Are you currently trying to drive more traffic to your blog? If the answer is yes then take a look at this article on Australianunwrapped to find out how to do this! But one of the most common questions asked by those trying to boost their traffic is “How long should my blog posts be?”. If I had a dime for every time someone asked me that question, I would be a billionaire.
Long or short?
Detailed or vague?
Pictures or just text?
The questions go on and on.
And while there is no one right answer for any of these questions, there is some data that can help you to craft blog posts that will have higher views, higher engagement, and all but inevitable virality.
Credit – searchengineland.com
But First…
Before I delve into all of the details explaining how long your articles should be (and why) I want to start this article off with a caveat.
Length is not everything.
I know incredibly successful marketers like Seth Godin who rarely writes more than 100 words per article. There are other marketers who are more similar to me who prefer to write longer articles, often longer than 3,000 words.
The length of your article will largely depend on your target audience, personality, and chosen methods.
While longer is usually better, you can still succeed with short articles, but you will have to market them very differently.
So with that out of the way, onto the data.
Also read:
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Contents
Why Longer Blog Post helps in ranking higher in SERP
Longer Articles Tend to Have More Search Traffic
If you are looking to rank your article on the first page of Google or some other search engine, longer is definitely better.
An SerpIQ study found that all articles that ranked on the first page of Google for their respective keywords had 2,000 words or more.
And while there are over 200 different factors that actively affect your search engine rating, length is a primary factor that cannot be ignored.
The message here is clear.
If you want to rank on the first page of Google, then you need to write longer articles.
Longer Articles Have Higher Keyword Potential
Have you ever plugged a search query into Google where the top posts that came up had none of the keywords that you had typed but were still exactly what you were looking for?
While we could just crack this up to Google being smarter than the average bear, it is really due to keyword variety (and the way that Google indexes it).
What this means is that the longer your articles you write, the more keywords you will be able to put into the article.
So for example, if you are writing a 2,000 article on Instagram marketing with the search term “Instagram Marketing” you would also be able to use keywords like:
- How to master Instagram Marketing
- How to get more customers through Instagram
- Increase Instagram conversions
- Build an awesome Instagram account for your business
- Boost sales using Instagram
- Increase traffic through Instagram
And many, many more.
However, if you only wrote a short 300 word article, you would only be able to include a handful of those keywords (if any).
A Higher Word Count Equals a Higher Backlink Count
One of the best ways to increase your article’s SEO ranking is to have a long list of authoritative backlinks.
But the odds of getting backlinks to short articles is very slim.
Just think about it.
What are you more likely to link back to, a 300 word article with a very vague description of a pain point and a solution, or a 3,000 word article that offers step by step actions that you can take to fix a problem in your life?
I think the answer is obvious.
And outside of the emotional argument, there is also the data.
According to a test run by Moz, longer articles (1,000-2,000 words) get backlinks several orders of magnitude higher than shorter articles. If you want to increase the SEO ranking of your web pages, then Authority Backlinks by Link Scholars could be the game changing solution your business needs.
The final point that I want to make regarding length is that longer content gets shared more.
Another study conducted by Orbit Media showed that content that was 1,500 words or longer was shared almost 50% more than shorter length content.
In other words, if you already have articles that are getting shared by thousands of members of your audience, you could 10X that number just by increasing the word count by 1,000 words.
My own research on Quicksprout.com has corroborated what the data shows.
Articles that are 1,500 words long or more have 68% more Twitter shares and 22% more Facebook shares than shorter articles.
Pretty staggering when you think about it.
Conclusion
If you want to succeed in your content marketing campaigns, you need to have longer content.
It’s as simple as that.
Unless you are Seth Godin or a similar big name with a huge following who takes every word that you say as gospel then you will probably not see great success with short content.
Increasing the length of your content is not a particularly difficult task. With a few extra sentences and maybe one or two “Ultimate Guide” posts, you can skyrocket your business success.
So start writing more and see your marketing flourish.
Have you experimented with long vs. short articles? What’s your experience?
This Post “Why Longer Blog Post tends to rank higher in SERP” was First Published on Huffington Post
See the Original Post Here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
