Blog Post Length and SEO

byMikeC69

6.3K followers

6 years ago

I will start by saying that I am not an SEO expert! Not by a long shot! But while learning new things every day, I thought I would share a little tidbit that most people who have been here a while likely know, but some newer members such as myself can get some good info from!

In depth content

I wanted to drop in and drop a tidbit or two about content that I have benefited from and feel that there are others who may get some benefit from as well.

I more than welcome everyone to chime in with helpful input !

It started when I was speaking with another member a little while back who wanted to pay a copy writer to do a couple of posts for his website to get a professional feel as he got better at writing in the early stages.

He told me that he had paid $50 for a 400 word blog post that he had just posted and asked me to read it. So I did.

I didn't think much about it at the time, but most of my posts in the beginning was in the 800- 1000 word range, and I thought that was great.

After some time and reading multiple blogs and blogs that ranked in the top 3 spots for a keyword or phrase, I started getting the feeling that my posts were a bit short, because all the posts that I saw in the top spots were all much longer on content and images.

Most recent Google SEO starters guide

I started getting really deep into reading on the subject and of course the "Content is King" subject dominated the topics!

The Google webmasters videos are the best of both worlds, Some are interesting and some are real snooze fests, but I figured that it would be best to get through them and glean what I could !

One thing I did was ask Google what they want, and believe it or not there is an exact and sort of simple document at Google that helps quite a bit and even touches on content .

Here is a link to the most recent Google SEO Starter's Guide.

Results of making my content longer

I wanted to get more info and the Google Webmasters website was a huge help! But I got some really good info from just searching as well.

This one lady had said how she started making sure that she never posted content that was under 1500 words. I almost fell out because sometimes it is a struggle to get to 1000 words! But I continued along.

Every piece of evidence that I could find pointed to longer content with more information as being the key to much higher rankings. So my determination was that if Google and pretty much every other blogger is saying that length of content is super important then it must be!

Then I found a video by Neil Patel that broke it down and I was finally convinced. Neil is a super smart human being and one of the foremost experts in SEO. And I am a fan.

I started making a conscious effort to make my content longer.

At first, it was really difficult on some posts to get to my goal, but it became easier and easier. I will tell you how I made it easier.

I made a template for reviews and a template for keyword rich content in Site Content. In these templates I put 6 H3 sub headers that remain fairly relevant across any content I write. They change some here and there, but it always stays at 6. Occasionally I might have to add a seventh or eight H3 .

Then I do the research and take notes...that's it, no Jedi Mind tricks and no magic!

Practice really does make ......better ! I can't say perfect! LOL

As I practiced on my blog and Quora answers etc, it became easier and easier to write longer content! I have noticed a huge difference in my content because it seems to always show up no lower than page 3 and comes up much quicker that the short content did.

For 5 months I wrote 68 blog posts on my main website and 8 of those made it to page 1. Since starting my longer content I've done 31 posts that are all ranked except 2 and 11 of them are on page one ! I am still waiting to see if they climb to the top 5 spots.

How Long is long enough?

That is easy to answer and the answer is I don't know !

My writing goals are now set at a minimum of 2000 words and I've had a few that went to the 3500 range. Those are my best ranking posts!

I can't say that there is a certain number of words Google looks for, because I don't know. But I can say that I firmly believe that the owners of the information super highway search results really like long content. I guess that the post with the most information wins!

I am about to publish my latest review that will fall just over 5000 words and that will be my longest review yet.

There may be some here who would like to chime in with some more info if they know exactly how many words is a magic bullet.

You can also refer to the recent training by Little Mama (Grace) where she shows how she does her reviews and shows the word count to be like 1800n on one post. In fact, you might want to watch her training if you haven't yet! It's pretty darn good!

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/littlemama/blog/littlemamas-...

Don't worry, it's not that hard

I've read quite a few posts put up by members at W.A. in the comments platform and have noticed that there are quite a few of you guys posting long word count articles! But I have also noticed some very short ones as well.

The longer ones seem to be the more experienced people and every post they make is usually of the same type length.

If you want to make longer posts it's no more difficult than making short posts in most ways!

All you have to do is work at it. Try to make the next one a little longer than the last an so forth.That is what I did and trust me, I'm no rocket scientist! Whe I got started and ran out of ideas I would save the post and do a google search on the subject. Usually within a few minutes I had more than enough ideas to get past 2000 words.

Once again, if anyone has anything to add feel free to chime in!

Keep on keeping on and the best of success to you !

Mike