What Even is a Blog?
Updated: Jan 5, 2021
Humans crave information, opinions and perspectives - and what better way than to write them all down in an easily digestible piece of writing?
Typically consisting of around 300-1000+ words, blogs can be used as a device to communicate, educate, promote and influence.
Whatever your purpose for blogging, whether it be a diary to emotionally connect with others, or a tool to demonstrate thought-leadership, blogging should be consistent and ideally, frequent.
Over time, writing regularly helpful and informative blogs will make you the ‘go-to’ source within your industry and particular niche - leading to more inquiries and higher conversion rates.
In technical terms; blogging is a way for websites to stay constantly refreshed and updated. When posting weekly, daily or even less-than-hourly updates, it keeps your website active - Google and other major search engines love this. To repay you for your hard work, they rank you higher in the search terms, which results in more leads, clicks - and ultimately - money.
Choosing word length:
“Blog posts with over 1,500 words are 68% more likely to be shared on Twitter, and 22% more likely to be liked on Facebook compared to shorter posts.”
According to Medium, the ideal blog post length is 1,600 words - or seven minutes of reading. This was calculated by evaluating the user engagement (the average total seconds spent on each post, compared to the post length). Remember, when it comes to SEO, it’s all about how much value the content provides.
So, maximise the value of your content + increase length of user engagement = higher ranking on Google! After all, content is king but context is queen! You’re welcome.
Rumour has it that longer-form content is more likely to be shared on social media AND is more likely to be linked to by other blogs, again, both of which also improve your SEO!
The Pros of Writing Shorter Blog Posts
More feasible to create on a regular basis
Easier to read
More content = a bigger footprint
The Cons of Writing Shorter Content
Search engines are robots. They have a hard time discerning the context of your page content
Fewer words = less keyword ranking opportunities
Content can be too shallow. Readers need to be spoken to on their level of understanding
Benefits of Longer Blog Posts
Longer dwell time for readers
Search engine better understand the context and intent of your content
Drawbacks of Writing Long Blog Posts
Few writers have the ability to keep readers fully engaged
Better content requires stronger writers - choose wisely!
The bottom line:
If you want to create frequent content on a wide variety of topics that prompts readers to an action, you’ll want shorter content (with a minimum of 300 words). Don’t forget, duplicate content in Google and other search engines can wreck havoc on your ranking, so originality is key! Aim for a minimum of 500 words per page. If you want to create a piece of content that can seriously boost your SEO and user engagement, then invest in quality long-form content of 1000+ words. Less frequent posts with stronger context will win the SEO game.
To learn more about SEO, check our marketing page.