Let's cut the fluff – the answer is it depends. Ask an SEO expert how to rank in Google, and they'll tell you to write 2,000 words or more. Ask any writer, and they'll tell you to keep it as succinct as possible. Ask the staff at Medium, and they report engagement drops off after seven minutes: around 1,750 words.
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Few questions generate as varied answers as "How long should a blog post be?". Who's right? I'll provide the bulletproof answer below – and I'll be confessing a shocking secret.
How long should a blog post be?
Content creation might be an art, but facts drive it. With oodles of data, we can determine the optimum length for blog posts.
Longer content ranks higher
According to Wix Blog's analysis, the ideal blog post length is between 1,500 to 2,500 words. The sweet spot is around 2,450 words – when you'll generate the most backlinks and social media shares.
Alternate analysis from Ahrefs, meanwhile, clearly shows that increasing your word count leads to more backlinks – and, by extension, a higher search engine ranking. Go over 1,000 words, however, and the average number of backlinks from unique websites declines.
Indeed, while content up to 2,000 words gets more organic traffic, over this threshold, we see diminishing returns. A 10,000-word tome on content creation sees much less traffic than its shorter counterpart.
Why? Because we're balancing two contradictory factors: thoroughness vs. succinctness.
The writer's answer
I'll answer the question with a question: how long does it need to be?
Here's my juicy confession – I write to the word count. While I don't stretch, squeeze, and swell content to reach my customers' arbitrary target, I do set round numbers for articles that could have required more or less. It simplifies the selling process – and overall keeps customers happy. But I don't set an arbitrary cut-off point of 1,000 words for these blog posts.
After all, turning "How Long Should a Blog Post Be" into a 1,000-word or 2,000-word article wouldn't make sense when I can answer the question in 500 words. In contrast, squeezing "A Complete Guide to Content Creation" into 1,000 words isn't concise; it's a straitjacket.
Customers don't want to read more than they have to. They want the answer – no nonsense. Hide the answer amongst a wall of text, and readers feel cheated – unless the wall of text is necessary.
It's also better writing. When writing to a word count, we fill our writing with fluff: it's Hemingway's nightmare! When we're writing with a purpose, the word count becomes secondary, and creating value is our goal – and that's what really matters.
How Long Should a Blog Post Be – Forget It! It's a Nonsense Question
Don't sweat your word count! It's content creation, not your end-of-year assignment. Your blog posts should be long enough to provide value to your customer and not so long that you're dragging your feet.
Write something people will want to read – that's it.
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