SEO experts recommend that blog posts should be between 500 to 2,500 words for SEO purposes. However, there are several variables that affect this word count, and the recommendation can vary depending on who you ask.
So, what is the ideal word count? The short answer is: it depends.
In this post, we look at why your blog post’s word count is so important and provide recommendations for the length of your SEO content.
Why does word count matter for SEO?
In the words of Google, creating “fresh, unique content” is one of the most important strategies for search engine optimization (SEO).
By creating content that is useful for your audience and optimized with the keywords that people are searching for, you increase the chances that your content will rank higher in search results.
Google makes it clear in its SEO Starter Guide that you should “Provide an appropriate amount of content for your subject.” But it doesn’t specify how much. Instead, Google simply advises that content should be “factually accurate, clearly written, and comprehensive.” The example it gives is a web page for a recipe. Instead of simply listing the ingredients or a “basic” description of the dish, you should provide a complete, easy-to-follow recipe that gives people all the relevant information they’re looking for.
Google reiterates this recommendation by saying to “Avoid providing insufficient content for the purpose of the page.”
An important (albeit vague) clue here is “for the purpose of the page.” This implies that the recommended word count for SEO depends on the nature of the content. More precisely, it depends on the subject matter (what the blog post is about) in the context of searchers’ intent (what people are searching for).
So, back to the question at hand …
What word count is best for SEO?
A 2021 study by HubSpot argues that the best word count for blog posts is 2,100 to 2,400 words. However, this recommendation is based solely on data from HubSpot’s own blog, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. HubSpot’s blog posts are focused on very specific niches within marketing.
In contrast to HubSpot, the SEO folks at Yoast say that the ideal length of blog posts for SEO is “more than 300 words.” For less experienced writers, the company recommends a word count of 700 to 800 words. That guidance is slightly confusing, but essentially the company is arguing that the quality can begin to suffer when less experienced writers attempt to arbitrarily reach higher word counts.
What does Google say? That’s where things get even murkier …
Google says word count is not a ranking factor
Google’s own search guru John Mueller has been quoted saying that “the number of words on a page is not a quality factor, not a ranking factor.” He adds, as an example, that “just blindly adding more and more text to a page doesn’t make it better.”
Huh?
If the word count of your blog posts doesn’t affect SEO, then why do so many SEO experts say that the ideal length is 500 to 2,500 words?
The answer comes back to searchers’ intent.
For some types of content, Mueller says, searchers will be looking for a short-and-sweet answer to their question. But for other types, they’ll want “a giant book of information.” So the real ranking factor is not necessarily word count alone. It’s whether the blog post is providing a sufficient amount of information for what the searcher is looking for.
Google looks at all kinds of other clues in your content, besides word count, to determine how relevant it is to users’ searches.
But that still doesn’t answer the most pressing question: “How long should content be for SEO?”
At Copy Army, our clients often ask us for the best word count for blog posts. And if they plan to publish content on a weekly basis, then they usually just want a ballpark number, based on our experience and SEO experts’ recommendations.
That’s how we arrive at our recommendation of 500 to 2,500 words …
Our recommended blog post length for SEO
We recommend a word count of 500 to 2,500 words for blog posts when considering SEO. This range helps to ensure that the content achieves several other key SEO goals that are recommended by Google, including:
- Quality & readability
- Relevance and usefulness
- Freshness
- Credibility / authority
- Context
Another practical consideration that SEO experts tend to ignore is the cost and time to create all this SEO content. Not every business has the budget to churn out 2,500 words of professionally written blog posts every week. However, that doesn’t mean that these businesses can’t achieve their SEO goals with shorter content.
Again, the most important rule is making your content useful for searchers. For most topics and niches, this can be achieved with a 500-word blog post. But if you want to provide more context for users and capture a greater range of search intent (and you have the budget to do so), then we recommend increasing the word count to more than 1,000.
Keep in mind that longer blog posts will take longer to write, especially when you’re creating high-quality content, so be sure to factor that into your overall content strategy.
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