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
-
Can anyone recommend a good reliable blogging platform for a small to medium sized manufacturing and services company?
I've been asked by my manager to investigate the best blogging platform for our company website. On a recent CIM course it ways suggested that Wordpress is not necessarily reliable. Could anyone advise? The blog is required to provide a space for current industry news, casestudies etc. It is also envisaged that the blog will allow comments. I've only got good things to say about Wordpress, but have only used the platform for my own small SEO company.
Content Development | | Catherine_Selectaglaze1 -
1,023 blocked malicious login attempts. Who trying to steal my blog? Any advises?
My new blog growing up fast and I'm about the break the Alexa million and I discovered 1,023 blocked malicious login attempts today. I'm really got scared when I saw this number. I'm using WordPress, any advises?
Content Development | | Eslam-yosef0 -
Blogging for Clients
Hello, I need some tips I think. I create content for my clients blog through research and I try to understand fully their product or service so that I can write about it and promote it. But is this enough, do you think, to be able to write good quality content? I will obviously never be as knowledgeable as they are about their product or service. Does anyone have any tips or approaches for writing content in areas they are unfamiliar with? What do others do to create blog posts for clients? Thanks
Content Development | | AL123al0 -
How to Recover Blog Traffic
Hi Friends Recently we changed Blogger to Wordpress with same permalinks but Unfortunately our traffic Down to 90% .please suggest me to recover Traffic & Ranking In Search engine Our Blog : http://www.ibpsexamguru.in/ thanks in advance
Content Development | | jenisys0 -
Rel="noindex in a guest post
I'm guest posting on some sites and one of them placed my back link as follows: mysite.com I'm not sure what he's trying to achieve with the help of rel="noindex"? The first that jumps into my mind is that Google will index the post but skip my backlink. So, there's no sense in such a bakclink, ringht?
Content Development | | VinceWicks0 -
Blogs, blogspot, tumblr etc
We currently have our own wordpress blog on our site using wordpress, is it worth while having others such as blogspot, tumblr etc for seo purposes? Or would I be wasting my time and efforts?
Content Development | | Shuffled0 -
Harder and harder to get articles approved on My Blog Guest
Hi People, So I got a My Blog Guest account (paid) and have now for a while, I do back the service as its a great system and works well BUT mods are making it very hard work. I put up around 20 articles a month on this site which costs me £300+ to have produced by a professional copywriter and the standard is very high, I get feedback from bloggers commenting on how good the articles are because of the quality of the content (articles are 500 - 550 words). So all I ask in return is 1 link in the body and 1 link in the byline. I ask the copy writer to put a particular keyword somewhere in the content where it best fits, if its a top 5/top 10 article the keyword sometimes fits best in the first few paragraphs before it flows into the list. This is where the problem is: Now these articles are good, they have to be as there for a company with products in major high street retail stores so quality is not an issue. If I put the link in the first paragraph I get these kind of responses: "Linking from opening paragraph is rude to say at least" If I put the link in the second paragraph I get these kind of responses: "Please move your body link to the bottom of the article or better the byline" "The normal procedure is to Hide articles with links in the first few paragraphs like this one...Please edit to put the link in the second half of the article" "Links should be in the second half of the post" Then the articles are taken down until I do what they say! It's my article I can put the link where I want its up to the blog owner whether they want it or not, its not the content you want to administrate its the quality of the blogs, I got users private emailing me asking me to buy links, I've got users applying for articles where there using blogspot and wordpress free sites with content scrapped from the web. I think they got bigger problems then a link in the second paragraph and not the third.
Content Development | | activitysuper0 -
Duplicating Articles/Blogs
Two years ago, some articles and blogs were written and submitted to certain tech and news sites relevant to our field. Will it be fine to submit those to other sites now. It is our content only and not some one else, but would it be penalty to submit the copy to other article sites whereever those articles/content are relevant today also?
Content Development | | sayeed0