How long is a normal blog post?
We all are taught here at Wealthy Affiliate that a blog post needs to be at least 1000 words on average.
The current research performed by Orbit Media, says the average post in 2019 is 1236 words. Five years ago in 2014, the average post length was only 808 words long. This shows an obvious trend toward longer posts that provide more information that our readers are looking for. I think we all know that our readers want to be as well-informed as possible and they want us to help them solve a problem they have.
The biggest increase in posts was found to be in the 1500 - 2000 word length. I mentioned in a previous that I think 1500 is the new minimum if you want to get ranked better. I always try to write all by articles/reviews at 1500 words or more.
There does appear to be consistent increase in blog post lengths for the people who are seeing the best results on their sites. More than 55% of the people in this study found the best success when they wrote at least 2000 words. And 92% of bloggers who wrote 1500 words or more, reported the best results.
Please remember, the number of words being 1500 - 2000 or more doesn't matter unless the content is of high quality. You can't just write a bunch of garbage and expect to see results with your blogs.
I hope this gives you a good idea of how long your blog posts need to be on your sites from now on, if you want to see the best results possible.
Recent Comments
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Good reminders here. I know long posts seem counter-intuitive to some because we are told people are more likely to skim, have short attention spans and use mobile devices now.
I think the key that people might not understand is that those 1,500 or 2,000 or more words are not written like a book. They should be broken up with relevant headings throughout. That way people can skim the headings and go to the section they are interested in.
The headings also act as keywords so a long post with many relevant headings has many keywords by default. Having many headings and keywords is part of the strength of long posts. There are many more ways for a searcher to find that post since they could search for potentially dozens of different terms and find it in high in the SERPS.
My best posts are ranked #1 in the SERPS for many different long tail keyword phrases. I suspect that is why they get a lot of traffic. My best posts are over 2,000 words. One is over 4,000 and is taking off now.
There are still shorter posts that rank well too. Quality content is always the most important factor. It is true that with practice it becomes much easier to write longer posts however.
Jessica
You are right on Jessica. I agree with everything you said. High quality content written like Wealthy Affiliate teaches us to do, is the best way to go.
I have said it before and I will say it again. I have some posts that are 8,000+ words that are nowhere to be found on Google and others that are 700 words and are my highest traffic pages. Quality and relevant content is key.
Yes, some of my early posts that are super long are probably not very good. I just don't know how much effort I want to put into revising an 8,000+ word post at this point.
I would consider splitting the really big ones into smaller articles while at the same time, revising them to make them better in both your readers eyes and to make Google happy.
Interesting Curtiss.. I remember when I started here that writing 1000 words was hard.. now, I have trouble keeping blogs within the 1500-2000 mark and what I’ve ended up doing frequently us having to tune down the blog material and split what I have to say into two. My worry is writing too much and the reader getting bored. I feel it is quality work though.
Sounds like you are on the right track. I don't really think writing too much is an issue, as long as it is engaging your readers to keep them reading.
I don't doubt the studies or the statistics. However, there's got to come a point of diminishing returns of some sort. We can't all have a coveted spot in the top 10 when more people are writing to some academic word length. When a few hundred bloggers are writing long-form content (LFC) then I can buy the argument. When thousands or even millions of bloggers are writing LFC, again they won't all make it to the first page.
We read time again how web readers are skimmers, yet here we see the gurus continue to tout the benefits of yet even longer posts.
I continue to do experiments to see if short form content even comes up when searching for keywords. You'd think that with all the LFC, they wouldn't stand a chance against the LFC. But, you'll likely find multiple examples and often of content that is around 500 words ranking on the first page.
Google has stated that they don't have an official LFC rule. They do state that LFC will likely help their AI engines get a better read on what a page is about. It's also likely that if something is well-written and keeps the attention of someone to read the entire LFC, this will help time spent on the page. Anyone willing to commit that much time to a page means that the page is well-written.
Of course, writing LFC that can keep someone engaged is an immense challenge. Tutorials are a good option for this, but other types of content may not. And comparing whether someone read a 500-word document against whether someone read a 2000+ word document, seems almost like an apples-to-orange comparison. Someone is likely to read all of the 500-word content. If someone reads 1000 words of the 2000-word content, they spent more time on the site, but still got bored and left after reading 1000 words.
There's also the mobile factor. Mobile has (or will likely soon) overtake desktops as the device of choice. Will people read LFC on a mobile devices? I like my content to be short and sweet on smaller devices. I don't find myself ever wanting to commit to a long, drawn-out piece of content on my Android.
This is just my two cents.
Best Regards,
Jim
It will be interesting to see if this trend continues over the next 5 years, making a standard blog posts around 3000 to 4000 words. At some stage the post length might reach a cliff edge, where the readers give up on what looks like a book to wade through. The search engines could respond & we will see concise articles featuring bullet points, holding the 1st page slots.
Thanks for your post, very interesting.
Cheers,
Duncan.
Hey Duncan, thanks for your reply.
My challenge is the whole academic nature of the concept. Personally, most of my content is over 1700 words, usually more. But, I do this because I have several years experience writing for the web and have gotten a feel for what readers are looking for. It's not because some guru said I need to reach that word count.
Also, what about video? Aren't we told that video is a great way to engage people on our websites? Yet, the videos themselves are usually embedded which means that we don't get the benefit of the YouTube (or wherever it's hosted) description. The video itself doesn't add anything to word counts. And even at some point in the future when search engines can index information in videos, it won't help bloggers content because the videos will still need to be hosted on video websites like YouTube. So YT will get the benefit at that point, unless I am missing something.
The moral of the story is worry less about some moving target for a word count. Write what feels right and what you think your readers want to read. Period. End of story. Again, just my opinion for what it's worth!
Best Regards,
Jim
Great points. All I can say is, all the top money earners write content that is 2000 words and usually much more. Just look at Neil Patel who has been around since 2001. He advocates 2000 or more.
Agreed. However, if Neil Patel wrote a 500-word article, do you not believe it would rank well?
Of course because he is well established and people want to see what he has to say.
But we are not Neil and we have to do more to get where he is.
Right, but couldn't the same argument of his being well established account for the reason why his LFC ranks well, too?
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Personally I think that a post should be as long as needed to succinctly and accurately tell the story. Everyone is posting longer posts because people have more to say these days. But longer is not necessarily better.
That being said - I agree Google seems to like longer articles for SEO.
I agree with you and yes, we sadly have to make the Google gods happy, along with making our content useful to our readers.