If you are a content writer or a ghost writer, it can be difficult to know sometimes how long to make your blog posts. As a rule of thumb, articles should be a minimum of 300 words long to achieve good rankings in Google.
Lengthy articles are more likely to rank well than shorter articles. Nonetheless, lengthy articles demand good content writing skills. Some writers struggle to create readable articles that exceed 1000 words. These types of articles should be a significant part of your SEO methodology though.
Let’s take a closer look at why the length of blog posts is so important for SEO, and explore strategies for creating good quality articles for wordpress blogs that have a high word count.
Why Google Chooses to Rank Long Blog Posts Highly
As already mentioned, if you produce an epic blog post of over 1000 words, your chances of getting a high ranking with Google are greater. In many cases, articles containing 2500 words or more can produce a big increase in the amount of organic visitors a blog or website receives.
The length of blog posts is key to SEO for several reasons. The main factor underpinning this is that, with a lengthy post, Google simply has more opportunities to decipher the meaning of your article. If you implement good keyword optimization practices, your keywords will appear in your post fairly frequently, due to its’ length.
This eliminates the need for stuffing keywords into your articles. In all likelihood, you will include a greater number of links, headings and photos — all of which will contain your keywords.
In addition, your article could rank well for numerous long tail variations of the keywords you have optimized it for. With a long post, several topics are usually covered. Your post will be well positioned to appear in Google’s results for lots of long tail variations. Overall, this will make a noticeable impact on the quantity of organic traffic that comes to your website.
Combating Readability Issues in Long Blog Posts
The drawback of articles containing 1000 words or more is that they often drag on and become heavy going for the reader. You will require a good level of content writing ability to craft readable articles that go on for this long. Not to mention, even the sight of large chunks of text can be enough to make your readers click away.
People will not read poorly crafted, overly long blog posts right the way to the end. Instead, they will probably get bored and move on to a different website fairly quickly. This type of content does not generate social media shares, and people are unlikely to remember your website and return to it. Ultimately, Google will not rank mediocre and convoluted articles highly, due to the poor user experience.
To create a good blog post with a higher word count, it is vital to structure it properly and make it as readable as possible. If you want to write an extremely long post, include some sort of contents page at the start of your article, so people can quickly navigate to the section they are interested in if they are pushed for time. Keep every paragraph in your article brief and to the point.
Use plenty of subheadings as well, which breaks the text up nicely and makes it less daunting for the reader. Adopt a conversational tone in your writing to make people feel like you are addressing them personally. This is a great way of maintaining the reader’s interest over a longer timeframe.
Do not use sentences that are too long, otherwise you risk confusing and alienating readers. The language in your article should be straightforward and clear, and you should adopt an active voice throughout.
Final Thoughts About the Length of Blog Posts
Every article you write should have at least 300 words in it, or the search engines will not assign it enough authority to rank it highly in their results. If you have written many articles before, you should have the necessary skills to write long blog posts of over 1000 words.
Follow the advice outlined above to ensure that the readability and structure of your content is perfect. If writing is not your forte, aim to write a blog post of about 700 to 800 words instead. This is still long enough to find favor with the search engines, but not so long that you lose your train of thought and end up boring your readers.
