What Is the Right Length for Blog Posts?

How long should a blog post be? A newcomer to blogging may ponder this question. There are no rules to this. You will find some blog entries are only a few hundred words long, others consist mainly of videos or photos, and still more boast several thousand words of pure text. If you come upon such articles in a successful (popular) blog, it's safe to assume that they are just the right length as far as the blogger author is concerned. But if you're new, how do you know what's right for you?

A solution is to think of the searchers first, not yourself. You want to deliver what people want while also pleasing search engines. Some guidelines are:

Make your article at least roughly 400 words long.

This is to avoid giving search engines the impression that your site has too little content.  Thin content suggests that the blogger didn't put a lot of effort into the post.  So beef up your articles some. And don't use empty words to meet your minimum number of words.  Inject rich, useful details into it.  It's vital that you do this if your pages are peppered with advertisements. You don't want to give either surfers or search engines that you have a "made for AdSense" blog.

Make your article only as long as you can reasonably expect people to read it.

It's a well-known fact among Web designers and Internet marketers that searchers almost never read every word on a page. Instead of reading, they quickly scan the headline (title), sub-headings, bulleted lists, pictures and emphasized (bold) text.  It's unlikely that most of your visitors will ever read your articles in full. Don't make this an even more remote possibility by publishing novels. This holds even if you just have a Facebook blog for family and friends.  Social networks are busy places; don't take up too much of everyone's time.

Make your article as long as needed to address the title.

An article that doesn't deliver what the title promises will cost you your credibility. When composing your posts, don't obsess with their length. Concentrate on serving up the information that the title suggests would be there, which is probably what leads the searcher to click over to your article.  If it takes 1,500 words, do it.  If it takes 500 words, then make it that long.

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