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2,500 Word blog post? What's your advice?
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Most of my blog posts end up being 400-600 words, sometimes more, sometimes less. I have written one that is 2,500 words this time. If it were you, would you make one huge post, or split it into two or three? Or would you say it wholly depends on my site and the type of content?
As far as link bait goes, one page is better . . . I guess. But would anyone ever read a 2,500 word blog post, even it it's about a subject he/she is interested in? Additionally, what's better for SEO?
Just wants some second opinions. Thanks!
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Thanks, everyone, for your responses. My gut was telling me to keep it in tact. Thanks for confirming it.
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I have lots of articles of various lengths on my website.
I have also been improving lots of short content that was written a few years ago.
The articles that perform best are those that make a very detailed presentation about the topic and are long enough to address the most important subtopics that you would find doing keyword research. These typically go a minimum of 1000 words and can be as long as several thousand - in addition they have many photos, sometimes graphs, sometimes data tables or a video.
These long articles rank well and get LOTS of long tail keyword traffic. Think about it... there are a large number of different relevant words on the page and I addressed all of the major keyword topics for the subject area.
Years ago I tossed up a lot of short pages that have 30 to 50 words and a photo about a topic, then a couple years later I upgraded them to a couple hundred words and a couple photos, now I am making them 1000-3000 words and 6 to 12 photos. With each improvement rankings improved and long tail traffic exploded.
I don't break the long articles into several pages - that would kill a lot of the long tail keyword combinations, the article would not be as impressive in presentation, and don't you hate clicking through those long articles that span a dozen pages that are very slow to load?
Even if the article is monetized on the basis of pageviews I believe that the improved rankings and traffic will make up for the pageview loss. Plus the increased sharing will be a bonus.
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For SEOmoz, I know some of our most popular (in terms of thumbs and comments) posts have been well over 2000 words. Adam, I don't have that post. What I do have is a roundup of 2011 posts by likes, tweets, etc. and you can look at those individually and see length (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-best-of-2011-posts-people-who-rocked-our-world).
I'd look more, but I've got a backlog of other Q&A questions due to being on the road. Driving from SF to Seattle today and tomorrow. Halfway there, and way behind on email and Q&A.
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If it's monetized based on page views then serialize it.
If it's for link bait, it's riveting to read and highly relevant then take a chance and put it up intact. I think you probably already know if it's good enough for this.
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I'm known for my verbose writing, and even I try to keep my articles under 1,000 words. My best series though, on SEO audits, was four articles that averaged 1500 words each. It was a very focused technical series though - something that people were willing to take the time to read as each new part was published.
The problem with very long articles is keeping people's attention in today's multitasking world.
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I think it depends on your site, the content, how intuitive it would be to split the article, etc.
I think SEOmoz had done an analysis awhile back that looked at which blog posts got the most links. Length of article was one of the factors they looked at, I think. Alas, I can't find that article now, though. Anyone else have the URL?
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