What’s The Best Blog Post Length?

Copywriting Tips

Jan 19

Written By Emily

A few years back, you could add 20 800-word blog posts to your website and start ranking on Google. These days? Not so much.

The Google algorithm champions long-form content because it offers the most value. But what is the best blog post lengthfor SEO?

Let’s break it down and take a look at the research so you can start drafting your blogs.

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What’s the Best Blog Post Length?

Studies have shown that the top ten ranking posts on searches tend to have more than 2,000 words per post.

Ideally, you should aim for 1,500+ for each post, but the actual blog post length will vary based on your topic.

For example, writing 4000+ words for a skyscraper post with dozens of sections is easy. But you might struggle to hit 1000 if you’re writing a quick blog to answer a simple question – much like this one!

What Does the SEO Research Say?

I like comparing what industry experts say on topics like this. So here’s a quick round-up of example blog post lengths from some of the top marketing research sites:

Brightedge: 1,500 to 2,000 words
HubSpot: 2,100-2,400 words
SEMRush: 1,500 and 2,500 words
Search Engine Journal: 2,100-2,400 words

Although no one can agree on a specific range, it’s clear that you should be aiming for over 1,500 words for an average blog post.

Writing Blogs For Google Quick Answers

Google Quick Answers has dramatically risen in popularity recently, appearing around 40% of the time during search queries. These are the blog posts that appear at the top of searches as snippets:

example of best blog post length for Google quick answers

It’s interesting to note that blog posts chosen to appear as Google Quick Answers are usually below 2,000 words. So, what’s the right answer?

Vary Your Blog Post Length for SEO

The rather boring but practical answer is to vary the length of your blogs. Here’s an example of how to do that each month:

One long-form blog post on an in-depth topic (2000+ words).
One quick explainer blog with the aim of hitting the Google Quick Answers (1000-1200 words).
One news article on a trending industry topic (1500 words).
One standard blog post on any relevant topic of your choice (1500-2000 words).

Large publications and news sites tend to go shorter at around 800 words per blog post. But that’s because they are churning out trending content incredibly quickly. They’re not aiming for long-term content marketing gains; they want to capture the attention of their audience quickly with click-worthy headlines and fast insights.

For your website content marketing strategy, we want a more value-focused approach.

How to Determine The Best Blog Post Length

As a starting point, aim for over 1000 words of valuable content. If you’re struggling to hit that number, think about how you can expand your blog post length by adding more sections and content for your readers.

But how do you figure out what posts should be skyscrapers and what ones should be shorter explainers? Here’s a quick guide.

Check Out Your Competition

Why reinvent the wheel? Have a peek at your competition to see which of their posts are doing well, and use the word counts as a blog post length guide.

You might discover that your ideal audience responds better to shorter posts, or you might find people love super-long blogs.

Tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs will let you do a competitor analysis – just type in a competitor URL to get some juicy insights.

Test and Tweak

There’s nothing wrong with a little trial and error, so post a range of blog post lengths and track your progress. If one starts getting far more views, write some more of the same length and keep tracking progress.

It’s tough to put a lot of work into a post and watch it get hardly any views, but think of it as one giant experiment. And even if a post doesn’t get a lot of traffic, it’s still boosting your SEO efforts.

Think About Your Goal

Each blog post on your website should serve a specific goal:

If you want to boost your SEO and organic traffic, aim for long-form blog posts.
If you want to show up as a Google Quick Answer, write shorter 1000-1200 blog posts.
Do you want to get backlinks from high-quality sources? Write a skyscraper with 4000+ words.

Remember, the more general the topic, the easier it is to write longer posts. For shorter posts, get as specific as possible.

Skyscraper: The Complete Guide to Starting a Blog for Your Small Business
Mid-Length: 10 Tip Blogging Tips to Boost Website SEO
Short: What is the Ideal Length For a Blog Post?

The Verdict on The Ideal Blog Post Length

Make it up as you go along. Seriously, it’s not very technical, and you should at least aim for over 1000 words to satisfy the Google algorithm overlords, but the rest is really up to you.

Don’t get too bogged down with the ideal blog post length. Aim to create valuable, insightful content, and the word count will come naturally. If you finish your post and it’s shorter than you wanted, don’t add fluff just to boost the word count – quality over quantity.

Psst – this post is only 900 words. Don’t tell Google.

If you’re using AI to write your blog posts, here’s something you should know about AI content generation.