It is ironic that an article on how many words blog posts should have comes out to around 8,000 words. While I did cut some of the fat, a lot of the comments below on blog posts lengths have a lot of great (and differing) ideas on the subject.

This post weighs the pros and cons of each to help you determine the right length for your blog posts. If you want to create content on a regular basis, then this can help you determine the best format for your posts.

80 Experts Tell You How long your blog posts should be?

David Levy Trefis

A blog post should be at least 250 to 500 words long but I’d say that it’s the wrong question to ask. Length is less important than the story you tell and the WAY you write it. In my blogging I follow a specific format that always begins with a very specific human moment that engages the reader. Once you pull a reader in, the rest of the blog can be as long or as short as necessary to complete the story.

Alexander Reichmann iTestCash

For my blog posts I always aim for 500 words at a minimum up to a few thousand depending on the topic. I think somewhere around 500-1,000 is a good goal.. Content is being thrown at us left at right nowadays on the internet and from experience, I think people generally like content to snappy.

There are some exceptions though, such as long guides that teach you how to do something or a round up of ideas from professionals. When it comes down to it the focus should be more on quality over quantity, but if you can mix the too that is even better.

Graeme Watt The Zen Agency

Many people believe that longer content = better content. Studies tend to show that longer content does attract more links, shares and better engagement however this doesn’t mean that all long content is great.

There is simply no magic number when it comes to the length of blog posts. Write as much as you need to in order to help your visitor complete their goal (such as solving a problem or answering a question). That may take 300 or 3000 words. It’s important to not confuses quantity and quality!

Chris Martin FlexMR

In my experience, the B2B blog posts which perform best are between 1,000 – 1,200 words. There are two key factors that contribute to the ideal length of a blog post – each of which varies across different industries. These are: search performance and user experience.

Search performance is the first and most common consideration. Longer posts tend to perform better in search as they are more authoritative and lend themselves to more structure. This means there is a greater opportunity to use rich media, as well as multiple images and heading tags.

However, search performance should always be balanced against user experience. In this regard, shorter content which provides statistical evidence and key lights is more engaging. In addition to this, to encourage users to remain on the site – a blog post should never fully answer the question it sets out to. While it should provide significant information on the topic, there should always be room for a hook which leads into another piece of content.

The result of these two contesting elements leads to blog posts which are approximately 1,000 words in length.

Viktor Bogdanov Intersog

Although people rarely read long blog posts today and prefer short summaries, wrap-ups or video content, I’d still recommend that you keep your average blog post word count between 800 and 1,500 words (depending on factors I’ll mention below) and I have solid facts to prove this.

For instance, in the past 6 months my team and I have created 125 blog posts resulting in nearly 5,000 total shares, i.e. around 40 shares on average.

In particular, 1,000 – 2,000 word posts demonstrate on average 30% more social actions such as likes and shares than 500 – 1,000 word articles. Also, 1,000 – 2,000 word posts have 15% higher user engagement and shareability
in Google Plus, 25% higher engagement on Twitter, 13% higher engagement in LinkedIn and 2% higher engagement in Facebook.

Sam Williamson Aims Media Glasgow

We recommend at least 500 words per blog post, regardless of the subject. This is more than enough to convey any point, without dragging on for too long. If you;re struggling to reach 500 words then you might want to consider whether your post is really worth publishing at all.

Philip Fenton   Switch Communications

A blog post should be as long or as short as the ideas you’re conveying require. There’s nothing more off-putting to a reader than ploughing through something that’s obviously been padded out to hit a predefined word count (and most simply won’t bother). Equally if your post is genuinely so exciting that it demands being 2,000 words long, then write away, though you may want to consider splitting it into two or more articles.

If you’re writing with one eye on your SEO rankings then Google does favour longer content, so 600 words is a good minimum but please, if you’re stuck at 500 words, end it there.

Jordan Bradley High Speed Training

We find that shorter content is more difficult to rank in search engines, perhaps because it is more difficult to provide real value (and something different to what is already existing for that search term) in such few words. We tend to aim for 800+ words as a general rule, but if you have to waffle to reach this, then don’t. We’re fairly flexible on it.

Long content, if designed well, is not an issue – content length should not be a worry, only thin content should be a concern.

I’ve managed our blog, the Hub, for over a year and have seen our traffic more than double in that time thanks to this strategy.

Dylan Kissane Doz

It is rare that we publish a blog post shorter than 1000 words. While we have in the past experimented with shorter posts our best results have always come when we take the time to expand on a subject and provide something substantial for our readers.

