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Rohit Kumar

Optimal Blog Post Length

What’s an optimal blog post length?

100 words? 1000 words? More?

And should a personal blog post be shorter than a company blog post?

Search engine optimizers say your blog post should be long enough to be understood by Google bots. Social media savvies say keep it crisp to make it viral. One blogger even reminded the internet that there’s no law that says a blog post needs more than one sentence.

Ugh, who do we listen to? What’s the right answer?

I Don’t Know

I am not a blogging guru, so I don’t have a definitive answer. But I have something to add to the conversation. See if it works for you.

One Blog, One Question

Instead of focusing on the length, I focus on providing answers in blog posts.

My logic is: every blog post exists to answer a question. And the answer can be one sentence or a hundred pages long.

Here’s how I write a blog post:

  1. Think of a workable title
  2. Write a blog post
  3. Check if the blog post completely justifies the title
  4. Check if the blog can grab the reader’s attention all along
  5. Done (I don’t look at the word count)

If you are in a hurry, you can listen to 100 growth hackers and optimize for 1000 things. I’ve nothing against you; you should do whatever it takes.

But if your time scale is more than 2 years or so, listen only to your readers.

Google makes major changes in its algorithm every year or so. Content trends change every few months. What won’t change ever is basic human nature and your readers’ media consumption habits. Optimize for that.