If you write blogs for a living or as a pastime, or you’re just now considering getting into it, then this question will have popped into your mind at least once.
When you get an idea of what the best length for a blog post is, you’ll be able to write effective posts that reach the right audience.
In this article, we will be going over exactly how you can work out the ideal length, understand why it’s the ideal length, and offer you many more tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your blog posts.
What Is The Ideal Length For A Blog Post?
You might not think it’s an important part of your content, but the length of your blog post really does matter and really does impact how well your blog does!
One of the main things the length impacts is the effectiveness of SEO, which we’ll be going into a bit later.
The ideal length of your blog really depends on a few factors, but we will cover those factors here.
So, What Is SEO?
Before we go into working out the ideal length for your blog post, we need to talk about SEO.
The phrase “SEO” is going to come up quite a lot in this article. A lot of you probably already know what SEO is, but for those who don’t, keep reading!
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. It is a process and technique used in marketing to improve your website’s position on the search engine results pages.
If you have good SEO on your website, it will appear higher up on the search engines.
Everyone knows appearing on Google’s “first-page” is the ideal place you want your website to be.
Most people don’t bother going to even the second page, let alone any further, so you want your SEO to be of the highest quality.
SEO helps in making sure your website is seen by more people and improves the overall traffic to your website, so if you aren’t as well versed in the nuances of SEO, you might want to start learning how to effectively incorporate it into your website!
Determining The Length Of Your Blog Post
Before you even consider the length of your blog post, you need to make sure you have a content plan.
If you’re just keeping a personal blog and you’re not looking to grow your audience, you don’t really need a content plan or need to worry about the length of your posts.
If you’re trying to use your blog as a business and you want your audience to be large and committed though, you need to have these things in place.
Knowing what you’re going to write about and the key information and elements you need in your blog posts are crucial for writing concise and to-the-point content, without waffling on too much.
Lots of people believe that the shorter the blog, the more views it will get, but that’s simply not true! Here’s a little breakdown of the different blog word counts and how they affect SEO:
200 – 400 Words
These are the shortest form of blog posts and are usually very brief. They are good for comment discussions.
They actually aren’t very good for SEO and are better suited for descriptions for products or companies.
400 – 600 Words
These are usually considered the minimum length for blog posts. If you’re going to be writing a short blog post, this is the ideal word count you want to go for.
Though they are a bit longer, they still aren’t great for SEO.
600 – 1,000 Words
These types of posts are mostly informational articles that are great for adding references. They are better for SEO, but the SEO builds very slowly.
1,000 – 1,500 Words
This word count is considered a very powerful tool for building better SEO.
This word count will be most effective depending on the type of audience you have.
1,500 – 2,500 Words
This word count is ideal for SEO. Search engines really love the longer posts, and if you use this as your standard word count, you’re more likely to gain organic traffic to your blog.
Just because the longer posts are better for SEO, doesn’t mean you have to make every single blog post long.
Don’t be afraid to switch it up and have some shorter posts too!
If you just have a blog filled with posts in the 2,500-word count region it can get a bit tiresome and you may lose some of your engagement.
Add in some shorter posts to get discussions going and just to break up the longer posts more.
And remember, cater your word count to your audience! Most people don’t even bother with the second page, so you need your SEO to be of the highest quality.
SEO helps in making sure your website is seen by more people and improves the overall traffic to your website, so if you aren’t as well versed in the nuances of SEO, you might want to start learning how to effectively incorporate it into your website!
Working Out Your Audience
Now that we’ve gone over a bit about word count and SEO, we can talk about how you can determine what your target audience is and how you can cater your blog posts to them.
Besides SEO, your other main contributing factor when working out how long your blog posts should be is your audience.
What do they like? Where are they sharing posts the most? What sort of posts do they engage with the most?
You will have to do some market research of your own and look into your follower’s and audience’s activities.
But you can easily do that just by looking at their public social media platforms.
Some questions you’ll want to ask yourself as you’re determining your blog post length include:
What is the average length of the blog posts my audience engages most with?
Which media sources are they following and keeping up to date with?
Which social media platforms are my audience sharing the most content from?
What types of content is my audience sharing the most?
If you’re looking for a specific word count, you’re not going to find one.
The ideal length of your blog posts will always be whatever gets the most engagement and whatever is currently trending with your target audience.
You need to get to know your followers and audience. You need to research what they like and what they don’t like.
If you’re confident enough, you can make interactive posts with polls on them, asking your audience what types of blogs they’d prefer to read.
Only you can truly determine what sort of length is ideal for the people that are reading your blog.
Optimise Your Blog Length For SEO
Lots of credible content marketing agencies have confirmed that the length of your blog post or article will directly impact and enhance your SEO optimization.
Your best course of action when it comes to optimising your SEO and reaching more people is to go for blog posts in the 1,000 – 1,500 or 1,500 – 2,500 words range.
When you write longer content, you have more room to add more information and the option to use more keywords.
Longer posts are also great for adding hyperlinks that can take your readers to other pages and adding those hyperlinks helps with SEO.
Even if you’re a bit further down on the search engines pages, having a link to another page with a high SEO can do wonders for your own blog.
When the blog posts are too short, adding hyperlinks can make the post a bit more messy and chaotic.
Having these longer 2,500 posts gives you more leg room to experiment with what information you can add and it will greatly improve your reach and SEO optimization.
A big thing that affects SEO is how engaged a reader is with your page.
If they aren’t engaged with the post within a few seconds, they usually press back on their browser and look for another page that is similar.
The search engines pick up on this activity and if people are backing out of your blog quickly, it will drastically decrease your blog’s SEO effectiveness.