While 300 words or even 600 words is enough space to make a basic argument or outline a quick list of tips, it is not enough to explain the fundamentals behind these tips, nor to offer the sorts of in-depth examples and case studies that readers expect. We have found that a 1000 word minimum and an average post length of around 1300 words works best for us, and for our readers.

Rohan Semwal SEO Spouse

Honestly for the first five years of blogging I posted an average of 500 words related to content but my business seemed nowhere. Then I started writing posts over 2500 words and they are getting more shares and comments.

Henry McIntosh RI Web

Everyone gives a different answer for how long a blog should be because there should never be a set word count for blogging. Producing content of the same length every time would make your blog incredibly boring. There are, however, a few principles to adhere to.

The first is to make sure your blog is never less than 300 words for SEO purposes. The second is to provide variety, every blog should provide value and by producing long-form content in excess of 2,000 words you can be much more informative for your audience. Mix short-form, easily digestible posts in with your longer pieces to make your blog interesting. But remember- you should aim to produce quality over quantity, but it’s even better if you can do both.

Andrew Berkowitz The Global Startup Movement

This question depends highly on your audience. For example our audience is primarily 18-22 year old college students. We learned quickly through our metrics, attention spans in our niche are low. We typically try to keep it
at around 500 words with complimenting pictures. A blog post is simply a way to communicate a message, call to action, or content. Keeping word count low will ensure more users read through to the end.

Randy Downs Downs Consulting Services

You should have at least 1,000 words in a blog post and preferably a lot more. 2,000 words would be ideal if you have that much material. There is plenty of data to show that longer posts get better rankings in the search engines. Short posts are basically thin content and don’t stand out since there are probably lots of similar posts on the web.

Mark Aselstine Uncorked Ventures

I don’t personally believe there is an ideal number of words for a post. Basically I think writing a blog comes down to one simple rule, write for human beings and search engine’s and other traffic will follow. There are going to be posts that are going to end up being quite long while others are naturally going to be shorter.

We have posts that rank well and bring in traffic that sit around 300 words and a post that’s over 20,000 words that does the same. I feel like if you spend too much time being constrained by min word counts that adding those last few hundred words will take so much time and effort that you’ll end up missing out on some time that could be better spent creating the next piece of content for your blog.

Tim Backes Synergistic Consulting,LLC

The length of blog posts really depends on the goal of the author. For the best user experience (UX), the post should only be as long as it needs to be. In this type of situation word count does not matter.

Regarding SEO, word count definitely comes into play. Current best practices demand a minimum of about 500 words per post. You can get away with a little less if you’re including rich media, like an original video.

The more competitive a keyword or keyword group is though, aiming for more words (1000-2000) is even better.

The main reasoning for this, which is often left out when people discuss word count, is that when you draft longer more comprehensive posts you tend to include a lot more long tail keywords, or keyword phrases consistence of three or more words.

Those long tail keywords are typically much easier to rank for , and it’s not very easy to naturally squeeze them in to shorter posts.

Kristan Wheaton Sources and Methods

I have been blogging since 2007 at Sources and Methods. It is a professional blog designed for those who work in the intelligence community. I find, in general, that shorter is better – about 350 words – in terms of traffic. In terms of influence, though, I have found that longer pieces – 1000 words or more – do a better job of establishing my reputation as an authority in the community. Thus, I think the right answer is a mix of lengths, shorter to build traffic and longer to build credibility.

Dayne Shuda Ghost Blog Writers

Many look at word count from an SEO perspective and it’s true that many top-ranking pages and blog posts are on the longer side (1,500+ words).

For me, it depends on the topic. We like to look at blogging as a way to answer questions that the target reader is asking. The word count often reflects the length of the best answer. And it’s no different than how you’d answer a question in person.

Eric Nisall Entrepretunity

As someone who has been blogging for more than 7 years, I’ve had my share of successes and failures with my sites. One of the key lessons I’ve learned is that regardless of what standards there are, there is no one set length all blog posts should adhere to. There’s a common practice for editors to require, and freelancers to offer, 500 words as a target for blog posts. I view that as an arbitrary number which should go away.

David Attard Collective Ray

Writing long form, exceptional content pays for itself in the long run.

We strongly recommend that you should focus all your effort in creating a few long form, detailed blog posts which fully cover all aspects of a certain topic. Most of our content is over 2500 words in length, and we find that it very quickly ranks well in search engines. Only long form content ranks so quickly and effectively with the benefit that it starts sending us traffic within a few days.

