when they find what they’re looking for, they’re much more likely to convert into customers (or at least followers who can be converted into customers later on down the road). The trick is to give them the information they want and make it easy for them to find it, rather than burying it in piles of information they don’t want.
Breaking up your content with subheadings is a great way to make your content more skimmable. If a reader just sees a giant block of text, chances are good they’ll click away without bothering even to skim your blog post, much less read it. But by providing subheadings, you make it easy for them to quickly find the information they need.
You might have noticed I take this a step further in my blog posts, not only by providing a table of contents at the top, but I also include links to each subsection, so they don’t have to scroll to find what they need. They just have to find the subheading that describes what they need, click the link and they’re there!
Don’t forget that subheadings also help your SEO. If you do it right, each subheading should show up in Google as a meta-tag, which means Google will “read” that content first to get an idea of what your content is about and which search terms it should rank for. You can get the most out of this by including your target keyword for each blog post in each subheading.
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If writing blog posts that are the ideal length, on top of everything else you have to do for your business, is too much for you, or just not one of your strengths, I can help.
By the way, the ideal length of this blog post turned out to be 1,554 words.
