How Word Count Contributes to the Success of Your Website

There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there about wordcount and SEO.

Ask some professionals and they’ll tell you that so long as a blog post reaches 250 words you’re golden, even in a post-Panda, post-Penguin, and post-Hummingbird world. Others swear by 500 word blog posts.

But there’s evidence to suggest that longer is better, so long as you have something important to say. Blog posts of 800, 1000, or even 2000 words are becoming the norm–even though there are some sites out there which continue to rank well in spite of using lots of shorter posts.

Let’s look at some of the reasons why an average content marketer should probably focus on writing longer pieces.

Longer pieces for you to think more about your topic.

“Insight” has become the coin of the realm. Isn’t that what most people say? Content can’t just be informative. It has to offer some insight, too. “Insight” is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but it’s more likely to come if you’re actually forcing yourself to think about the topic of your post.

500 words may be enough to deliver a rough overview of any given topic, but it’s not always enough to deliver any insight. Forcing yourself to work with longer word counts means forcing yourself to dig a little bit deeper. It also forces you to produce articles which are truly unique.

I find that longer pieces also force me to pay attention to what others in my field are doing and saying. It’s easy to knock off a really short piece on the strength of my expertise alone, but I can’t always write a longer piece that way. Poking my head out of my own thoughts and experiences exposes me to ideas and issues which I wouldn’t see otherwise. It forces me to think about them.

When those thoughts are valuable, then I can turn around and present them to you.

Rising to this challenge helps me create a one of a kind site.Shorter pieces encourage content marketers and SEO specialists to churn out a lot more “surface” content–the type of stuff that makes every website look like every other website.

Remember, a blog post has more than one purpose. It’s not just there to capture keywords. It’s also there to establish your authority in your niche. It’s there to demonstrate thought leadership and expertise. It’s there to build trust with your customers. So the value of this thinking, planning, and research process cannot be overstated.

Longer posts offer real SEO value.

As I mentioned, some sites continue to rank well on 500 word blog posts. There are a lot of factors that go into ranking, and average post length is certainly only one of those factors.

However, Neil Patel of Crazy Egg recently ran tests on over 20,000 keywords. Here’s what he found:

The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The higher you go up on the search listings page, the more content each web page has.

Averages aside, I’ve found that blog posts start performing really well right around the 800 – 1,200 word mark. I wouldn’t write a 2,000 word blog post soley for the sake of writing a 2,000 word blog post. Short of conducting interviews and treating each post like a full length magazine feature article I’m not sure that every topic deserves 2,000 words, even if there is a ton of thought and insight behind it. With that being said, Patel’s statistics still prove the point: longer posts offer a big SEO boost.

There may be several reasons for this. First, longer content has a lot more legitimate opportunities for to weave in keywords and keyword variations. They can capture a lot more keywords too–all without using the kinds of manipulative writing tactics that create stilted, keyword stuffed content.

In particular, longer content is better at capturing long tail keywords–the types of keywords that perform better in a post-Hummingbird world.

Second, as Neil points out, longer content simply looks more valuable (and, as noted above, is more likely to be more valuable). That means that other bloggers and site owners are more willing to link to that piece of content, and to do so in the most valuable of ways: organically, without being asked, of their own free will, with no effort on your part.

Longer blog posts get more social shares.

Social shares matter to overall traffic, even though the jury is still out on social’s SEO impact. People are more likely to share longer content for the same reasons that they’re willing to link to it. It comes across as more valuable, more important, and more insightful.

Sharing other people’s content is an incredibly important part of just about anybody’s social strategy. And the strategy usually pays off more for those who share really good content. “Good” is as subjective as “insightful,” and length is certainly not the only arbiter of what is good. But length can certainly be an indication of quality.

Length also lets the social media manager get more bang for his or her time, allowing him or her to share more value and more information in one action packed update.

Of course, there are plenty of other factors that can spark a social share. Writing clear, precise prose at the 8^th grade level helps. Good visuals help. Video helps. Saying something nobody else is saying definitely helps. Great headlines are also a deciding factor. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that it’s a slam-dunk piece of content just because it’s long.

Word count is a guideline, not an end result.

Since word count is not a slam dunk indicator for a really successful piece you’ve got to keep its importance in context. Sometimes a piece is just as long as it needs to be, and attempts to make it any longer will only weaken it to the point where it is no longer useful or interesting. When that happens, polish it until it shines and post it. Each individual blog post is just one component of a larger web site, and every single piece does not have to rank in Google’s Top 10 to bring you outstanding results. You just want to add longer-form posts to a more general list of best practices so that you can get the best possible return on your content marketing efforts.

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