Given that it ranks so quickly, it then starts to automatically acquire backlinks. That becomes a positive feedback loop where it then ranks for even more and more keywords and phrases.

Dave Ruch DavidRuch.Com

Of course, this depends entirely on your goals with your blog. For someone looking to build authority, attract potential customers, and rank well in search engines, it should be the most comprehensive post on the internet for your topic. Tough to do with so much content out there right now, but these ‘cornerstone’ blog posts are how you will rise above the competition and rank well in Google. Additionally, once you have some high ranking pages, your other shorter posts (ideally, you want a mix of longer and shorter for different types of readers) will do better in search.

Jezen Thomas UXPin

Blog posts should provide as many words as needed to tell your story, or to provide context and make your point. Waffling and stating the obvious is disrespectful of your readers’ time.

Lisa Batra My Kids Threads

Blog posts should be clear and concise and get the point across in around 500 words; however for optimal SEO my posts for ThreadTalk, the blog on www.MyKidsThreads.com has an average of 1000 words. Posts should be long
enough so your readers have all the information needed and not too long that they become unfocused and skim the content. Rich keywords and images help are optimal for visual interest.

Patrick McHugh Patrick McHugh Digital

We use a minimum of 300 words but always advise our clients – 500 words or more. There are many reasons but the main ones are engagement and future proofing for the search engines.

As SEO is one of the main pillars of our business we think in medium to long term search success for clients.

Google rewards good content and has become incredibly sophisticated in recent years determining quality content. At our agency we ignore short term gimmicks like keyword stuffing or low quality backlinks.

It is important to think ahead of the curve.

Nick D’Urso The Nutritional Source

I did split A/B testing with 10 different posts on previous blogs. Writing 500 words or less did not get me ranking well in SERPs. 1,700 – 3,000 words not only got me ranking number 1 for certain keywords, but also the average
time spent on the entire site was aver 3 minutes.

Steven Macdonald  SuperOffice

For the SuperOffice blog, we have a 1,500 word minimum. We want our content to be research-driven and actionable and so the content becomes long form, with each post including data, charts and practical tips.

We started publishing content with a 500 word limit. This approach gave zero results. Since switching to 1,500 words, we’ve increased organic traffic from 32K visits per year to 300K visits per year.

Put simply, it works!

Jason Parks The Media Captain

If your blog is trying to teach the reader insightful information about a particular topic, the blog should be over 1,200 words. This would provide depth and substance.

Jim Wang Wallet Hacks

Blog posts should have as many words as it needs to achieve its goal. If the goal is to be an all-in-one comprehensive post about a subject, it’ll likely be longer than one in which you tell a story to illustrate an important point.

Seth Godin’s posts on marketing and business are often just a couple hundred words but a Pricenomics post that looks at the historical price of rent in San Francisco is several thousand spanning many parts. If the blog post achieves its goals, it’s impossible to be too short or too long.

Eric Moeller Copy Dojo

The answer: it depends.

You must know who it’s for (your audience) and what it’s it for (to inform, entertain, persuade or inspire). If the writer focuses on communicating with their audience in an engaging way, they will be in a better position to create a popular blog post, rather than focusing on the word length.

As Winston Churchill once said, “A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.” The same could be applied to a blog post.

Tom Jeffries Bizdaq

We don’t have a set length for our blog posts – aside from being over 400 words, they can be as long or as short as needed. Whilst it’s true that blog posts over 1,000 words tend to rank higher than those below 1,000, this is because more information can be included in longer blog posts and they are more likely to answer a user’s question.

Despite this, the reason we don’t make all of our blog posts 1,000 words or more is that some topics don’t need that many words. So long as our blog posts succinctly answer what they set out to, they’ll be long enough. Blog posts should answer a user’s question as efficiently as possible, regardless of length. Whilst some topics require the extra length, others simply won’t, and this is why we don’t have a specific length we stick to for all of our blog posts.

Dan Thorton The Way of The Web

Good writers and journalists are taught to write as much as they like and then cut anything that’s unnecessary. One rule of thumb has always been to cut a third of what you have written. That’s the opposite of most search engine optimisation advice, which recommends an ever-increasing minimum word count from over 400 words to more than 1000. If you’re aiming at providing a comprehensive guide or resource, then I’d certainly aim for more than 1000 words. But otherwise, one single sentence can be perfect.

