Hey, it’s the #1 question I get asked when I start someone with a blog.
But, are they asking that with an eye on doing just the minimum? That’s a fair question. Time is valuable and adding the act of blogging to your marketing plan is going to take a chunk of time.
Are they asking because they are worried they are going to write too many words? Nah.
Or, are they asking because they know blogging adds SEO to a website and that’s the reason? Chances are… this is their number one reason, second would be “how much time is this going to cost me?”
So, what’s the least amount of words should you write if you want to be found in Google?
Let’s answer that!
Listen:
My initial reaction would be that you need to use just as many words as is necessary to convey your message. That’s easy right?
To that end, one of my favorite bloggers was (that’s past tense on purpose) Dustin Luther of Rain City Guide. He would write what he wanted but before he hit the publish button he would go line by line and start deleting unnecessary words and phrases. My all time favorite post consisted of a single word, “Unsubscribe”. It was a powerful post. The site has just about been abandoned but in it’s heyday it was immensely popular. The point is, at a minimum, you need to write as many words as it takes to get the message across.
But that’s not what we’re here for. You want a number. You want to minimize your time. I get that.
YOAST:
If I built your website I built it with YOAST SEO. It’s a handy plugin that I’ve written about before. It’s a tool that will help you write better posts with an eye for SEO. Let me point out that you should always be writing for your reader first, SEO second.
Right now, right here, this post is at 344 words. Yoast has a handy little section that will suggest changes. at the beginning of this section it showed me this.
Yoast is pretty smart so if you want a number I’ll say start at 300.
I’ve always said at least 350 but I think the most important part is having a goal and writing towards that purpose. There’s a lot more that goes into SEO than writing posts. The site needs to have built right from the start, it needs to have the right elements, it needs to ping Google when there’s new content and so much more. There’s many other factors that go into SEO like external / internal links, inbound links, time on site. Word count is just the tip of the iceberg.
OPINION: If you have a properly built site, I say forget the word count and write for the person you next want to be a client (if that’s your goal). That’s exactly why I wrote this post. I want to build your next website (and do it properly). Oh hey look! It’s a button you should press! 😉
Photo by Courtney Corlew, Brad Neathery and Simon Hattinga Verschure on Unsplash
Total word count: 526
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and now,a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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