How can you determine the ideal blog post length? Let me break that down for you.

The Ideal Blog Post Length

There has been plenty of research done on this topic, and here’s what the big guns are saying:

Medium found that 7-minute long posts (aka 1,600 words) had the most read time.

Here’s their research plotted on a chart:

But wait, you can only take that at face value!

Sure, 1,600 words seems to be the ideal general blog post length – but that doesn’t mean it will be your ideal blog post length. You need to test this for yourself!

Additionally, longer posts (2,000+ words) tend to get the most social shares, but the least read-through rates. People share content without ever even reading it!

So, what matters to you more – shares or real engagement?

Testing to Find Your Ideal Blog Post Length

When it comes to blogging, we’ve seen things all over the board – from 100-word snippets to 10,000-word monster posts.

To be frank, extremely long posts (2,000 words and more) don’t get read as much as shorter ones.

That’s true for our blog, at least. How do we know?

Because we tested different lengths.

Every blog is going to have a different reader base. And with a different reader base comes difference interests and different attention spans.

An engineer interested in how a machine works might pour over a 100,000-word manual from start to finish. A busy executive? Forget about it – they want the main points and that’s it.

Try it yourself – write a few long posts and a few short posts, and see which ones get the most engagement.

Pro Tip: One big SEO trend coming up in 2017 is the rise of “dense” content – meaning more value per word. People hate seeing tons of fluff – they want you to get right to the meat of things.

Conclusion

The ideal length of a post depends on who, what, when, and where. Know your audience, and test different lengths.

The best advice I can give you is this: Cover the topic as fully as possible in as few words as possible. Don’t be afraid to cut a sentence, paragraph, or even whole section if it doesn’t add value.

Focus on providing value in your blog post and solving your reader’s problems and you’ll be well on your way to finding your ideal blog post length!

What length works well for you? Let us know in the comments!