Dr. Chester Goad ChesterGoad.Com

I’ve been blogging since 2008, guest posting, and also contributing to some major web and social media outlets, and I believe the length of a blog ultimately depends on the audience. Most of my educational blogs are longer in length about 1200 words, while my pieces on parenting and family are typically between 800-1000. The research and widely accepted word on the street is that shorter blogs no longer get the traction they used to get. Longer blog posts are getting distinctly more shares than shorter blog posts.

But again, I believe the audience is the key. I write a lot of stuff in the leadership space and I used to write longer leadership posts, but I’ve found that entrepreneurs, business professionals and other leadership folks appreciate shorter posts. And then of course there’s leadership guru Seth Godin who gets away with very short posts of just a
few hundred words or less, but he’s also built a reputation for that and has a strong following who readily share his posts. I encourage people to actively research their genre or space and see what’s working in that field or topic area, and then follow the trends.

Sam Hoober Bigfoot Gun Belts

A lot of studies indicate most people don’t read an entire blog post; mostly they read the first 400 or so words and skim the rest. However, there’s also lot of evidence that the best performing written content tends to be longer form – more on the order of 1500 words or more. The reason, ostensibly, is that longer posts tend to have a lot more information; it’s hard to – if you’ll pardon the expression – BS a reader for too long, so a longer form piece requires the writer to actually know what they’re talking about. However, a person with deadlines (especially if you’re creating content in, say, an agency setting) is going to find blog posts and other types of content of great length (1,500 or more words) take a lot more time to create, which in that setting…can create problems.

After more than five years as an SEO Copywriter and blogger, I don’t use a set number of words, it’s more that I stay in a wheelhouse, if you will, of 700 to 1,100 words. Sometimes more, but never less. For me, this strikes the perfect balance, as it allows me to stuff whatever piece of content I’m working on with good information (good for readers and from an SEO standpoint – informative evergreen pieces can get links/shares/traffic for years and helps you rank for keywords) is concise enough to not drive people away, and allows me to meet my deadlines, which makes me and my boss happy.

Victor Clarke Be Better Do More

To provide value to the reader a content creator needs to go in depth on a topic with lots of detail and supporting graphics, images, and expert sources. Valuable content needs to be a how-to manual for the chosen topic. The best way to meet these requirements are long form content posts of at least 2500 words that include 8-9 graphs and/or photos.

The best way to get this content distributed is to create epic posts on a less frequent basis. Consistency is key, but scarcity makes the reader’s heart grow fonder for more of your content.

Eric Brantner Scribblrs.Com

One of the things I’ve found over the years is that Google loves long-form content. In fact, the average first page result in Google contains 1,890 words. If you want to get your content discovered by Google users, your articles need to go above and beyond what your competitors are doing. Dig deeper into topics, include more links to quality sources to support your claims, and just make sure your content is as great as it can be.

Lisa Finklestein RangerAgainstWar

Since the burgeoning competition for human attention from apps and various social networking platforms, ideal blog posts should not exceed 500 words (2 typed, double-spaced pages.) If the idea needs further development, it should be broken down into a multi-part series.

Nick Leffler Your Brand by Nick Leffler

Every blog post should be at least 300 words which is a recognized standard in blogging. Extremely popular blogs that don’t rely on search traffic but only social can get away with shorter but that’s an exception to the rule.

My personal sweet spot for blog posts’ length is around 600 words but I don’t stress it if they are too much longer or shorter.

My posts range from 1300 words to 300 but it’s hard to stick to one standard. The topic of each blog post ultimately determines the length of a post and that’s how it should be. Some topics require more details while others require getting to the point quicker.

David Reich Reich Communications

I have found that there’s no magic formula for how long a post should be. The good thing about blogging is it allows you so much more space than the 140 characters of Twitter, so you can really get into the meat of a subject. But readers don’t always have long attention spans, so it’s not good to put too much into a post. If I feel something will really require more than 600 – 700 words, I may break it into two parts, which also can serve to bring people back for more if they like the first segment.

Christina Giordano Salient Fox, LLC

When writing blog posts, the length depends upon the topic and audience. If we want a blog post to rank organically in search engines for a specific topic, longer posts (1500 words +) will typically perform better. This is only if the content is good and provides valuable insights or instructions to the reader. If a post is about a detailed topic that requires extensive content, the 1,500+ words will probably be necessary in order to teach the reader what they need to know in full detail.

Madeline Johnson The Market Council

It’s not the length of your blog post you should be concerned about, it is the quality of content. Your main concerns should be -Is it useful? timely? newsworthy? Are you giving something of value to your audience?