You want to keep your audience as engaged as physically possible.
How To Break Up A Long Blog
Now you have a better idea of who your audience is and how to optimise SEO for your page, you can start writing.
If you’ve determined that long blogs are better suited to your SEO and audience, then you need to learn how to format your long blogs in a way that will keep the audience engaged, while simultaneously increasing your page’s SEO.
The way your longer blogs are structured is vital to your post’s success.
Longer posts take a great deal of time, energy, and resources just to write, but if you don’t format them correctly, all of that hard work will go out the window.
When it comes to formatting your long blog posts there are a couple of things you need to consider.
Here are the simpler, more aesthetic things you can do to optimise the quality of your blog and help with engagement:
Add emojis in appropriate places
Add high-quality images, make sure they are vibrant, and include ALT TEXT.
Bold some of the text to make certain areas stand out.
Writer short paragraphs to hold the reader’s attention.
Make use of white space and add spacing between paragraphs and headings.
Add lots of subheadings
These small tweaks can greatly improve the SEO and quality of your blog. With a better format, your audience will be more engaged and more likely to stay on your page longer.
A big one when it comes to formatting is adding in and utilising subheadings.
In the next section, we will be telling you the best method for adding subheadings that will benefit your blog and your Search Engine Optimization.
Breaking Up A Long Blog: Subheadings
Subheadings are going to be your best friend after you’ve finished reading this article.
If you’re writing long blog posts, especially between 1,500 to 2,500 words, subheadings will clean the whole body of text up.
Subheadings are great for breaking up long posts because they let you talk about different aspects of the overall topic in shorter, more precise paragraphs.
They also let visitors scan through the whole article and find something specific, which is likely to keep them on your pages for longer.
An example of this:
Say you came across an article called “Biggest Breeds of Shark” and you wanted to specifically read about Great Whites.
You’d click the article and scroll and scan for a subheading called “Great White Shark” or something similar.
Once you found the subheading, you’d be able to read about the Great Whites, and then you might be interested in reading a bit more of the article.
Because the subheadings were formatted properly and on point with the keywords, you saved time and effort finding what you were looking for.
Now, if you’d clicked on this article and it didn’t have any subheadings at all or no formatting, finding information about Great Whites would have taken you a very long time.
You’d probably get frustrated scrolling through 2,500 words and not finding what you were looking for, so you’d click back off the article and find another one.
When people click off on an article, it directly affects the website’s SEO. If people are frequently clicking off of a page, the page drops down on the search engines and the traffic and audience reduce.
So having formatted subheadings increases your SEO optimization and keeps readers engaged and on your site.
Best Format & Subheading Structure For Long Blog Posts
Now you have a better idea of how subheadings will benefit your blog post, we will now go over the best structure for your subheadings.
If you are familiar with Microsoft Word and/or Google Docs, you will want to utilise the “headings” drop-down menu which can be found next to the font menu.
You’re going to want to use Heading 2 (H2), Heading 3 (H3), and Heading 4 (H4) for your subheadings.
You then want to follow this structure for optimal SEO and engagement conditions:
TITLE/Main Header (H1)
First Topic (H2)
Questions/Discussions about First Topic (H3)
Second Topic (H2)
Questions/Discussions about Second Topic (H3)
Solutions (H2)
Conclusion (H2)
If you use this method, you’re more likely to keep your audience engaged and your position in the search engine can greatly improve if you’re keeping readers on your blog for a longer time rather than a few seconds.
Some other tips for the format of your blog include the following:
Always Begin Your Blog Post With A Title In H1
You should only use Heading 1 (H1) once throughout the whole post. This is your title.
Add An Introduction Next
You usually use about 50 to 100 words for your introduction, but it depends on the overall length of the blog and what you’re writing about.
You want the introduction to be shorter than the other subheadings though.
Next, Add At Least 4 Subheadings And Fill Them In
This is the bulk of your overall post. The subheadings always use Heading 2 (H2) for formatting but can use some Heading 3 (H3) in certain parts. You’ll know when it is appropriate for adding H3s.
Wrap Up Your Post With A Conclusion
This is the very end of your article. Use it to do a quick summary of key points and to close the overall article.
Using these tips will help you break the blog post up. Not only will it keep your readers and audience engaged and keep them on your page, but it will also make writing longer posts much easier for you.
With a good structure, method and format, you don’t have to stress about the blog post being unorganised or complicated to write.
This method keeps it clean and to the point and allows you to follow a structure that has been proven to be effective.
Conclusion
There is no set number of words or set length when it comes to writing the ideal blog post. It all depends on your content and your audience. Different audiences require different things.
Though long blog posts are better for SEO, don’t be afraid to switch up your content and add shorter blog posts.
Sometimes people just want a quick read and aren’t looking for anything specific, so adding in these shorter blogs will benefit your page overall.
And remember, correct formatting can make a world of difference. With a powerful format and informative body of text, you can drastically improve your blog’s Search Engine Optimization and keep readers engaged in your posts.
Hi, my name is Ollie Wilson and I have been a keen blogger since I was a young teen. I was growing up with the rise of YouTube and bloggers, and the people I followed influenced me to start blogging. They were making a lot of money from their blogs, and I wanted that too!
I’ve now had this blog for almost a decade. In that time, I’ve learned how to monetize it to start earning money, which servers are the best for each blog type, and how to optimize your domains.
Now it’s time to share my knowledge and help others create their own successful blogs, just like I wish I had when I was creating my first blog. It can be daunting when you first set up your site, but with my advice, you’ll have a great looking blog in no time. Let’s get started!
