Digital marketers know how important it is to produce blog posts today consistently. Aside from providing valuable information for online users, your blog posts can also be a potent digital marketing tool for building brand credibility and authority. It’s also a way to get traffic to your website fast.
Many rules govern how brands produce and publish blog posts, but there’s no standard on how long it should be. Nonetheless, it is crucial to know the word count of your blog posts, especially since today’s online audience is composed mainly of busy people and individuals with shorter attention spans. Knowing the correct length will help make it more readable for your audience, improving engagement and conversion rates.
So how long should a typical blog post be? Let’s break down the best practices for you to help you decide how to go about it.
The Ideal Blog Post Length
The ideal length of a blog post is not as specific as some may want. Some would say around 1,600-word count is enough, while others would argue that an article with a word count of around 2,500 is ideal. Even if most sources don’t have the same number for the perfect length, they all agree that long-form content is better.
Long-form content is preferable since your audience will learn more about the topic they’re searching for online. And a thousand to two-thousand-word articles can expound more on the given subject and prove to be more helpful than shorter blog posts. Apart from your audience, long-form content will also help search engines understand your post thoroughly, resulting in higher rankings on the search engine results page.
Quality Over Length
Although the length of the blog post is a factor that needs to be considered, quality should always trump length when it comes to content. And that’s one of the reasons why there is no exact number to identify the ideal word count of a blog post. As long as you can get your message across, a blog post doesn’t need to be as lengthy.
Producing long-form content consistently, like four times a week, can be challenging for some. So for the sake of rankings, some may forget the quality of their content in exchange for a lengthy, keyword-stuffed blog post. Unfortunately, that practice can hurt your search engine rankings since search engine algorithms get smarter by the day. Once the algorithm detects keyword-stuffed content that’s not reader-friendly, they tend to give the site lower rankings.
Some Benefits of Longer Content
When you produce longer content, then online users will spend more time on your website. And the longer online users stay on your website, the more likely it is that they’ll check out your other blog posts. And when they see that you are consistently producing quality content, they may come back to your site for more.
There was a study by NewsWhip that showed that long-form content is the most shared on social platforms. So when your audience shares your blog posts on social media, they can gain more attention and have a high chance of going viral.
Longer blog posts also give you the chance to show your expertise and authority on certain topics. Long-form content allows you to go more in-depth with your subjects and provide more information to help online searchers. Long yet quality blog content will help establish your credibility online and gain more followers.
Lengthier blog posts that are more than 300 words rank higher with search engines. That’s because you have more opportunities to insert keywords naturally, as well as synonyms and related keywords. That way, search engines will have a better understanding of what your content is all about.
Closing Thoughts
A blog post can be as long as it needs to be, provided that it gets its point across through its quality and informative content. However, you should concentrate more effort on the quality of information it relays, and when you get to do that, the length of your blog post will naturally follow.
Do you need help in producing quality long-form content for your blog? Tulumi is one of Orlando’s leading digital marketing agencies with years of experience in blogging and other aspects of content marketing. Talk to us today about your blogging needs. Give us a call at (800) 481-1720 or reach us through our contact form.
