Many marketers assume that longer content is more effective in terms of marketing. Although increasing the word count of blog posts may improve results for SEO efforts and content marketing initiatives, this doesn’t always happen; its effectiveness depends on your goals for creating it.
How to Calculate Word Count to Meet Marketing Goals
Word Count and Content Marketing Goals
Some may argue that more words equal better wfo maximus content. This belief stems from users preferring informational pieces that cover a topic in depth and add value; although quality information may be appreciated by audiences, is that what your content marketing strategy aims for?
Businesses may need to provide an answer to another question: What are you hoping to accomplish?
Different content lengths serve different marketing goals, such as SEO and content marketing objectives. This makes sense since not all customers or business models or content marketing strategies are similar – why would everyone stick to conventional wisdom that suggests content should be around 2,500 words?
Reassess your content marketing goals.
Page Views: 300 Words or More
Short content might not be the worst choice for marketing strategies that primarily rely on pageviews. Though Google’s Panda algorithm prefers longer posts than 300 words, thin ones won’t be penalized by it.
HubSpot data showed that blog posts between 2,250 and 2,500 words attracted the highest organic traffic, yet blog posts between 250 and 499 words outshone both categories of posts by outpacing them by an astounding 93%! An Orbit Media study discovered 13% of bloggers surveyed reported strong results with posts shorter than 500 words, and Tim Brown, an established marketer, conducted a Twitter poll which revealed 27% preferred posts between 300-700 words as respondents’ preferences.
Seth Godin, an esteemed marketing expert, is best known for his daily blog posts that have proven vital in his successful content marketing strategy.
Notably, many static pages such as FAQ, product, and about pages fall within the 300+ word category. While these may not contain thousands of words like an in-depth article might, they still serve businesses effectively.
SEO, Branding and Marketing Content of 500 to 1,000 Words
Content marketing pieces ranging between 500 to 1000 words are ideal for most companies, providing enough coverage of most blog topics while still adding value for readers, earning social shares and comments, and satisfying Google’s search algorithm.
Tim Brown’s followers generally approve of posts between 800 and 900 words, with 51% approval rating from them. Orbit Media conducted a survey that revealed 17% of bloggers preferring this length; moreover, posts between 800 and 900 words have become very popular among this group in recent years; Medium data supports this claim, showing posts around three minutes reading time (approx. 900 words) receiving the most views.
Content lengths between 500-1k words are ideal for your small team or outside agency partner to manage effectively, offering the right balance between covering an issue in depth while optimizing it for SEO.
Engagement: 2,100 Words
When your content marketing goal is to engage deeply with its target audience, long-form articles with approximately 2,100 words could be ideal. This represents both time and resources investment from you as well as from readers themselves.
Medium’s internal data revealed that seven-minute posts (roughly 2,100 words) tended to garner the highest engagement and average time spent reading content peaked here before gradually decreasing. HubSpot content of this length received the second-highest number of social shares, behind only content longer than 2,500 words.
Ranking Keywords With Over 2,500 Words of Text (2,000-2,500 Words).
When ranking for highly competitive keywords, longer content–about 2,500 words–tends to perform better. According to data from SerpIQ, the top ten Google search results for such terms typically feature content with over 2,000 words; even their 10th ranking result averages an average word count over this threshold. HubSpot found similar trends; content around this length generated the most organic traffic.
Top Content: Resources, Time and Effort
Importantly, not just any 2,500-word article will rank highly for competitive search terms. Quality content creation takes more time and resources – both to create and to consume.
Orbit Media’s survey revealed that on average it takes three hours and 16 minutes to write a blog post – an increase of 26% year over year. More than 45% of bloggers spend three or more hours creating one piece of content; 12% go beyond six hours.
One way to ease resource constraints is to mix content lengths. This could involve publishing several shorter posts each month alongside one longer post; or you might find that another approach such as content volume, paid media placement or other tactics works better for your needs.
Conclusion
The ideal content length depends on what best matches your business, audience and marketing goals. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to word count; shorter pieces can work well for driving pageviews or engaging casual readers; while longer pieces often require SEO services and building deep engagement. By understanding your objectives and audience preferences, your content strategy can be tailored accordingly, whether that means writing posts with 300 words or 2,500+.
