Article Length for SEO Blogs
November 25, 2020 | Category: SEO, SEO Blog Writing
An aspect to consider for blog writing is the number of words in each blog article.
It’s very straightforward to understand, but it is easy to forget. Search engines like Google consider article length when deciding how to rank content.
Quality is essential, but quantity also plays a significant role. You don’t want your blog articles to be too short. Three hundred words are the bare minimum. On the other hand, there is a general limit to how long items should be. Blog posts need to be of very high quality to be longer and still rank well.
Article length is one of the essential aspects we describe in our SEO Blog Writing guide.
Make sure your articles aren’t too short
At the very least, blog posts need to be 300 or more words. With any less, you’re probably not providing enough value to readers. Google considers small articles to be “thin content.”
A hefty penalty is applied to thin content and prevents it from ranking well compared to other sources. If your blogs aren’t making it onto the first few results pages on Google, don’t expect any potential customers to find it organically.
Keyword stuffing is another issue that can arise with short articles. The term means overusing keywords to try and manipulate a website’s ranking in search results. Depending on how often you use your focus keywords, Google might accuse and penalize your article’s ranking.
For example, let’s say you wrote a 400-word article about a specific style of craft beer. If you used the keyword “India Pale Ale” 40 times, it would probably be too much. Google would detect that 10% of your article is the keyword “India Pale Ale.”
The only exception to this 300-word minimum is taxonomy content. This is short written content that writers use for organizing other content. An example is categorizing different types of shoes for a shoe store. Yoast discusses Taxonomy SEO further in an article.
What is the ideal article length?
Historically, blog articles with 1000 or more words have ranked best, according to Yoast. Marieke van de Rakt of Yoast suggests that “You have a higher chance of ranking in Google if you write long, high-quality blog posts, of 1000 words or more. “(Van der Rakt, 2020).
This can be attributed to many reasons.
Longer blog articles give search engines more information to determine what you’re talking about and if it matches a user’s search intent. When you’re following best SEO practices, your article’s focus keywords will appear more frequently throughout the text.
For example, if you’re writing an article about “Eavestrough inspections,” you’ll have more opportunities to say precisely that throughout the piece. Frequently using keywords helps Google know that it should consider showing your article to people searching about eavestrough inspections. You will also have more room to include pictures, videos and website links. All of these elements can contribute to a blog article receiving a higher ranking.
Lastly, it’s important to note that content with 1000+ words is less likely to be accused of keyword stuffing. In other words, it’s much tougher to do accidentally since the post is more spread out.
Can articles or blog posts be too long?
Technically, there isn’t an exact limit for how long blog articles should be. You can write a great 2500+ word article that ranks very well and receives much organic exposure.
The most optimal number of words depends on the quality of the article’s content. Good quality content is readable, original and well structured. Also, you should consider if it’s relevant and valuable to your ideal readers.
Google’s algorithm is very complex and constantly changing. To determine the rankings of web content, it takes a wide variety of metrics into account regularly. Ultimately, Google and Bing care about user experience and use these metrics to evaluate page experience. For example, the average time on page can be utilized to gauge user interest. If an article is 2000 words, but the average time on page is 40 seconds, that’s a big red flag for Google.
A strong example of high-quality articles is known as cornerstone content. These are long articles that are typically 1500 or more words long. They briefly cover everything related to a topic. For example, our SEO blog writing guide is cornerstone content for SEO blog writing. We discuss word counts in articles, headings, Alt-text, Meta descriptions, and several other aspects of SEO blog writing in the guide.
For more details on writing long, high-quality articles, we recommend visiting Yoast’s blog for Word count and SEO.
In Conclusion
Your blog post’s word count should be kept in mind when writing it if you want it to be put in front of people by search engines.
If it is too short, it won’t show up often in search results. There are a few things to keep in mind with shorter blogs, such as thin content and keyword stuffing.
If your blog is around 1000 words long, you need to make sure the content is high quality. For example, this article you’re reading is around 900 words long. It has valuable information that helps you learn more about blog writing. Also, it’s readable, well structured and original.