Short form posts of 450 words or less will be just as important as posts that are 1,200 words depending on the topic and how much thought you have put into the article.

Dan Shure Evolving SEO

There’s no set rule for this. It’s like asking how long a movie should be, or a song, or a poem, or an assembly manual for a refrigerator.

Content should be as long as it needs to be, to tell its story, teach, entertain and fulfill its purpose. For some posts this might be 100 words and for others it might be 10,000 words. Users and search engines are happy when content meets its objective – and length is completely relative to what that objective.

Content should have all the words needed to meet that goal – no more, no less.

Violeta Solis Fuertes Herald Strategies

Briefly we’d say the ideal amount of words for a blog post is around 400. Nowadays we’re all aware of the fact that the quantity of information we’ve around can really be overwhelming and people don’t really feel like reading long articles if they can avoid it, so for us a blog post should be concise, clear and fresh. It should have quality information explained in a concise and direct way, with short sentences. That’s the best way to assimilate it for the reader and the best way for the writer to make sure the reader enjoys it and gets the crucial points of what he’s sharing.

Mario Serna Wonder Costumes

As a rule of thumb, I keep all blog posts at a minimum of 500 words for several reasons. Our industry is very competitive, so we have to capitalize on searcher intent. In my experience, I have noticed that entries of 500 words and over rank much higher. These entries also help with time spent on page and bounce rate since they are more relevant and informative to the user.

Val Geisler ConvertKit

You can read countless articles that contradict one another on this subject but that’s because there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. I recently looked through our posts on the ConvertKit blog, and on average our posts are
around 1,000 words. Our blog is a resource for bloggers who want to earn a living from their website and email list so it’s important that our articles are actionable and provide options for the various types of blogs they run.

Scott Beckman FiveFifty

If your blog post is intended to rank for a search term and earn organic search traffic, it should be at least 300 words. If it’s any less than that, the odds that Google will pick it up and rank it on the first page for any kind of competitive search term are very low.

That being said, your post should ideally be the very best page on the entire internet for its particular subject so I strive to write at least 1000 words per post. Of course, your writing should also be as tight and simple as possible to be easily read and understood, which can make getting to 1000 words a challenge.

John Kinskey Messaging Service

Blog length really depends on your industry, area of expertise your target audience’s need for current or new information and the goals for your blog.

Do you publish in-depth, detailed research oriented blogs or quickly digestible daily content? In our case, we target a minimum of 350-500 words in length and break it up in chunks using font, kerning, headings, bullets, numbers, short punchy lines, and pull-quotes.

People process information visually and spatially, not just text. Google is trending toward longer content so adding some long-form blogs (1,500 words or more) will also benefit your website.

Billy Bauer Royce Leather Gifts

Make sure your articles have a minimum of 300 words. Google likes long articles, if your article is too long though it might scare away users. So try to stop at around 700 words. Try to put your search terms in about 1 to 2 percent of your text. So in an article of 300 words, you should mention your search terms 3 to 6 times.

Louise Hendon Paleo Flourish Magazine

I believe longer blog posts (over 1000 words) are better – it answers more questions that the reader is likely to have, it draws in readers that are more serious rather than just looking for a quick answer, and it helps with Google SEO.

Nathaniel Rowe NRoweGT

The ideal length for a post is 1200-1500 words. Longer posts like this must be chock full of content and not fluff, but writing something of this length that is helpful all the way through creates a lasting impression and sense of value on your readers. Not only that, but doing so gives much better SEO opportunities, as google has more content to link and associate within the article which provides better page rank.

To sum up: Better content and in depth value for readers as well as better search rank.

Owen Larkin SnowPak.com

The length of a blog post depends on the purpose of the post. If the purpose is long-term search traffic, then a best practice for SEO is to write longer posts of 5,000 – 10,000 words. This allows you to rank for more keywords and is favored in the eyes of Google.

The content must, however, be high quality and relevant! You should not write more words for the sake of it as writing quality content is key. We also, however, publish shorter posts of 500-1000 words. These are more shareable and great for getting immediate attention through social networks.

Ben Hicks Chicago Style SEO

According to Moz, 85% of content contains less than 1000 words. To set my content apart, I strive for articles longer than 1000 words. In my experience, long form content tends to perform well over the long term when it comes to being shared, earning natural links, and getting steady traffic from search. My strategy is to cover a topic comprehensively, including related sub-topics that users are searching for, utilize proof terms, and place external links to authoritative sources. A snappy title and some entertaining GIFs don’t hurt either.

