Why There's No One Size Fits All Answer to How Long Your Blog Post Should Be

Why There's No One Size Fits All Answer to How Long Your Blog Post Should Be

The Right Word Count for Your Blog Post: How Long Should a Blog Post Be?

If you’re wondering how long your blog post should be, there’s no single answer to that question. Depending on your niche and the topic you want to write about, it could be anywhere from one thousand to several thousand words (or more). There are some general guidelines that can help you determine the right word count for your blog posts, but they aren’t set in stone.

Please let me know whether you've considered the following questions:

• How Many Words Should Your Blog Post Be?
• The Google answer to How long should a blog post be?
• How Long Should a Blog Post Be? - Revealing the Magic Word Count for Optimal Rankings.
• How Long Should a Blog Post Be? Find Out the Optimal Word Count to Rank in Google Search.

I'm sure you've spent many hours researching on the internet, sifting through numerous articles in pursuit of a persuasive and truly appropriate answer to your business.

I'm sure you've spent many hours researching on the internet, sifting through numerous articles in pursuit of a persuasive and truly appropriate answer to your business.

This study is absolutely valid.

After all, it is our duty as bloggers and content marketers to develop optimized content for maximum traffic, social shares, and conversions. As a result, we must guarantee that the blog article we are going to publish is optimized for more shares, backlinks, and, of course, traffic.

In this article, we'll discuss how long your blog post should be and how you may determine the proper word count for your post on any topic.

What’s the Ideal Word Count?

Once upon a time, the recommended word count for a blog article was between 300 and 800 words. There are still publications that adhere to this norm and gain significantly from it. (More on it later.)

Long form articles, on the other hand, have dominated search engine result pages since the Google Hummingbird algorithm upgrade.

Let's take a look at three distinct pieces of research that demonstrates this.

According to a serpIQ survey, the average content length of the top ten search results is above 2000 words. In fact, the top five results were all articles of more than 2300 words.

According to a serpIQ survey - How Long Your Blog Post Should Be

Backlinko conducted a more in-depth investigation and discovered that the typical Google first page result comprises 1,890 words.

Backlinko - Google first page result

Finally, a SEMrush study on Google search ranking criteria discovered that long-form content ranks higher in SERPs for high-volume keywords.

Why There's No One Size Fits All Answer to How Long Your Blog Post Should Be

So the major lesson from all of this research is that long-form content outperforms short-form information in search results. A Google first page result's average word count is close to 2,000 words.

Is this, however, relevant to all industries? Maybe not.

Viperchill conducted an in-depth investigation of the top five blogs from eight different industries to determine the average post duration for each. The investigation discovered the following:

Why There's No One Size Fits All Answer to How Long Your Blog Post Should Be

As you can see, most gadgets, online news, and gossip blogs post shorter content. This should come as no surprise given that these sites update many times each day. On the other hand, marketing, financial, and personal development blogs provide long-form pieces but post less frequently (1-7 times per week). Furthermore, the issues covered in these categories are very complicated, necessitating extensive research and explanation.

So the question stays unanswered. What is the ideal length for a blog post?

The solution is to conduct some research on the best blogs or magazines in your field. This is where a tool like SEMrush's SEO Content Template may help.

The SEO Content Template is a SEMrush tool that assists SEOs and marketers in creating SEO-friendly content. The tool offers basic SEO advice to assist you in creating content that outranks your competitors on the SERPs for your target keywords.

In the following part, we'll show you how to use this tool to determine the optimal word count for your blog post using two examples from different sectors.

How to Use an SEO Content Template to Determine Post Length

For this part, you'll need a SEMrush account.

A video lesson for SEO Content Template is provided below. You can also scroll down to learn how to utilize SEMrush's SEO Content Template in detail.

The SEO Content Template tool works as follows:

1. In the SEO Template search box, you add keywords that you wish to target with your content.
2. SEMrush examines content on Google's top ten sites for your chosen keywords.
3. SEMrush gives critical advice for producing SEO-optimized content based on these top ten ranked pages. These suggestions include semantically similar terms, backlinks to target, readability, and appropriate text length.

Note that: SEMrush is a robust digital marketing solution that can assist you with more than simply content length. Read my entire evaluation of the software.

Let's look at how to utilize this tool in more detail. The first example is about marketing, while the second is about a topic that is now popular in the gadget industry.

Log in to your SEMrush account and select SEO Content Template from the left-hand navigation menu, directly underneath Topic Research Tool.

SEMrush account - SEO Content Template

In the first example, I typed "link building techniques" into the SEO Template search box and got the following results:

SEMrush account - SEO Content Template - link building techniques

The typical suspects from the SEO sector were among the top ten search results: Moz, Backlinko, Matthew Woodward, CMI Institute, and so on.

This topic's suggested text length is 4,469 words. The average word count of the top ten posts for the seed keywords was used to calculate this. Most of the sites mentioned here, understandably, have released massive link-building instructions and so rank in the top 10 SERPs.

Scroll down to discover how your rivals are utilizing your target keywords:

SEMrush account - SEO Content Template - link building techniques - target keywords

You may go to the appropriate post on your target keywords by clicking on any of the results. Backlinko provides an example:

Backlinko - link building techniques - target keywords

Let us now move on to the second case. In this example, I chose "google duplex," which is a hot issue in the gadget market right now.

target keywords - google duplex

Tech and gadget blogs such as the Verge, TechCrunch, CNET, and others rank in Google's top ten. The optimal text length for the target keywords is 717 words, which is a little longer than usual for gadget blogs, but the contentious nature of Google Duplex is sure to attract thought-provoking pieces from other news outlets as well.

When you scroll down, you can see how other websites use the target keywords in their content:

the most popular gadget blogs - target keywords

You may view the associated article for the target keywords by clicking on any of the links. Here's an example from Engadget, one of the most popular gadget blogs:

Google: Duplex phone calling Al will identify itself

Conclusion

There is no hard and fast rule for the appropriate length of a blog article. However, research indicates that short-form publications seldom dominate search engine rankings. News websites, particularly in the technology and entertainment areas, are notable outliers.

In the end, long-form publications that explore a topic in depth tend to score better on search engine result pages. Such articles also generate more connections and social shares. As a result, you must conduct research before you begin writing your article and determine the optimum post length based on the average word count for the top 10 ranking sites in SERPs for your target keywords.

I strongly recommend using SEMrush's SEO Content Template if you want to save time or give articles to your content writer. Allow this program to handle the tedious research for you so you can concentrate on the essential stuff.

You'll be better positioned to dominate SERPs for your target keywords and beat the competition if you keep the word count in mind.