Blogging 101: Crafting Sweet and Interesting Posts with the Right Word Count
What is the right number of words, sentences, or paragraphs for your blog post? The worst thing you can do to your readers is to make your blog post too long…or too short.
Ouch, which is it?
There is some consensus in the blogging community, so let’s dig in.
Shorter Sentences Are Better
In a blog post, you want your sentences to be concise. It is recommended to aim for sentences that are between 15-20 words in length. This length is considered ideal as it is concise enough to be easily understood while also providing enough information to effectively convey the message.
According to a 2020 blog post by Yoast, their plugin will advise you if more than 25% of your sentences are longer than 20 words.
[Yoast] counts the words you’ve used in each sentence. Next, it calculates how many of your sentences are longer than 20 words. If more than 25% of your sentences is longer than 20 words, you’ll get the advice to shorten them.
Yoast SEO
Shorter sentences help to maintain the reader’s attention and make it easier to follow and comprehend.
The most important thing is to ensure that the content is clear and easy to understand. Sentences that are too short can come across as abrupt or lacking in detail. In contrast, sentences that are too long can be difficult to follow and cause the reader to lose focus. The goal should be to strike a balance between conciseness and detail. In addition, the goal should be to use sentence structure and grammar effectively to convey the message in a clear and engaging way. Additionally, varying sentence length and structure can help to keep the reader engaged and improve the overall readability of the post.
What About Paragraph Word Count?
RankMath, the SEO plugin I use, suggests keeping paragraph length to under 120 words and will flag a paragraph that is longer.
Putting up a wall of text is the fastest way to lose your readers’ interest. A great way to keep the user engaged is to use shorter paragraphs. [Y]ou’ll notice that we keep our paragraphs limited to a few lines each.
RankMath
If a particular topic requires more than five sentences to explain, it may be better to break it up into multiple paragraphs. Additionally, using subheadings, bullet points, or other visual aids can help to break up the content and make it more visually appealing and easier to understand.
The Magic Question – How Long Should My Blog Post Be?
Too short, and your post probably doesn’t have enough meat in it. Too long, and well…
Most recommendations for blog post length are intended to help your site rank in Google Search. Semrush has an interesting article laying out blog post length by type of content. They suggest a target of 1000-1500 words for an informational blog post and 1500-2500 for a user guide or tutorial.
In reality, success is mostly down to the quality of your content and how comprehensively you cover your topic, not necessarily a specific length.
Semrush
Interestingly, many SEO plugins prefer longer content. The list to the right shows the scores used by RankMath.
- More than 2500 words: 100% score
- 2000-2500 words: 70% score
- 1500-2000 words: 60% score
- 1000-1500 words: 40% score
- 600-1000 words: 20% score
- Below 600 words: 0% score
If SEO ranking is not a goal, you might want to consider a blog post length of 300-500 words.
If we are keeping our paragraphs to under 120 words and our sentences to under 20, that means about 4-6 paragraphs with a total of about 25 sentences.
Keep in mind that many WordPress plugins will check the word count for you.
Closing Comments
Quality is more important than quantity. A blog post that is 2,000 words in length but lacks substance or is poorly written will not be as effective as a well-written 500-word post that provides valuable information and engages the reader. The key is to strike a balance between providing enough information to meet the reader’s needs and keeping the post concise and to the point.
