How long should a quality blog post be?
-
How long should a "quality" blog post be? General advice seems to be that a 300 word post just won't cut it, but advice on the optimum length is vague. I appreciate that all posts are different but is there a rule of thumb, is 1000 words good and 1500 too long...or should they are all aim to be 2000 words?
Also with regards to pictures in blogs, can they just be taken from the web or are there sites that I should be using to source the pictures?
Thanks
-
If you look at my blog I have really struggled with really good (low / no cost) blog images. I came across this guys site today - it's totally devoted to great blog images and has a lot of great content on it - http://www.betterblogimages.com/the-1-blogger-friendly-website-for-finding-citing-free-images/
Another good article on the subject - http://www.incomediary.com/how-to-use-photos-in-your-blog-to-make-it-more-interesting
And my favorite on the subject I have come across in awhile - http://www.incomediary.com/how-to-make-your-blog-posts-stunningly-beautiful-images
Good luck!
Matthew
-
It depends on the site and the topic. At YouMoz, we've seen posts from under 500 words to over 10,000 words, though usually not much shorter than 1000 words -- usually in the 1000 to 3000 word range.
There is more to quality than quantity. Think less of how many words, and think instead of how much meaning and information are you conveying with those words. I can blab on for 2000 and not say much, or I can have a powerful post in 500 words.
Here's a post I recently wrote about what makes a good YouMoz post. This is not what every site is looking for in a post, but it can give you a lot of ideas (with actual examples) of what one readership has found to be good quality.
-
Hey,
There is a general consensus that 300 words or 500 characters is enough but I tend to think that is borderline useless advice here. How long should a blog post be? My answer would be long enough to fulfil the promise of the title and short enough to not be boring and overstay it's welcome.
Some great blog posts may be 100 words, some fantastic posts may be 10,000 words. It really depends on what you are talking about and how long it needs to be to accurately do what it says on the tin.
There is a tendency in search to try and do SEO by numbers. We want 300 words. Well, 300 words does not denote quality. Quality denotes quality. If your main criteria when writing blogs or hiring writers is to hit 300 words then you have already failed. If your main criteria is to provide high quality answers that don't already exist or to do things way better than they are already being done then you are on the right track.
That's a somewhat philosophical answer but a better one than any general advice you may get re word or character count. If you want a more specific answer tailored to your situation then look at the blog posts that do well in the niche you are targeting. How long are they? Could some of them benefit from more detail? Could some of them be trimmed a bit to provide a more succinct answer?
The only caveat to this advice would be to avoid going too long and if you have something that is thousands of words long consider making it part of a series and having several posts that make a greater whole. Think of them as chapters of a book or report and that these parts can then more accurately fulfil the promise made by the whole. A great strategy can be to write up a series like this and then to create an overview or summary that links out to the more detailed sub posts and you then target the high level and more detailed keywords within your topic.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
I would agree that 300 is too low and you're right that there doesn't seem to be a consensus out there.
I generally read that 350/400 is the recommended minimum - so I normally advise 400 to be safe.
I'm unsure about maximum but 1,500/2,000 sounds excessive to me. You would need to be writing a very interesting and helpful blog to keep readers attention for that long.
Hope that helps.
Stu
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My keywords have low search volume - is it still worth starting a blog?
I'm thinking of starting a new blog, but when I did my keyword research I found that my keywords all have low search volume (under 100 searches per month, with the occasional keyword having 480 searches a month). Is this a deal breaker? Any recommendations would be great - thanks everyone!
Content Development | | Trevorneo1 -
B2b services site, deep long tail services or flat and broad
Hi all, i have a small internet agency with services in several area's.
Content Development | | mdkay
Currently i structud my services in 2 different area's.
General services and specialized products with services underneath. like so:
domain.com/services
domain.com/services/service1
domain.com/services/service2
and so on. domain.com/product
domain.com/product/service1
domain.com/product/service2 domain.com/product2
domain.com/product2/service1
domain.com/product2/service2 But now im thinking of create loads of different services i provide,
there are some overlapping content of course, but all services are still individual.
But i can write a lot of unique content about all the services. But is it smarter to make just a few big pages with the services more bundled.
Or really long tail. Now i have around 15 services pages.
when i make it a lot deeper im talking about 40 pages. Currently my complete website is around 35 pages.0 -
Finding blog ideas and syndication
We've had our blog for a little under 2 years now using Magento and we've only created 48 posts. As we're in the furniture industry topics are hard to come by and we've become stuck for ideas. Sure we have researched our audience, checked Q&A's and forums to analyse what questions our audience are asking, but the ideas are limited. It's a difficult industry to find niche articles that our audience would be interested in. Could anyone suggest any ideas on how we could find interesting topics that people would actually want to share and maybe our industry influencers would be interested in featuring on their sites, does syndication still work? Duplicate content is a big 'NO NO' for Google but as long as the third party site features a rel=canonical or link back to our original post, Google wouldn't have any problem with this?
Content Development | | Jseddon920 -
Would it be smart to have 2 different blogs on our site?
I run Wick Video - where we make animated videos for businesses. We are toying around with making blog/video content geared toward marketers, _and _creating blogs/tutorials geared toward designers and animators. Since it's two totally different groups, we've had the idea of making two separate blogs. Is that a good idea? Any websites currently doing this well?
Content Development | | WickVideo0 -
Google "blog" search
Anyone notice a while ago - the "more" drop down used to include "blogs" which really helped with finding like minded blogs for content marketing. Anyone finding this frustrating and or find a solution? I know they supply us with: http://www.google.com/blogsearch Any other hints? Your pal, Chenzo
Content Development | | Chenzo0 -
How to make a bad posting drop down the search engines
we have had a competitor who has been stealing a lot of content from us and now they have used seo tactics to write a bad article about one of our sites that they have been taking content from, and what we would like to do is to use seo techniques to drop their article down the rankings. We are consulting a solicitor to take action against them as we are fed up of the content being stolen and the other techniques they are using, can anyone give me ideas on the best way to drop this post down the rankings. I was thinking about articles and press releases and blog posts to get higher up in the rankings and do a lot of these to drop their article down the rankings. Our solicitor has already taken action against them in the past and that cost us a fortune and it looks like we are going to have to spend a fortune again, so any help on using seo techniques to drop their article down the rankings would be great.
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Why my competitors posts rank well if those posts have lower SEOMoz?
Hello SEOMoz forum! I have a smart phone related blog, but it's not publish new related posts. I saw that most of my competitors rank well than me, even if they don't have a higher rank on SEOMoz (PA and DA). Most of their post's SEOMoz PA rank is lower than (1-5), but similar post on my blog have higher PA rank (10-15. Thanks!
Content Development | | Godad0 -
Blog for SEO: embedded in the site or separate
Hello, For both ecommerce and sites that sell services, I've seen a lot of people recommending a blog for SEO. Should this blog be inside or separate from the main website for the most results? I can see how adding one to a site would create more unique content and an opportunity for link bait, but perhaps there is a reason to have a blog separate from the main site Thank you.
Content Development | | BobGW1