blogging

This post will serve two purposes: 1) explain how blog post SEO works 2) prove that short content can still rank.

This post is an experiment and a case study in itself.

Let’s get right to it.

Googling “how long should a blog post be for SEO” gave us 177 million results. We’ve taken the top 10 and analyzed word count on the pages using an online tool.

Here’s the result:

URL	Word count (approximate)
https://hookagency.com/blog-length/	5020
https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/how-long-should-your-blog-post-be-for-seo.htm	1138
https://www.reliablesoft.net/how-long-should-a-blog-post-be-for-seo/	2745
https://yoast.com/academy/seo-copywriting-training/text-length/	1046
https://www.wesfed.com/blog/ideal-blog-post-length-seo/	2169
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ideal-blog-post-length-for-seo/255633/	1415
https://thewritepractice.com/blog-post-length/	1563
https://themegrill.com/blog/how-long-should-a-blog-post-be/	1501
https://bloggingexcel.com/how-long-should-a-blog-post-be/	2894
https://publicadagency.com/how-long-should-a-blog-post-be-for-seo-in-2020/	1028

The average word count for these results is 2051 words.

The simplest conclusion would be to say right here and now:

the optimal blog post for SEO is at around 2K words.

However, there are tons of factors at play in SEO – incoming links, outgoing links, domain authority, social activity, domain age and dozens more.

The safest thing to say to remain objective is – “the top sites have this amount of content and they rank for this specific search query in 2020“. Everything else is a stretch.

However, there is another thing that is keyword density. You’ve surely heard that keyword densities are a thing of the past – and you just have to “create good content” that people will love.

Practice shows that it’s not like that.

If an article about blog post length does not have the question “how long should a blog post be for SEO” in this exact match form – ranking will be way harder.

In fact, this very post has great chance to jump to page 2-3 without any links after getting indexed, just because it’s got high keyword density for the search phrase, and it actually answers the question fast.

Funny enough, only 3 sites out of the top 10 have the actual search phrase “how long should a blog post be for seo” in their content as an exact match. They still rank because the content does deal with ideal blog post length. And also, because those are all extremely authoritative domains with massive amount of backlinks.

This post, however, will rank too. Let’s see how fast.

Now to the blog post length for SEO checklist:

• Count the word amount in top 10, 20, and 30 results for the search phrase
• Get the average number, and examine who ranks higher
• Check domain metrics of the sites
• Check keyword densities for your search phrase
• Produce content that matches and exceeds the top 10.

That simple checklist should get you the results you need – the content long enough to start ranking and gathering organic traffic in 2020.