About a week ago, a business blogger came to me wondering why she wasn’t getting more traffic. She had just started her blog three months ago. She said she checked out a successful blog in her industry and was publishing posts similar to the posts on that blog.
I checked out the successful blog she was talking about. It was a three year old blog with mostly short posts. The posts were usually less than 100 words and included one picture.
I told her this blog gets a lot of traffic not so much because of its content but because it got started earlier when there wasn’t a lot of competition in the “blogosphere”, or blogging world. Sure, the content wasn’t low quality but today you need to have higher quality content to generate a lot of traffic.
Today, the posts that attract links and traffic are usually longer posts. When I say “longer posts”, I mean content that is at least 400 words. And oftentimes the longer, the better.
Longer posts get more links because they have higher perceived value. The successful blogs less than two years old all seem to have long posts as the bulk of their content.
Still, many bloggers are trying to build an audience with short posts. This trend allows allows bloggers who write longer, more in-depth posts to stand out from the crowd and earn the attention of more readers. There is much more competition today in the blogosphere. Anything that allows you to differentiate your blog should be considered.
Also, long posts are usually more unique than short posts. Short posts tend to just be commentary of an interesting link. These type of posts are not very unique. They are easy to emulate and many people are already publishing these short, commentary link posts.
Even if your style is to write short posts, I would at least try mixing in a longer post 1-3 times a month.
How long is your average post?
About Dee Barizo
It’s an interesting, if mathematical take on blogging. I yearn, on a personal level, for an algorithm that could just tell apart quality from trash. The major issue search engines have is that no matter how complex the algo is – seo wolves will always follow closely behind and deliver whatever the mother-queen (google mostly) wants.
As for blog posts length, I’m not sure it’s about a certain figure. I agree 100 word posts might be a bit short. Having said htat – I guess it’s all about the sense it makes. I do beleive, and hope, that quality posts will get you further, regardless of lengths.
I like your blog Dee :)
Thanks, Rob!
I will say this, Google has gotten better at removing spam from their index. I hear about spammers that are now becoming white hat SEOs since it’s a lot harder to spam Google than in years past.
I agree with your point, unless you’re Seth Godin. That man can pack more in one paragraph than anyone on earth, which of course is why I actually manage to read all his posts. If you can write short posts that good, you should do it!
Great point. I totally agree. I tried writing like Seth Godin’s pithy style but I couldn’t do it. Then I realized Seth is definitely the exception to the rule. But for most of us, we’ll need more words to get our point across.