There are many factors that determine a good SEO score for a blog post. Today we’ll be discussing what is the best content length for blog posts, services pages, and product pages.

What’s the Best Content Length

Overall, most SEO practitioners agree that 300 words per page is a good length. But the content length can also vary based on what you’re writing about.

For this article, I break down content length into three categories;

1. Informational blog posts
2. Service offerings
3. Products (eCommmerce).

1. How long should a blog post be?

Content length for blog posts should be 300-500 words.

The length of a blog posts should be a minimum of 300 words. This is about the same length of content that fills a single, 8-1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper.

In my opinion, 400-500 words is a better blogpost length and more appropriate for shorter informational articles because the length allows the author to dig more into the the topic and provide extra details.

Remember when your English paper had to be at least X words long so you added as many extraneous words as possible to make sure the length met the requirements? Yah, don’t do that.

The 300+ words should be concise and informative.

I personally try to stay away from posting articles with less then 200 words simply because they feel more like “news” websites whose primary goal is to pump out and regurgitate “what’s happening now” stories as fast as possible.

All flash, no substance.

An exception to that rule.

If your content is extremely powerful, the actual length won’t matter.

As an extreme example; If you discovered a cure for Cancer, you wouldn’t need to say much to get a reader’s attention or for other sites to link to you. In which case, a short concise blog post would be more than enough to attract visitors, get links, and achieve high search engine rankings.

Why longer blog posts are better.

If 300 words is considered a good blogpost length, why should you write a longer article?

To begin with, the longer the article, the more chances that your topic keywords will naturally occur within the article, and then rank higher in Google

So how long is longer?

Well, this article on How To Copyright Your Website In Six Easy Steps is 2,930 words!

The reason it’s so long is that explaining how to copyright a website is a very lengthy process. It’s also one of my most popular articles.

Blogpost writing tips

Format content for reader’s

From a reader’s standpoint, make the copy easy to read by using the Flesch reading ease test which measures the complexity of an English text.

A high Flesch reading ease score of about 100 is straightforward and easy to read, with short sentences and no words of more than two syllables. Usually, a reading ease score of 60-70 is considered acceptable/normal for web copy.

You’d be surprise that the average adult reads at the 9th-grade level.

Visitor’s don’t read, they scan

Research has shown that visitor’s don’t read every word of your content. Instead, they scan the page looking for the relevant content that brought them to your site. In which case, make sure to break up large sections of content into smaller bite-sized chunks.

To that end, bold or highlight key benefits you want customers to see — just don’t go overboard. Examples might be, “5-day turn-around“, “Guaranteed results“, “Lowest prices“, “Money-back guarantee“, etc.

Include sub-headings

Break up your text into short sentences and include sub-headings like I’ve done here. It makes it quick and easy for users to get a good, clean grasp of what you’re conveying.

Keep content user-friendly

While you’re focusing on weaving relevant keywords into you content, let’s not forget that the whole purpose is to bring more traffic to your website — meaning users, visitors, and business prospects. So, keep your content user-friendly.

• Keep sentences short.
• Get to the point quickly.
• Make the copy benefit-oriented – tell the visitor what’s in it for them.
• Don’t add meaningless drabble

Edit with extreme prejudice.

Here’s the rule of thumb. If a word or phase isn’t adding value, delete it!

Here are a few of my favorite writing quotes regarding text length;

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” — Marcus T. Cicero

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” — Elmore Leonard

“I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.” — James Michener

2. What’s the best text length for promoting a service offering?

I have found that 200-250 words is generally a good length for promoting products and services.

It’s enough to pull the reader in, give details about why they need the service (how it benefits them), and have a good call to action with a positive testimonial as support without boring them to death.

Also make sure to include images to support your service such as work samples, sales team members, awards, etc.

3. What’s the best content length for selling a product.

There are two different types of products pages; Sales pages and Retail products.

Sales pages (also known as Landing pages) can be extremely long. The length of which varies depending on the product. So, for the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on Retail products.

Content length for retail/ecommerce products are generally mush shorter – around 100-200 words. The content is mostly descriptive details about the product; what it’s made of, sizing, styling, measurements, guarantees, etc. wrapped into a story that helps the reader envision themselves using the product in a beneficial way.

It’s also important to include customer testimonials to support any claims made about the product.

What We’ve Learned

Web pages need concise and informative content that provides a benefit to your readers.

Focus on providing value — make it worth their time.

Remember, people want to learn about topics that interest them but don’t want to waste time. So get to the point, stick to it, and wrap it up.

While there are standard guidelines about content length, don’t worry about the exact number of words on a page. Just write what you feel works best for your topic and keep the content interesting and compelling to the reader.

If you try to “fill” or inject extra keywords for the search engines, your readers will notice.

Up next in our Learn SEO series: “How to use related products and services to increase SEO rankings”.