What is the best size for a post?

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In one of the lessons, Kyle says 1000 to 1500 is a good length for SEO. Although getting ranked should be one of the priorities for those starting in affiliate marketing, there are other aspects to consider.

Retention is just as important as traffic. But then you say: 'well, without traffic there will be no retention, right?' Right, but without retention there will be little chance of leads, and without leads there will be no conversion. The ultimate goal of an affiliate marketer is not really traffic, it's conversion. What is better: 1,000 visitors and 0 conversions, or 100 visitors and 10 conversions?
It's said that a person makes a decision of hitting the 'back' button in three seconds after he or she goes to your page. Within this time you will able to scan quickly the 'above the folder' screen and scroll once or two times. If the person doesn't find what he wants right away, he is a goner. If he thinks it is worth it, he will scan your site a little longer to try to find something that he likes or needs.
The main criteria for a person to linger in the page is your content, obviously; if the content is relevant for his need at that moment, he will give it chance. However, if your layout makes it hard to find any desired information, or your text is like a big wall of letters with huge paragraphs and no subheadings, 'back button, here he goes'. A well segmented article will help to keep the visitor in your page, even if it is 4,000+ words long. Chunks of information can be easily found and the person will only read that part that contains what he wants. A visitor will only read a long article from beginning to end if he is very interested or really has to. And this, of course, if he has time.
Another strong criteria people use is the time it will take to read an article. Currently, the average length of the pages best ranked on Google is of 2,450 words. That takes about 10 or 11 minutes to read if you're a fairly fast reader. Most people read more slowly on a computer screen, and even more on a mobile device. Medium (online publishing platform) found that the pages that were most visited had texts could be read in 7 minutes. That would be around 1,750 words.
Most sites, however, have found that the posts that are most likely to be shared in social media have more than 2,500. Some shared content have u p to 5,000 words!!! To tell the truth, not everybody will be able to write good articles with this length, but having content shared in social media is a blessing to the free traffic of a website.
On the other hand, if you want to have your pages commented, your best bet is on shorter posts. A 250/300-post with some call to interaction - a question, a task to be shared in comments session, and so on - are most likely to have reader engagement than a longer article with the same calls. The visitor wiil be less passive (less time reading) and more active (having a task to accomplish when they finish reading). Thare are so many people out there willing to share their thoughts that will be more than happy of doing it when given the right incentive and an easy opportunity.
Summing up: Kyle recommendation of 1000 to 1500 words is a great advice if you want to be in the safe side. Not everybody will write catching long posts, and short post are not very rank friendly. But in the end, what will determine the length of your article is your topic: whether your keyword gives your enough to write a lot or not without straying of fluffing. And the most important is what you want to say, it's your website after all, and you chose which path you will take.
That said, how long are your posts usually? How do you determine their length?

Cheers.

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