Robert Sollars today Training, LLC

I believe that your blog length should be variable. If you want people to question what you write & start a conversation, then make it shorter and leave questions unanswered. But if you are trying to educate, as I attempt to
do, then make it as long as it needs to be.

And just because it’s 2,000 words doesn’t mean it all goes in one post, break it into a series of posts, probably at least 2 maybe 3 (this keeps people coming back to read the whole thing. I normally try to keep mine between 500 – 900 words, but sometimes it ends up being 2, 3, or even 4 posts.

Jonny Campbell FM Outsource

In terms of blog posts, it can vary depending on the topic. We tend to keep the content for a marketing blog to no more than 700 words but this can vary depending on what is included within images (if there are any infographics etc.).

This blog, where we covered PPC campaigns, contained around 650 words as an example

Britney Schroeder Power Digital Marketing

Working across a variety of industries we’ve seen a great amount of success with blog posts that are over 2,000 words because they work to support Google’s most recent algorithm changes which place a strong emphasis on content. This isn’t to say that every blog post you write needs to be over 2,000 words but if you are looking to set yourself up for success from an SEO standpoint this will give your article the fuel it needs to rank.

That being said, writing a 2,000+ word blog post with little keyword research or SEO optimization behind it will only get you so far. Cross channel integration is key here as strong written content, well thought out SEO strategy strategy and an aggressive link building plan will set your article up for ranking success.

Nathan Barber SEOWorks

Ideally, the more content that you can produce, while still engaging your audience, the better at around 1500-2000 words. You want enough copy so that search engines can crawl through your website to more efficiently understand what the main topic of the page is about. The more words and sentence structures that you have to offer, the more likely you are going to rank on the search engine results to get more traffic. Having around 1500-2000 is just the right word count to fulfill Google’s attempt of giving meaning to your website, while also providing readers with enough information to make informed decisions.

Zondra Wilson Blu Skin Care

I think the length of your posts depend on what you are hoping to accomplish. When I first started blogging, I would write these very long and detailed posts about skin care and nutrition. I was ecstatic if my posts got an honorable mention on social media. I’ve found that how many shares you get on social media is influenced by several things, including your topic, the posts’ quality and the size of your audience. I aim for medium length blog posts between 600 to 1,000 words. This seems to work fine for my audience. Medium length posts are also pretty good for SEO and for generating discussion.

Diana Spektor Imprezzio Marketing

I believe that blog posts should be between 350 – 500 words primarily due to the readability factor. A blog post of that length can be highly informative yet concise – in other words, accessible for the average online reader and able to hold their interest throughout the entire text.

Makenzi Wood Picky Pinchers Blog

My rule of thumb is to never make a blog longer than your reader’s interest level. For some people, this is 1,000 words, and for others it’s 200 words.

You have to know your audience to cater content to their liking.

Even if your readers love super short content, for example, you still have to consider optimal length for search engine optimization. I like to stay at a minimum of 300 words so search engines can see that I offer readers valuable, informative content.

So overall, after accounting for reader preferences and SEO considerations, my ideal blog length is 400 to 700 words.

Patrick Antinozzi RapidWebLaunch.Com

Your blog posts should contain the amount of words necessary to clearly and efficiently answer your reader’s question. No more, no less. Simply filling a post with as many keyword-stuffed sentences as possible is not going to
improve your post’s SEO. That is an old fashioned SEO technique. If you’ve written a 2,000 word post, but feel like you can get your point across in 1,500, then trim the fat. Keep it lean and mean!

Laura Mohammad PersonalLoanReports.Com

You need to write relevant, textured content that addresses the topic thoroughly and authentically. Packing posts with keywords and links will turn off your readers and put you at risk of a Google penalty. I’ve found that a minimum of 800 words gives a writer adequate opportunity to explore a topic and feature multiple sources adequately.

I require my writers to give me at least 800 words and at least two live sources. I encourage statistics from original sources and first-person experiences. This is a little off-topic, but I don’t worry too much about keywords in the body of the copy. If the content is relevant, the keywords will follow, in my opinion. I let the titles and metatags do the heavy lifting.

I have been a content generator and editor for websites since 2010, writing and editing on personal finance, such as human resources, credit and credit building, investing, and now, personal, P2P and small-business loans. Reach out with any questions.

