How Long Should Your Blog Posts Be?

In the age of skimming, RSS feeds, and tweeting, I have found that a common question among new bloggers is,”how long should my blog post be?” When people ask me this I always like to ask them, how long do you think it should be?  As it turns out, there is no magical number that everyone should aim for. The answer to this question is unique for every site and target audience, so if you want to know what length is ideal, you need to understand your readers.

First, if you havent done so already, think about who your target audience is, and how much they want to read.  If for example your blog is about celebrity gossip, your target audience is likely not interested in sitting down and reading your 1400 word analysis of Kourtney Kardashian’s recent display of motherhood, however they are very interested in reading a paragraph if it contains a new bit of information.  If on the other hand your site focuses on discussing foreign policy, then your readers likely will welcome longer posts that have deeper analysis.  The marketing people over at Viper Chill did some research and put together this chart of the average length of posts based on industries, use it as a guide to see how you stack up.

In the SEO world people commonly talk about post length, many strongly believing that search engines will give less weight to posts that are either to short or to long.  Of course no one really knows what numbers are ideal, but the common consensus is that posts should be between 250-1000 words.  To test how much your audience likes to read, try shortening or lengthening your posts for a few weeks and see how your analytics data looks and adjust accordingly.  How long do you think a post should be?  use our comments section to let us know!

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