Long vs. Short Blog Posts: Which Is Better for SEO?
Blogging is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies. Apart from attracting traffic to your site, blogging is also good for your SEO. Think of writing blogs as filling gas in your car. The more gas you fill, the further your car will go. A website that publishes fresh blogs on a frequent basis will rank higher in search rankings.
About a decade ago, the ideal length of blog posts for SEO was 500 words. However, today, experts have a different viewpoint on what should be the ideal length of a blog for ranking purposes.
Going for long or short blog posts is one of the most debated topics among Huntsville SEO experts. In this blog post, we will present some facts that will help you consider whether you should go for long or short blogs for your website.
Long or Short Blog Posts: Which Is Better for SEO?
Almost all SEO experts agree that blogging is important for every website owner. But when it comes to the length of a blog post, their opinions tend to differ. There are two schools of thought regarding this subject.
On the Side of Brevity
One school suggests that short blog posts should be published as quickly as possible. This approach is taken by online marketing experts like Seth Gordin, who publish short blogs ranging from 150 to 300 words every day.
Concise posts allow you to convey important information without using any fluff. By getting the point across in minimum words, you tend to save the time of your online users. You also reduce the risk of pontification or expressing words in a dogmatic or pompous manner that will alienate your readers.
Short and concise, yet informative posts will allow you to communicate important points in less time. Moreover, the budget for digital marketing tends to be limited, especially for small and startup online businesses. So, short blog posts are more affordable for most business owners.
On the Side of Wordiness
The other school recommends long blog posts for search engine ranking. The approach is taken by digital marketing gurus, such as Neil Patel, who publish long blog posts that are generally between 1500 to 2500 words long.
An article in Forbes had suggested that blogs posts with more than 1500 words were 22 percent more likely to be liked on Facebook and 68 percent more likely to be tweeted on Twitter.
Moreover, a research carried out by the blogging platform Medium found that the best length for blog posts is 7-minutes. This translates to 2100-word blog posts without images, considering the fact that the average adult reading speed is 300 words per minute. This conclusion was made after comparing the average time spent on a post versus the length of the post.
A post with heavy images, such as the Medium’s 7-minute post that contained 15 graphs, could bring the word count down to about 1000 words.
Another study carried out by Backlinko found that the top-ranking sites had an average word count of about 2,000 words. The study had analyzed nearly one million Google search results and concluded that long content sites were more likely to rank high on search engines.
Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines has provided details of the factors that result in the high ranking of a website. The document has not mentioned anything about content size, but it has stated that high-quality web pages should be accurate, written clearly, and comprehensive.
Should You Go for Long or Short Blog Posts?
After reading about the two schools of thought regarding long and short blog posts, you should be in a better position to make the right decision.
While Google has stated that it prefers comprehensive, information-rich blog posts, the Search Quality Evaluator Guideline also says that the topic will pretty much decide the correct length of the blog post.
Make sure that the content of the blog post covers every aspect of the topic. For instance, if you are writing about ‘how to make money online,’ the blog posts should be long with a comprehensive list of tips and advice.
But certain topics require short blog content. This is especially the case when the aim of the blog posts is to entertain rather than inform the readers. Online users would prefer reading short amusing stories about your life. Most of them will be put off by a wordy, rambling story. To maintain the attention of online users, your blog posts should be concise and short.
To find out exactly what your readers prefer, you should consider taking a survey using a free online tool such as Survey Monkey. You can ask your readers whether they prefer blogs with less than 500 words content or more than 1500 words content. You should also ask whether your readers prefer a mix of blog posts with mostly shorter posts with a long post published occasionally.
In addition, you can look at Google Analytics of your popular posts to find out which posts received the most views, comments, and shares. Analysis of your blog posts will help you determine the content that resonates the most with your online audience.
Whether you go for long or short blog posts, you should remember the most important rule of blogging: the content should be informative and valuable to your online readers!
No matter the length of the content, the blog posts will be useless if the content does not contain valuable information. In other words, the quality of the content is of the utmost importance. Your blog posts won’t provide SEO benefits if you publish low-quality blogs just for the sake of boosting the quantity of the URLs. This approach will, in fact, hurt your chances of ranking high in the search results page.
Lastly, you should remember that content alone won’t result in high ranking. Many other SEO factors such as on-page SEO, domain authority, responsive mobile-friendly website, and link profile play an important role in the ranking of your site. That’s why it’s critical that you get in touch with experienced Huntsville SEO experts with proven results.
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