Daniela Arango Doitwiser.Com

The recommended number of words on blog posts between 150 and 300 to guarantee you give enough information in a simple manner, but there are exceptions. If, for example, you have a blog focused on scientific issues, it’s most likely going to have longer posts. If you have an arts and crafts blog your publications will probably be shorter and contain images or graphics. It all depends on the type of readers your blog has, you need to know what they like to read, on what devices they access your blog and how much time they can spend on your posts without losing interest.

Alex Bungener Digital+, LLC

500 is the absolute minimum if you want any real SEO juice out of the post.

About 2 months ago Google adjusted their algorithm to give more SEO value to longer blog posts. So if you want to have a post that has long holding power for the keyword phrase then it should pushing past 1000 words.

Emmelie De La Cruz  Shofur.Com

A study from Brian Dean at Backlinko found that the average word count for results that are found on Google’s first page is 1890 words. Ranking on Google means an increase in traffic to your site, and an increase in traffic can mean an interest in potential sales or earnings.

If you’re blogging to build your personal brand, boost your traffic, or generate more leads through SEO or content marketing, 800 words is the bare minimum for blog posts.

Emily Sidley Three Girls Media, INC.

We recommend blog posts fall within the 1,500-2,000 word range. In addition to recent research showing this is better for SEO, it gives you plenty of time to unpack an idea and get into specifics that your readers will be interested in. So really, it’s the best of both worlds, appealing to the people reading your posts as well as search engines.

Daren Low Bitcatcha.Com

I am of the opinion that long-form articles (1,000+ words) are more successful than shorter posts (500 words or less, which has been the accepted norm for some time). The goal for my website, which is in a very competitive space, is to provide content that is seen as being very helpful to readers who want in-depth information, including examples and statistics. With comprehensive articles, I can then pitch other websites to link to it or to promote it. With short posts, the content could never be rich enough.

Zach Folsie Your Home Suite

Joost de Valk, the man behind the scenes at Yoast and the authority for SEO optimization, claims the optimal word count is over 300 words with an arbitrary cliff tampering around 1000 words. Herein lies the issue, and this is where the schism begins: Content creation can be a struggle between producing engaging content (for humans) and SEO-friendly content (for crawlers).

Much can be said in 300 words, and even using Moz analytics to audit my own content proves Yoast’s theory correct. Fire off a few 300 word posts and follow it up with 1000 word, long-form content or infographics every few weeks or so.

Kristien Matelski Vizion Interactive

When it comes to the desired word count for blog posts, some people believe shorter is better, while others go for the lengthy, more in depth posts. We gravitate toward the middle of the road, and here’s why: If a post is too long and doesn’t really hold a reader’s attention, they’re not going to read it or share it. However, longer articles can be great for SEO purposes and if they have good quality information, can get a lot of shares!

We do a variety of length posts. We make our shorter blog posts around 1,000 words, which is just short enough to keep a reader’s attention, and long enough to do well for SEO. At least once a month, we also put out a longer more substantial post, around 2,000 words, so that we have good variety for our readers!

Joe Goldstein Navolutions

A blog post should have whichever number of words makes it the most useful. How to fix a lawn mower that won’t start in 30 seconds should only be a couple hundred words at most, while the ultimate guide to social media should look more like a novella. In general, longer posts rank better, improve mob metrics (like time on site) and earn more links, but that doesn’t account for how many more short-form posts you can publish using the same resources.

Also, you shouldn’t ever pad a post to make it longer, unless the length itself is the novelty. Always let the post’s topic and purpose dictate the length, first and foremost.

Sherrilynne Starkie Thornley Fallis Communication

Blog posts must be written for both humans and bots and my experience has shown that writing 300 to 400 words is a good range to achieve both goals. This is long enough to tell a story readers will value, whether is to inform, educate or entertain. And it’s short enough to be read and shared quickly. Importantly, this word length also gives search bots enough information to accurately index a blog post so that it’s easily findable through search. Posts shorter than 300 words impact SEO; search bots have less to go on and the risk is being ranked low or incorrectly.

Christine Leys Christines Web Creations

However, I have realized in my years of writing that blog posts that are about 500 words are ideal. Readers don’t stay focused long enough for much more than that but it’s just enough to put a clear point across. I also find that most of the time, unless you’re a very organized writer, anything more than that is simply rambling. Find the easiest way to get your blog post written by choosing precise words and you’ll have a very successful blog.

Helen Holt TheWritingPreneur.Com

One thing to remember about word counts for Blogging is that it changes over time. This is due to word counts being directly correlated with adjustments in Google’s algorithms.

