Ideal Blog Post Length For SEO In 2020? Nah! Just Focus on The Quality!

Ideal Blog Post Length For SEO In 2020: As bloggers, each of us, at some point, must have wondered what the ideal blog post length for SEO should be.

Researches conducted by a wide range of digital marketing bodies imply that Google prefers long-form content. At the same time, there is this talk about our decreasing attention span. Does that mean that users won’t have the patience to read your article if you write thousands of words? Wouldn’t that mean a higher bounce rate and a negative impact on SEO?

What is the ideal blog post length for SEO in 2019 then? How long should your article be so that it does not piss off your visitors? This is what this article is about.

Ideal Blog Post Length For SEO In 2019

As the title says, this article is about the ideal blog post length for SEO. There is a reason why I have specifically mentioned and now emphasizing on “for SEO”:

See, the length of your blog post depends on what purpose you want it to serve – do want your article to rank high in the SERP and generate organic traffic or is it for social media? Or is it just for getting more number of comments in it? The ideal blog post length for each of these three purposes is different. Since this article is about the ideal blog post length for SEO, it means it will deal with the blog post length for content to generate traffic from organic search.

Anyway, let us first see what the top researches say about the ideal blog post length for SEO:

a. BuzzSumo + Moz (2015)

Moz and BuzzSumo together analyzed over 1 million articles to understand the correlation between shares and links and to identify the content (and format) that gets high shares and/or links. According to the findings of the analysis, more than 85 percent of online content has a word count below 1000 words. Hence, it will be easier to rank if you write articles that have 1000+ words.

b. Search Engine Journal

According to this article, there is no denying the fact that long-form content ranks better, but that’s because, the article argues, long-form content usually has the substance, facts, and evidence to substantiate its claims. It is, therefore, a qualitative thing, not quantitative. Hence, there is no ideal blog post length for SEO.

Makes sense!

c. Medium (2013)

According to Medium’s in-depth analysis of the reading behavior of its users, on an average, they spend 7 minutes on a post. That is, the reading time of your blog post is 7 minutes, which, in terms of word count, means around 1600 words.

This may hold true for Medium blogs, but I am not sure if people who stumble upon a non-Medium article in the SERP will exhibit the same behavior. Because Medium is not a search engine where people go to look for answers to a particular query, like they do in search engines.

d. Backlinko (2016)

According to this research by Backlinko, wherein they analyzed 1 million Google search results to find out the factors that contribute towards first page search engine rankings, on an average, the articles on the first page of Google results have 1890 words.

e. Hubspot

According to Hubspot’s analysis of 6,192 blog posts on their own platform, the ideal blog post length for SEO, i.e. to generate organic traffic is 2250 – 2500.

f. SerpIQ 

SerpIQ conducted an analysis, wherein they looked into the length of the top ten results in search queries. The findings revealed that the articles that appear in the first position of the SERP have, on an average, around 2416 words.

So, now you know what others are saying regarding the ideal blog post length.

So, What Is The Ideal Blog Post Length For SEO?

The mission of search engines like Google is to provide correct information to the users. For this, search engine algorithms are constantly evolving so that they can identify which article, for a particular query, is the most relevant and useful one.

At the same time, search engines are not as smart and sophisticated as humans. So, to make the search engines understand the relevancy of the articles, we need to optimize them in a manner that they understand. One of the ways to do that is to write long-form articles. Because, as the SEJ article says, long-form articles are likely to have all the necessary information and elements of a quality article, including the evidence in support of the information provided.

Of course, that alone is not enough. Other aspects of search engine optimization are also needed to be taken care of.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should include unnecessary and irrelevant information in your article to increase the word count. Like I said, no matter what, quality cannot be compromised with.

So, What Does It Mean?

Word count of blog posts matters, but more than that, it is the quality of the article that is important. There are scores of articles that appear in the number 1 position that has a lesser word count than the ones below them.

From my experience, I think, it is OK to write articles with a word count of 1500-2000 words provided you have the necessary relevant information to write. However, the blog post length (for SEO) will also depend upon other factors, like the niche itself or the particular topic you are writing for.

For example, if the present article in number 1 position of the SERP for a particular keyword that you are targeting, is around 700 words, there is no point in writing 1500 words. Just exceeding the word count of that article and providing useful and additional information would be enough.

I hope this article on ideal blog post length helps you. If you have any query, feel free to drop them below and I will get back to you at the earliest.