Blogging Insights #13 How long is the ideal blog post ?

Short form VS Long form Content

Before I launched my blog a couple of years ago, I read quite a few posts and articles about blogging. All of them said that the search engines preferred content to be around 2000 words. Tbis, I learned, was called long form content.

I paid for a plug-in called Yoast which all the articles said I must have (more about this in a later post). This plug-in which works on a traffic light kind of system would not give me a green lighht unless I crossed 300 words. I dispensed with Yoast since the WordPress Business Plan that plug-ins operate on was quite expensive and not really doing anything for me.

By this time I had discovered that short form content (1200 words orless) seemed to be doing very well for many bloggers whose work I admired. For a really great article on short form vs long form comtent, click here.

How long are your blog posts on average?

When I first began blogging the average length of my post was more than 500 words. It used to take me about 200 words just getting warmed up about the topic. Although I was enjoying writing these wordy and lengthy posts, hardly anyone was reading them.

Then my friend Sadje, who used to write short-form posts told me to try sticking to a much lower word count. I followed her advice and my blog traffic soared.

Given the option, would you rather post long form or short form content?

I guess I prefer to write longer posts with a proper introduction, several paragraphs for the “body” of the piece, and a good conclusion that ties up the whole topic. But most people (myself included) don’t really have the time and patience to read very long posts.

I solved this problem once by dividing a long article on Decision Fatigue into a series of three shorter posts. You can read these here, here and here, if you like.

There are some posts, however, that have to be written as short form. These include poems, writing prompts, quizzes and list posts.

Time is short and the attention spans of social media users shorter still, why do you think the search engines prefer longer content?

Two years into blogging and I still don’t have the answer to this one. I did not Google it by the way, otherwise I might have found out. What I really want is the opinion of other bloggers on this.

Okay! That was my bit. Now I am really looking forward to reading YOUR answers. Please remember to tag your post

# blogginginsights,

and leave a link in my comments section too.