Me and my friends, a group of five recently went out for coffee. It had been a while before our last meet up. Four of us were part-time bloggers, and most of our conversation automatically shifted to work. It was a fun couple of hours not only catching up but also getting useful tips in terms of work as well, though I can’t vouch that it was as much fun for the friend who wasn’t into the blogging business.
Anyways while talking about blogging, the topic came up as to “What is the ideal word count for a blog and how long a regular post should be?” We all had different views and discussed the topic in detail. Today I will share the gist of what we discussed and the main aspects to keep in mind regarding the word count while blogging. In the end, I will share with you the details of the best word counter that I use.
As far as the blogging business is concerned all bloggers unanimously agree that a blogger’s ultimate aim is to increase traffic to his blog by increasing the readership and getting more comments and shares for the respective blog.
To do this a blogger, first of all, needs to know his audience. He needs to know how to write interesting blog posts about trending topics that are all the rage. Having said that regardless of whether you are a newbie or have been blogging for a while now, you can never be too sure as to what your audience will want to read about. This is very true in terms of the word count for the blog as well. But the question is “What is the right blog length that will increase traffic to your posts and increase your readership?”
Every blogger will have a different answer to this question. There will be no one answer in terms of word count. Our opinions differed as well. One of us was a staunch believer of the myth that as far as the blog posts are concerned, “shorter is better.” He argued that the ideal number of words for a blog is around 700 words, which keeps it short and sweet and the reader doesn’t lose their interest or get bored with too much information stuffed into one post. I happened to disagree. My reasoning was a reflection of my personal experience regarding blogging. When I started out, I used to do just that, keep my posts “short and sweet” but fast forward six years, and I can tell you with certainty that “the longer, the better.” I would be lying if I said that my longer blog posts went ignored. In fact, some of my most shared and read blog posts were the ones that had a medium length, a word count of roughly around 1200-1500 words. Although we did not agree, neither one of us was wrong.
Well, shorter is surely better if you are looking to generate more comments on your blog post or looking to start new discussions on it. In that case, 100 – 300-word count is ideal. But where the short posts have the advantage of engaging your readers it has the disadvantage of it having a negative effect on the number of readers. The shorter posts are usually not shared and do not have a very good ranking on the search engines either.
On the contrary, if you are looking to increase the traffic on your blog and the ranking of your blog on the search engines then, in that case, it won’t be wrong to say “the longer, the better.” If you are looking for more social media shares then writing blog posts with a word count of between 600-1200 would be perfect. But make sure that not only is the topic captivating but the content of your post is also good enough to capture the audience’s interest and solve their problems. If the word count is increased to roughly 2000 words and plus, owing that it’s a quality blog post you can expect a lot of traffic from Google. However, make sure that it’s a trending topic as it would be really sad if all that time is spent writing about a topic that no one will be searching for on Google.
Well, then what is the right answer in terms of the ideal word count for a blog post? It depends entirely on what you are aiming to achieve, whether you are looking for comments and shares or to increase traffic on your blog. So, make sure you keep your number of words in check and to do that check out Small SEO Tools. Amongst many other useful SEO tools, it has the best word counter available on the internet. It is very simple to use. All you have to do is click “word counter,” then put the text in the box. The moment you paste the text in the box the word count for the text shows at the bottom of the box. It shows not only the number of total words but also the total characters in the text. So, keep a check on the length of your blog posts with this amazing word counter and keep your blogs trending. Happy counting!!
