Jemima Writes

So, you’ve decided to launch a blog on your brand’s website. Congratulations!

You know that hosting relevant and engaging articles can be a high-return marketing tool, but you’re not sure exactly where to begin. You probably have a couple of burning questions on your mind. How long should each blog post be? Is there a secret-sauce number of words that will land you the greatest return on investment? Let’s get right to it and uncover the answer, giving you the tools to make the right decisions for your business!

When it comes to word count, you may have encountered the suggestion that 1500 is some kind of magic number, however, this is sadly something of a myth. This ball-park figure can be traced back to a 2020 study by Backlinko, which identified that first-page results on Google had a mean word count of 1,447 words.

Many people misinterpreted this to mean that this was some kind of golden figure, however, Google later confirmed that word count is not a ranking factor. For those paying attention, this didn’t come as a huge surprise because Backlinko had stated as much all along, saying, “we found no direct relationship between word count and rankings.”

One interesting thing that Backlinko did pinpoint through their research is that longer-form articles do tend to draw more backlinks (links on other websites pointing back to the article in question) which is a factor for SEO. However, as you might well imagine, it’s easy to see why in-depth and solution-oriented articles are likely to be linked to by other content creators.

Does this mean that you should be aiming for as high a word count as possible? Hold your horses! It really depends on the purpose of your content. Ultimately, the why of what you’re putting out into the world should steer your word counts, and that all-important why should be considered primarily from the reader’s perspective.

If you want to put out regular and engaging content for your readers, creating copy for them to peruse that is fun, fascinating, or both is where the true magic lies. Think about it; if you wanted to know how to do something really complex—like prune a bonsai tree or perfect your SEO strategy—then a longer in-depth article would likely hold your attention. However, if you spontaneously clicked a link because the title piqued your curiosity, depending on the topic, you might not want to read for more than a few minutes. As Google often highlights, the goal is to create copy that is high-value for readers, or “original, helpful content written by people, for people.”

Of course, there does need to be enough copy in each of your articles for search engines to be able to glean what they are about (and that’s where Keywords come in!) With this in mind, several SEO guides suggest a word count in the 500 to 1000-word area for web content, while some narrow that down further to the 700-mark.

Having made myself busy writing blogs for more than a decade now, my hot take is that 700-words is long enough to convey fully formed ideas and ample to use keywords effectively—which is why I offer that as a starting point in my blog writing service. For topics that are more complex and have a lot of ground to cover, a longer word count can certainly be advantageous, but trying to stretch a concept until it becomes thin will only guarantee that readers lose interest and navigate elsewhere!

So, what role do you imagine your blogs will play in the lives of your brand’s audience? What kind of ideas would you like to express, and how can we ensure that your readers enjoy and engage with them the most?

You may decide to focus on regular easy-reading articles, longer more technical pieces, or a mix—with occasional long-form articles serving as your cornerstone content. You might also hope to attract backlinks or have an SEO whizz busy building backlinks on your behalf. These aspects—word count, keywords, and backlinks—are of course only a few slices of the larger SEO pie, but certainly food for thought!

Word Count Examples

Having covered all of that, let’s have a look at what certain word counts actually look like. Bearing in mind that the average silent reading rate for adults in English is 238 words per minute, we can examine a few fairly typical article lengths. For additional context, these Lorem Ipsum documents (Latin filler-text, so not something to read!) were written using the font Arial in 12px and provide something of a visual guide.

What does a 700-word article look like?

A 700-word article would take the average reader about 3 minutes to get through. In a pretty standard format and broken up by subheadings to aid the reader, it would look more or less like this:

What does a 1000-word article look like?

A 1000-word article will take the average member of your audience a little over 4 minutes to read. Once again broken up by subheadings to aid the reader’s journey and free from things like bullet points, it would look pretty much like this:

What does a 1500-word article look like?

For most readers, a 1500-word article will call for a little over 6 minutes of focused attention. Punctuated by regular subheadings, it would look something like this:

So there you have it! With these examples in mind, you can consider how much you have to say about the topic at hand (or how much you’d like me to say about it for you) and what word count would achieve the best possible value for your readers. Would you like to explore some more tips and insights as you begin your blogging adventure? Be sure to check out more blogs for businesses via the link below.