What to consider when deciding on blog length

Blog quality – not length – is ultimately important, and weighing up certain factors. 

You’ll find a lot of chatter online about the ideal blog length. HubSpot even publishes data on the subject. Last year, the optimal blog length for SEO was 2,100 – 2,400 words. But how much does this matter?

It matters, as you want your blogs to perform well in organic search, and it’s useful to be aware of this type of data if you’re responsible for blog strategy. But there’s no point in slavishly adhering to it. It’s far more important to know your audience, to write and design blogs with them in mind, to understand how each blog performs and why some blogs perform better than others. 

There are factors to consider and questions to ask that will help you get the most from the blogs you write.

1.    What’s the purpose/topic?

If your primary goal is to increase traffic to your website, longer blogs will help you do this as there are more opportunities for internal linking and backlinking, and you can build anticipation in the reader through clever storytelling and structure the blog in such a way as to make it consumable to keep the reader engaged. This increases time on page which, in turn, helps SEO. If you’re looking to incite conversation or inspire debate, shorter blogs (350-550 words) can be more successful. 

Some topics will demand more information or exposition. For example, is your blog intended to educate its audience on a topic? If so, a longer blog (600-1,000 words) will likely be necessary. If you’re focused on lead generation, an even longer blog (1,500 words or more) may be preferable. 

Think about your topic and why you’re writing the blog. What do you hope to achieve? Do you want it to perform well on social media and get good engagement in the short-term as part of a larger campaign or do you want it to perform well on your blog over time? If it’s the former, a shorter blog can be sufficient, but suggest a longer blog for the latter. 

And is a written blog even the best medium? It could be that an infographic, video or series of graphs or screengrabs with a small amount of text may better explain what you have to say. If you want to publish an infographic on your blog, it may only need a few hundred words to introduce it.

2.    What’s the industry standard?

It’s important to monitor the content your competitors put out and see what works and doesn’t work for them. Be guided a little by the content norms and standards within your industry, as you want to outperform competitors with your blogs. This may mean writing blogs that are slightly longer than the industry average to provide richer, more insightful information that helps you stand out.

3.    Who’s the audience?

Your blog strategy may be structured around different target personas. If so, you may establish that certain personas prefer – or are more suitable for – a different length of blog. A big part of knowing your audience is understanding their problems and pain points. Are they especially time poor? Do you know from industry or customer research if your audience has any preferences around content length generally? 

All that matters is that your audience reads your content – or at least scans it for the information they need. If they do, this will support engagement and SEO.

4.    How much time do you have to write it?

This is a reasonable, practical concern. If you’re tasked with writing the blog and you’re under strict time pressures, consider first your audience and the blog’s purpose, but also be realistic. If you only have two hours spare to devote to writing it, will a shorter blog be appropriate? If a shorter blog isn’t appropriate, can you delay writing the blog or pass it to another copywriter?

Publishing frequency may be a factor here. If your strategy is to publish a blog on a daily or more regular basis, shorter may be necessary.

5.    Is shorter sufficient?

As we’ve mentioned, if you’re publishing daily/regular blogs or news items as part of an ongoing content marketing campaign, shorter blogs can be sufficient. 

A key consideration is also user or searcher intent. Once you know the purpose/topic/audience and keywords you intend to optimise that blog for, type those keywords into Google to see what comes up. If the SERPs prioritise shorter copy, it means the searcher’s intent is met in fewer words and there’s no need for you to write an essay.

The best approach to blogging and blog strategy

We recommend you mix blog length as part of your blogging strategy and then monitor performance using all the analytics tools at your disposal. Google Analytics is a good place to start, while drawing on any SEO tools and social media analytics tools that are relevant. 

In terms of performance, what does your target audience respond to most? Are longer blogs more successful at keeping readers on the page or is there no difference? Perhaps blogs that have fewer words but feature some form of multimedia content perform best? Focus on your specific audience first, but also be guided by your competitors. How can you outperform your competitors with the blogs or articles you create?

Monitor performance, test performance, and tweak your blog strategy accordingly. And above all, focus on creating high-quality content and understanding what high-quality means in the eyes of your audience and industry.

If you need support to write engaging, audience-driven blogs and other content that’s optimised for search, contact Copestone today. 

If you need support to write engaging, audience-driven content for your B2B brand or agency, contact Copestone today.