How Much Should I Write In A Blog Post

I am asked the question, "How much should I write?" nearly every day. Sometimes more than once. It seems to be a big concern for many bloggers. There is a short answer and a longer answer. The short answer is write exactly as much as it takes to answer the question, tell the story, or provide the help. Whatever your post is about, write that much.

Explaining How Much Should I Write

The short answer should be sufficient. But there is more. I could have stopped with the first paragraph above. It would have been enough for some. Others, however, wouldn't get it. It seems to easy. Too pat. They wouldn't believe it. Or they simply wouldn't have understood it. Sometimes you need to explain.

A good blog post isn't about size or word count. Well, not entirely. There are some SEO considerations and I'll cover those in a moment. But a good blog post is one that sufficiently lays out the information that needs to be delivered to satisfy the reader looking for what you are writing. As a writer you should be able to do this in about 250 to 350 words for most basic topics. The end of this paragraph makes it about 205 words.

Writing For Search Indexing

Search engine optimization (SEO) experts tell us that most search engines like to see a minimum of 300 words in order to deem a blog post worth of indexing well. I'm not sure that is entirely true but it's not a bad guideline to follow in any event. Yoast SEO, a plugin used to help with search optimization, looks for 300 words as the optimum number but it will still green light a post with less.

How Much Is Too Much?

While too little may not tell the story, too much should also be avoided. My suggestion is not to write more than about 900 words for any single post. Somewhere between 600 and 900 words your post probably has a point where you can break it into two separate posts. This is better for reader attention, and retention, and it may also better for SEO. Keep this in mind if you are a verbose writer like me.

And, in case you are wondering, this post is 373 words long.