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How long should blog articles be

Published
โ€ข3 min read
How long should blog articles be
C

I'm a full-stack developer from South Africa ๐Ÿ‡ฟ๐Ÿ‡ฆ. I love writing about JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

When you start exploring the blogging world, mainly technical writing, you'll encounter this question often.

Some questions that might pop up on your journey:

From your perspective, you might be wondering how long it should be to rank better.

If you write for other publications, they tell you it should be at least 1500 or 2000 words.

And you might be exploring other articles and see various lengths, which might confuse you about what is best.

But how long should your articles be?

The simple answer

Make your article as long as it needs to be to explain the solution.

To me, it's absolute nonsense that a blog should be x amount of words to rank. Trust me on this one, I have 250+ number one ranking articles, and they are "short".

This is old-school thinking and often by those articles that still suggest meta keywords are a thing (and no, they are not).

I know what you are thinking, but you are a simple tech blogger, not an SEO expert. And that's right, but I'm also a stubborn simple tech blogger.

I do what I think works best, which has not been disappointing so far.

What does matter?

I've noticed the only thing that matters with content these days is: "Does the user like it".

I'm stating "like it" as it can be a range of situations.

  • Your article is fun to read, so people read till the end
  • Your article solves an issue, and the person is happy
  • Your article clears some thoughts, and they agree

I don't particularly know how Google knows when these are true, but it seems they do.

It could be the person stops searching for specific terms, and google has understood your article has helped them with that.

Note: The above is just a brain dump, not proven

But, I can tell you that you should focus on making the user experience enjoyable.

To me, that means giving people an answer to a question. But for some, it might be to explain how something works in detail. Or perhaps even tell your story in your own words.

Conclusion

How long should blog articles be? "As long as it takes, to make it enjoyable".

A very vague answer, but stick to writing what you think is the correct amount to explain what you are describing. Don't try and fill your articles with words that don't add anything.

In my vision, there is no minimum but also no maximum words for blog articles. There are only enjoyable articles and non-enjoyable articles.

Thank you for reading, and let's connect!

Thank you for reading my blog. Feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter and connect on Facebook or Twitter

P

1500-3000 words

They say about 1k is enough to satisfy Google, but personally, I would recommend 1.5k as the bottom line.

Actually, 1.5k words are the required daily minimum for writers of Chinese Online Novels if they want to get paid. I guess the Chinese companies (Webnovels and others) have their well-researched reasons to insist on this number.

Over 3k words are simply too much. Modern readers need a break to relieve their shorter attention span.

1
C

I strongly disagree with this.

Why would you need random fillers to solve a problem? my article rarely go over 800 words and I still got 80+ #1 ranking articles.

It does of course depend on the type of content, but technical content seems to be more of a once-off-hit where you can really focus on solving without the fluff.

1
P

Fillers are usually a sign of sloppy writing, so no need to use them.

But even technical articles may be accompanied with deeper insight, typically with discussion of pros or cons of the given approach.

A longer article helps understand its reader not only what its author intended to convey, but even why he claimed that.

Of course, if the author's intention is only to provide a quick tip, no wordiness is necessary. But on the other hand, such write-ups usually do not qualify for a full-fledged blog article.

After all, some readers may end up disappointed that they got caught by too short note-like work, not exactly worthy of the click and wasted data.

Moreover, it is said Google Search Engine tend to skip over too concise content, so the author gets disqualified from the global competition.

Chris Bongers

A

Thanks for the tips Chris Bongers ๐Ÿ‘

3
C

Glad you enjoy them Ammaar ๐Ÿ’–

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