Simple question: How many words optimal for blog posts

[BobGW]

Hello,

We're adding a blog to one of our sites.

How many words should be in a blog post for it to be optimal for the search engines? If it varies from industry to industry, please give a couple of examples.

We were going to do 500 words but that seems a bit long.

Thanks!

[RyanKent]

I'm afraid there is no answer to that question. Here is why.

Each blog article you offer will cover a specific topic. More specifically, the article will focus one or more keyword phrases. The question search engines will decide is which web page is most likely to satisfy a user's query for that phrase.

If your article topic is "Houseism defined" then 100 words is probably enough. You could expand the article to 1000+ words by offering examples, explaining the history of the term, share instances where a House-ism was used in media outside of the television show House, etc.

The more content you share, the more thorough your topic coverage is of the keyword BUT the more opportunities arise to go off topic or dilute your message.

How many words should be in a blog post for it to be optimal for the search engines?

Enough to fully cover the specific keyword phrase target of the page. Always examine the top 5 SERPs for the target phrase. Search results are a competition. Some low quality articles rank as #1 and other high quality articles can't break the top 3 due entirely to competition.

[EGOL]

Setting a word count goal, quota or limit is a great way to mess up a great blog post.

The topic, your audience and your expertise should determine the length of the post.

[anjonr]

I totally agree, I have been asked this question a few times before and my answer is the metric for writing isn't length but are you the website owner answering the question the searcher is asking.

[theideapeople]

Write the content for the audience...there should be no minimums for superb content!

[scodtt]

I don't disagree with any of the other answers, but I have to say the target should always be 250 words. Any less than that, and basically you don't have enough to say to warrant a post.

What I've found is that if I'm struggling to get up to 250, it means I need to think about it more and then when I come back to it I blow past 250 easily.

[AlanMosley]

As many as it takes to write a good piece on the given subject.

Pages do not need a lot of text to rank, Matt Cutts has stated. but having said that, the more text the more chance of long tails

[BobGW]

Hey everyone,

This makes perfect sense. We'll focus on the quality of the blog post and not necessarily on making it long for the long tail.

Does the same thing apply to regular articles?

I'll close this soon. Thanks!

[RyanKent]

Does the same thing apply to regular articles?

Yes. Word count should be based on one primary question, how many words would it take to properly discuss the topic. If the topic is "What is the definition of...." then the word count can be quite small such as 100 words. If the topic is "Cardiomyopathy Risk Assessment" or any technical topic the word count can easily exceed 1000.

The judgement you exercise is when to pull back or expand upon various tangent topics. For a dictionary page, you could include a lot more then the definition such as synonyms, antonyms, thesaurus matches, origin of the word, examples in sentences, etc. For the Cardiomyopathy topic, you can greatly reduce the word count by offering additional pages on various tangent topics. One page can focus causes, another cures, another definition, etc.