A great length for an article?
I was questioning myself about the length of the posts and pages we create on our websites.
As you probably do every now and then, I was writing an article. It turns out to be more a tutorial page on How to make money with Ebay and how to get started with a seller account or an affiliate one. I just finished the overview of the subject and noticed that I already hit the 1500 word count. I try as much as possible to be concise but If I go on like I am actually doing I will probably go beyond the 5k words mark and I wonder how long should one article be? Is there any maximum length before we lost the reader?
I guess I am not the only one wondering that since we all are articles writer here. In his tutorials, Kyle splits his course in short lesson that we can read in a few minutes with a short video to listen. This way to do things really go well with the Wealthy Affiliate structure which is in fact a web-marketing school, but what about a work online informational web-site?
Should I just make one big page with all the informations? Or should I split the thing into multiple parts that are linked together?
Also, what do you think is the best length for an article?
Thanks for sharing your toughs!
Recent Comments
6
You should write as much as it takes to get your point across and nothing more. We shouldn't write for the sake of filling up some arbitrary word count.
Best Regards,
Jim
Personnelly I like shorter, if you are doing longer split it up in short paragraphs. Most people look and this is me I will scroll down and look how long it is, sometimes I will read all most of the time I won't.
Or you could make two lessons out of it. Just my opinion.
Brenda
I think it depends on how much information needs to be presented, as some things just can't be explained in a small amount of words, I usually aim for 5 - 600 words, but recently done a page that was 1600, but the way that it was done couldn't be achieved with a lesser amount.
Some of my articles are long. My long articles I split the info into short paragraphs and add images. As long as the information is useful, length does not really matter. I have reached over 1,000 words but under 1,500.
I would recommend you divide your articles into bite size content. If you want to tell a person about building a website and include niche and domain names within that article, I can see where it will be long. Write an article on niches. Then write another article on domain names. That is how I would approach these articles. You will find these articles are shorter.
If you are writing something technical, determine if your audience will understand what you are writing. If you audience is not trained in the information you are conveying, then you will not accomplish keeping your audiences attention.
People are not looking to read a book chapter online concerning a subject. They want a summary of information to gain more knowledge.
Debbie
I prefer long articles split - but I know a lot of people don't. My ideal is where people can choose whether to read it split on several pages or as one long article (and I have seen this quite often).
How long should be your article - probably as long as it needs to be - but most people could probably edit all their articles by a third. 400 words is probably the minimum length. Obviously tutorials and pillar articles are going to be a lot longer. :) Beverley
I try to keep pages/posts around 400 word count. Or break it in small paragraphs. If what you are saying keeps the reader's attention then it doesn't matter a whole lot.