• This is an exchange with one of the members of TheTrafficProfessor that I thought worth sharing (with minor editing). It will definitely save you time (if you are doing your own writing) and money (if you’re outsourcing content).

  It answers one of the most basic and important questions a blogger will ask.

  What is the optimal length for a blog post?

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  December 22, 2011

  Sue Anderson LaPointe

  • Hi Bill
    Hope you’re doing great, and getting ready for a wonderful Christmas.

  Got into a bit of a blogging conversation/debate and was telling another writer about how much I’d changed my blogging process since your course. He’s got a mentor ….., who’s swearing by 2000 word posts, which seems nuts to me.

  I told him about your idea of frequency, and he replied: “If Bill Belew built his sites in 2005+ era, that strategy would have worked. And now that his sites are *already* authority sites from before, it doesn’t matter what he posts because it’s already an authority site. But he’s mistakenly projecting past Google conditions onto today. A new site won’t rank with that same strategy that way have worked even just 5 years ago. So the question is, did Bill Belew start these sites back then or did he start them very recently?”

  I think your sites are more recent, but didn’t want to answer incorrectly. Also, figured that might be a great question to answer on your blog! and in the marketing.

  Hugs and all warm wishes -
  Sue

Bill Belew

• I started back in 2006. Still…2000-word posts are great but they are not for Search Engines. Ask yourself how many times you have searched for something and found it in the 400th or 1000th or 2000th word section of an article. Doesn’t happen. SEO = a balance between what appeals to a real person and what appeals to a search engine. 2000 word articles don’t have much appeal to readers either. Invariably when you do a search, find the link you want and click on it, the very next think you do is scroll down to find out how long the article is…if it is too long, you go away, right? This is called Bounce. And the higher the bounce rate, the worse the SE findability. The ideal length for a blog post is something that will fit above one click of the scroll. Make sense?

Mike Maunu

• In addition, not all the blogs were started then and many of Bill’s students only started in the last 18 months and they are getting the same results based on the lower word count.

Sue Anderson LaPointe

• THAT is fantastic news, then… because I’m getting totally hooked on these little 200 worders  Totally makes sense for readability – If I want to read 2000 words on something, would rather read 10 posts on it than one post. I’m in the process of creating blogging packages for my writing clients based on this and was SO hoping/then glad to find 200 words will get it done!
  Thank you guys for getting back to me so fast.
  HUGS!
  Sue

Bill Belew

• 200-300 words will suffice. Each blog posts generally answers one question. It never takes 2000 words to answer a question unless you are a preacher…. 

Sue Anderson LaPointe

• Lol. True that!!!!! I’m loving how much easier it is to blog like this. It’s actually getting done rather than languishing months between posts!!!

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