One of the questions we are asked most often about website content is, “How long should a website blog or article be?” Closely followed by, “How often should we be publishing them?”
These are good questions to ask, because including articles on your website is a great idea for lots of reasons, but also takes time, and like everything to do with your marketing, you need to consider the purpose, the likely outcomes and how to do it well to achieve business growth and sales from it.
People are usually hoping for a simple, clear answer. “You must write 1,000 words every Tuesday” would make life nice and easy for the would-be article writer! Unfortunately, that’s not really how it works, and some things are more or as important as the length and frequency.
The truth is that Google isn’t sitting there counting your words. What it wants is content that answers people’s questions well, holds their attention and, best case scenario they like enough to share somewhere. Sometimes that takes 700 words. Sometimes it takes 2,000.
And for you, a well written, useful article will not only keep someone on your site, or get you found in search engines, it will build trust, present you in a good light and encourage that person that your company is a good one.
But numbers wise a rough guide, I’d suggest aiming for around 700 to 2,000 words for most articles. That’s usually enough space to explain something properly without padding it out just to hit an arbitrary number.
What I wouldn’t recommend is publishing lots of very short articles that don’t really say much. If you can cover the subject in say, 400 words, it’s probably worth expanding it or combining it with another related topic. Or it might be that what you have to say on that subject is better saved for a social media post or LinkedIn.
The next question is usually, “How often should we post an article?” Again, consistency is much more important than chasing numbers.
For most small businesses, publishing one good article a month is a realistic goal, because a good article takes time to research and write and you have lots of other things to do in your marketing and your business. 10 to 12 useful articles a year will almost always outperform fifty rushed and badly written ones that nobody wants to read, or bookmark or share.
However if you love to write, you can do more, this is very much dependent on your skills, time and if articles to read will appeal to your target market.
It’s also worth thinking ahead and planning your content. If you’re writing about Christmas, summer holidays or an annual event, don’t wait until the week before. Publish seasonal content four to six weeks in advance so search engines have time to find it and people have time to discover it.
And knowing what you might write about over the coming months, even a list of topics, will help you stay on track. Some people like to sit down and plan a whole year of content. If you like batching things so that you get them done and dusted, there’s nothing to stop you getting into the zone and flow and aiming to have six months of articles written over a couple of weeks and then schedule them to publish over time. One thing Google does like is new content – so don’t publish six articles on the same day, spread them out to boost your organic SEO ratings.
Much more important than any of these numbers, though, is what you’re writing about.
The articles that tend to perform best aren’t simply repeating information that’s already on hundreds of other websites. They’re the ones where you share your experience, your opinions and your expertise and so it well. Where you answer the questions your prospects and customers ask you every week (a bit like we are doing here!). Explain how you approach a problem. Share what you’ve learned over the years. Think about what your reader would find useful, interesting or surprising, not what you want to tell them. Don’t write articles that are all me me me basically! Your prospects and clients are only interested in you in so far as how you help them.
Those are the articles that build trust, demonstrate your expertise and, ultimately, help people decide they’d like to work with you.
The test of a good article is this: will someone finish reading this knowing something genuinely useful that they didn’t know five minutes ago?
If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track!
(PS this article is around 800 words. As the reader, how did that feel to read? We feel for the subject it is just right. No waffle, plenty of tips and ideas, our key thoughts and opinions. We hope you enjoyed reading it!)