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So you’ve already set up your blog, did your keyword research, and of course, the next step is the most important part of the blogging process and that is writing content.
The most common dilemma that most bloggers face, however, is choosing the optimal word count length for a blog post.
Contrary to popular belief, blogging is NOT easy. Blogging is a tedious time-consuming process that requires a strategic time and content management approach.
Think about it. Whenever you update your blog, you’re allotting that time to writing instead of working or studying. And the longer the content, the more time-consuming it is. Blogging in itself is an inherent opportunity cost as you are giving up your precious time to write content.
Your goal as a blogger, especially if you’re planning to monetise your content, is to find the optimal word count length that allows you be competitive in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), and gives you a high user engagement rate and a lower bounce rate while not sacrificing much of your time.
Does word count matter for SEO?
I’m sure you’ve come across tons of articles saying that you should write a blog post with at least a minimum of 300 words. Some say that the minimum is 500. Others say that the optimal length is 1000 words. It’s quite confusing isn’t it.
With these ballpark numbers you’d assume that word count does matter.
Google’s Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst, John Mueller, in his reddit post however, stated that:
Word count is not a ranking factor. Save yourself the trouble.
Wow. So that is quite a direct statement. And I’m sure that a lot of bloggers out there felt crushed after spending hours and hours just to reach their word count quota.
But does this mean that we all can get away with writing 200 worded blog posts because at the end of the day word count is not a ranking factor?
Absolutely not.
While word count is not a direct ranking factor for SERPS, word count DOES MATTER as it can be related to an article’s comprehensiveness, quality and substance.
The more exhaustive and informative your article is, the higher your user engagement will be and therefore your site will gain more credibility and trust from your readers.
There is no write or wrong answer as to the optimal word count because it all boils down to QUALITY vs QUANTITY.
Quality > Quantity
Quality of content is far more important than the length. In fact, quality is perhaps the most significant aspect in blogging.
Most bloggers make the mistake of writing incredibly long blog posts because they think that it’s better for SEO. They include fluff and content irrelevant to the topic, jamming as much keyword phrases just to reach their target word count quota.
Word count does NOT equate to QUALITY.
You have to keep in mind that you are not writing for the bots and google algorithm. You are writing to provide VALUE for actual human readers. While your goal is to have competitive advantage SEO-wise to rank high in SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages), ultimately, it boils down to the usefulness and purpose of your article to your readers.
Your goal is to write content that will answer your reader’s queries while giving enough content to search engines.
Long form content vs Short form content
There is no precise definition as to what a long form or a short form content is.
However, I would personally consider a long form article to consist of more than 2000 words. Short form content, on the other hand, is composed of less than 500 words.
Long form content are usually comprehensive guides, in-depth research and tutorials. These articles are more time-consuming but there are several advantages to writing long-form content:
What are the advantages of writing long form content?
- helps you gain credibility so it’s easier to become the authority in that niche or topic
- lower bounce rate IF the article is highly informative and comprehensive while being cohesive with the topic
- high number of social media shares
- higher backlinks
- high customer loyalty and retention because your website will become the to-go-to website for that niche
- high engagement rate because your readers might be inclined to leave a comment and ask further questions
- you can outperform your competitors in the same niche because your article is far more informative and valuable
- you can include more keywords in the article for SEO
What are the disadvantages of writing long form content?
- time-consuming because it requires an in-depth research about the topic
- reduced attention span for readers so it’s important for your article to be highly engaging
- less mobile friendly
What are the advantages of writing short form content?
- less time consuming for both the writer and the reader
- can cater to your audiences’ reduced attention spans
- higher blog post frequency and consistency
- perfect for visitors who need quick answers to a problem
- more mobile friendly
What are the disadvantages of writing short form content?
- lacks depth as it just focuses on the main topic and doesn’t branch out to subtopics relevant to the article
- higher bounce rate because your reader comes and leaves after quickly getting an answer for their query
- not search friendly because authority sites rank better in SERPs
How do you determine the optimal word count for your blog post?
As mentioned above, while word count is not a ranking factor, it is still very important to be strategic about choosing the optimal word count length for your blog post as it can still affect user engagement, bounce rate, customer retention rate and social media shares.
To determine the ideal word count length, it is advisable to plan and structure the topics that you’d want to cover in your article.
List your topics and subtopics. from there on, you can gauge if writing a long form content is more appropriate than short form content for that article.
Go to google and search for the keywords about the topic that you’re about to write on. Check the articles in the top 10 results of Google search and determine if they are long form or short form content.
Your goal is to to write BETTER than your competition.
Based from my personal observation, keywords with high competition require higher quality long form content with at least 2000 words because you are competing with authority sites with lots of backlinks.
For keywords with low competition, shorter form content should be enough, though it still shouldn’t be less than 200 words. 700-800 words seem to be the sweet spot.
