What is the Ideal Length for a Blog Post?

If you’re a blogger you’ve probably been wondering, what’s the ideal length for a blog post that’ll drive SEO traffic?

It’s most likely you’re asking this question because you understand that the length of your post will also determine to a large extent, the performance of the post.

Now, that’s a fact up there. But, the reality is far more than that. Yes!

A lot of blogging experts believe that the average length of any post should be something between 2,000 to 2,500 words, for effective SEO purposes.

But the question is, does this work for everyone?

Obviously no! That doesn’t work for every one. And what works is what we want to find out with this post.

So, what’s best length for blog posts?

As a matter of fact, there’s no one size fits it all length for blog posts.

Blog Post’s length will always differ for different blogs and bloggers due to one reason or the other.

That’s why you’ll notice that while some blogs thrive on very long blog posts like 2500 words and above, others publish as little as 300 words per blog posts.

Yet these both blogs will always see a reasonable level of blog traffic.

But why exactly is this so, you ask?

Well, the reason is because, there are certain factors that will always affect the ideal length of any blog post…

Understanding and utilizing these factors will play a big role in determining the success of your content.

So, what are these factors?

In the following passages I’m going to list out the top five factors you need to consider while deciding the length of your blog post.

Your Niche

To get the ideal length for a blog post, you need to know that different length works for different niches.

The minimum standard is that for your blog post to rank well on the search engine, it must have at least a minimum of 300 words.

But even at that, that’s actually the least you can shoot for per time!

Anything below this maybe considered as thin content and will definitely be useless to your SEO.

Even though 300 words is the minimum length for blog posts in the SEO world, this should not be the yardstick for the length of your blog posts.

Why?

Because in most niches, a blog post of just about 300 words might not give you the chance to secure a better SEO ranking.

So, to know what works, you want to find out the minimum and maximum blog post length for blogs in your niche.

You can do this by checking out the high ranking blog posts of top blogs in your niche.

Find out the length of those posts and how the audience is responding to it.

As soon as this is done, consider making your own blog posts to fall within same range. Or just a bit longer than that.

Your Audience

Your target audience will always play a great role in determining the ideal length for your blog post.

If you’re in a niche with an audience that prefers short snacky blog posts, you need to give them short and snacky content if you want to generate massive engagement.

Anything more than that might lead them to ignore your content.

And this might lead to low readership or engagement with your posts.

Your Platform

Your publishing platform is another important factor that will affect the ideal length of your blog post.

If your primary publishing platform is the social media for instance, you’ll find out that usually, social media audience prefers short and straight-to-the-point kind of contents.

For you to create meaningful engagement with your content on social media, then you’ll want to stick with short and snacky posts.

Because this is the sort of content that will get you more shares, likes, comments and engagement because that is what works for them.

On the other hand, if you’re to create content for a blog, you’ll have more liberty to write a more extensive content as most blog readers will want to spend more time interacting with your content.

Your Competition

Who are your competition and what’s the length of their own content?

When you’re in a niche that has massive competition, your competition will definitely affect the ideal length of your blog posts.

How’s this possible?

If the highest ranking blog posts in your niche is around 2000 words, planning to outrank such posts will entail writing posts that’s longer than that.

In fact, to out rank your competition in any niche, you need to bring out the very best in a blog post.

And most times this will mean covering areas the competing blog post is yet to cover.

Doing this in the long run will increase the average length of your blog post.

Your SEO Goals

One of the important factors that’ll affect the ideal length of any blog post is the search engine optimization goals of the blogger.

As a blogger in a very competitive niche, you’ll need a good mix up of keywords, back links and semantics to get a better ranking for your posts.

These factors do not really favor shorter posts.

So, to get better SEO results with your posts in competitive niches, not only are you going to write high quality posts, you’ll need to write longer and more detailed posts.

The posts should cover 2500-3000 words and above if you’re targeting a very good SEO returns.

Your posts are also going to cover the topic as much as possible, with a good mix of keywords and important search phrases.

In fact, if your goal is to get back links in particular, you’ll need a high quality and very well detailed posts.

Same things goes with keywords. To rank for particular keywords, one of your key strategies should be writing longer posts that covers areas around the Keyword.

So, in a nutshell for some niches it can simply be summed up in the following words; “the longer your posts, the easier to achieve better SEO results.“

Final Words

In a nutshell, when it comes to answering the question; how long should a blog post be? Bear in mind that there’s no unified consensus or specific ideal length for a blog post that everyone must follow.

While it’s always advisable to keep your blog posts above the threshold of 1000 words, always remember that bloggers will always keep their blog post at different length for different reasons. And you must always put this into consideration.

While deciding on the average length of your blog posts, always keep in mind your audience, your niche, competition, SEO goals etc. And even the available time you can spare to create the content.

Also, no matter your niche or goals, as a blogger you want to make sure at all times that your blog post is well beyond the 300 words minimum limits.

Put this into consideration and you’ll come up with an ideal length for a blog post that will be suitable for your audience while helping you to deliver your SEO goals.

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So there you have the ideal blog post length for bloggers. Now, it’s over to you! What’s the average length of blog posts you’ve written?