For example, when I first started out a few years ago, the ideal word count for a blog was 300-450 words. (This was the good ol’ SEO Keyword Stuffing days before Google Panda). What clients wanted was a brief blog post saturated with relevant keywords in every other sentence to get a high ranking in the search engines. Today, with search engines preferring longer form quality content over extreme SEO keyword stuffing, current Blog word counts should average at 800-1000 words. This is effective because the more words you write, the more of a chance you have to rank high as an authority on a certain word or subject. Longer form blogs also have optimizable components
that appeal to Google’s current algorithms, such as subheadings and images
(i.e.infographics).

Mike McRitchie MikeMcRitchie.Com

Starting from scratch a year ago I’ve now created over 100 blog posts and have seen both excellent and blah results. What length should a blog post be? Here’s a couple versions I’ve found when mixed together have generated good results.

The first is the short 500-1,000 word blog post. For this type of post focus on a news story or media event. You’ll be doing more commentary than heavy research. Mixing these up with longer posts below will keep your readers connected with you and help break up the deeper and longer teaching posts.

The second type is the long post (1,000 to 3,000 words). Google tends to like these better than the short posts because people stay on the page longer (and Google watches for stickiness in ranking pages).

Varda Epstein Kars4Kids

As contributing editor of the Kars4Kids educational blog for parents, I’ve learned that the trend is for deeper reading with blogs of around 1800 words being the ideal word count.

Sally Falkow Meritus Media

A blog post should be around 400 words.

The minimum is 300 – because that’s what Google expects from a page. And you do want your blog posts to have search visibility.

People read differently online than they do in print, and attention spans are getting shorter and shorter ( research now shows that it’s 8 seconds) so keep your posts under 1000 words in total. And use lots of subheads if you go long.

There are exceptions of course. Brian Solis always writes very long, meaty posts. But he has a reputation for excellent content and his posts are always worth reading.

Dallas McLaughlin The James Agency

To answer this question you need to decide if you want the blog, and the blog’s length, to be optimized for search engines, maximum readability, or social shares. Each of these three objectives have a different recommended
word count.

Search engines show an obvious preference for long form content. Research shows that articles with 2,500+ words have a noticeable improvement in the amount of social shares in comparison to an article between 2,250 and 2,500
words.

When we look at optimizing for maximum readability, the most recent research points to writing an article that takes an average of seven minutes to read, or 1,400 to 1,750 words.

Chris Huntley Huntley Wealth & Insurance

In my humble opinion blog posts should be long form – which translates into 2,000 words or more. In fact, some of my pieces surpass this number.

Full disclosure, I did not start out this way and over the years many, many of my posts have been short form.

Quite simply, solid pillar posts do far better than ones that skim the surface. I am in the process of doing a site audit where we cull all the posts about a particular topic and redraft a go to article where people can find all the information they could want or need in one place. The articles we changed have increased traffic and people spend more time on the site. Win, win.

Andrew Silcox The Lead Agency

In my experience, as a content writer, I’ve written a range of blogs in different lengths for a variety of purposes. In examining which are most effective, I have found the longer the better when it comes to search traffic. One of the most read blogs on our site is a 2,000 word report on Marketing for Small business. We find that as Google is more likely to index content of this length, it attracts more readers.

Be wary when creating content this long however, as it can be text heavy for the reader. Include images and breaks in the content so that it is easy to digest.

Jordan Hudgens DevCamp

I’ve spent years blogging, both personally and for work, and I’ve found the word count sweet spot to usually be around 500 to 1,000. However it is key to have the topic determine the word count. If a topic is more complex I will either extend the word count or break the post into multiple segments. As with any type of content, focusing on quality over quantity is always key.

Jacob Spikes Appleton Creative

In the case of blog articles, longer is better. Compared to the average blog article of 400 to 700 words, content marketers should aim for articles with 1,000 words or more. While 1,000 may seem excessive, especially in our 140-character count world, the added length benefits websites in several ways.

Khuram Zaman Fifth Tribe

I think the best length for blog posts should be between 200-300 words and broken up with sub-titles in order to make the article scannable. Most people read blogs through mobile devices now and the trick
is to give them enough content to engage them. Too much content, and the reader will get overwhelmed, get distracted, and go elsewhere. Too little content, and readers won’t benefit and are unlikely to share it. The key is
to concision: saying more while saying less.

Final Thoughts

Yowzer! That was a lot of great information! Let us know in the comments below what you thought was the best recommendations how long your blog posts should be.