How Long Should Each Blog Entry Be

How long each blog entry should be is one of those tough questions where you will get a ton of different answers... in fact, everyone you ask will probably have a different answer as to what the ideal post length is. But the reality is that some types of blog posts require more words than others, while some market areas will define how long your blog posts should be, which is why there is such a variety of answers. So when it comes to picking a word count for each of your new blog posts, how should you determine it?

What you need
If you write a fantastic blog post that comes in at 1000 words, the last thing you should do is chop it down to 600 because of what someone says. If it is quality content and perfectly edited, just leave it as is. If there is an easy way to break it into part one and part two, consider that, but otherwise, leave it as the full 1000 and publish it as is. The last thing you want to do is starting chopping out parts and end up with a shell of the original that ends up being mediocre, when your original longer one was Digg-worthy.

Quality
As long as you are posting quality, you can do short blog posts more frequently. But don’t risk losing quality for quantity, regardless of the post length. Ideally, your blog post length should be what is needed to provide the best quality of article, whether than means 200, 300, or 900 words in each post. Just as you want to ensure you are giving the topic the word count it needs, you also want to ensure you are giving it the quality it needs.

Market attention span
The reality is that some market areas can hold he attention of the reader longer than others. Start by checking your analytics and see how long visitors stay on your site per page, with a variety of post sizes. If the average is 30 seconds, you will want to stick primarily with shorter, snappy posts. But if the average is 90 seconds, you could easily handle 1000 word blog entries on a more regular basis, as long as you can consistently provide the quality goods in that length of article.

Reader interaction
You can also look at your visitor interaction. Do your longer blog articles tend to end up with no comments while your short ones have plenty? Or your longer ones end up with dozens of comments while your short quick posts are empty? That could be a tip off as to the length of posts that are best received by your readers, so you can offer more of the same.

Most popular
Are your blog posts with the highest page views consistently the ones where you dove in-depth into a subject, rather than the shorter quick look posts? Or is it the shorter ones that tend to be the most read? This can definitely help you consider not only the length of posts that are most popular, but also the types of posts you readers seem to love.

Both worlds
One of the favorite end result strategies it to mix it up a bit and offer both. Provide the longer 1000 word posts that delve deeply into a topic, but then offer a quickie post of a couple hundred words for the next one. You can give the longer ones the depth it needs while upping your blog’s post quantity by posting shorter (and quicker to write) blog entries too. This way you are providing the best of both worlds for your readers, and satisfying both reading tastes.

The end result? There is no right or wrong answer to the post length question. It is better to focus on what each blog post needs than trying to conform each of those blog posts to a length that you think the readers want. Then watch for what seems to be popular to your readers and try and provide more of those post lengths while still mixing it up enough to suit all reader’s attention spans.

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