Blog Post Length for SEO: How Long Should a Post Be?

A blog post should be as long as it takes to answer the query completely, and no longer. Google says it has no preferred word count, so length comes from search intent and what the best results already cover. For many informational topics that means 800 to 2,000 words, but treat that as an observation, not a target.

Reading behaviour is the reason length alone is a poor goal: in Jakob Nielsen’s 1997 study for Nielsen Norman Group, 79% of test users always scanned any new page they came across and only 16% read word by word (Nielsen Norman Group, How Users Read on the Web).

Every few weeks a client or a writer asks me for “the ideal word count”. I understand why. A number feels safe, it fits in a brief, and it is easy to check. The trouble is that the number does not exist, and chasing it produces two kinds of bad page: thin posts that stop before they have helped anyone, and bloated ones that bury the answer under three hundred words of throat-clearing. This post explains how I decide length when I audit or plan content, so you can make the same call for your own pages.

What Google actually says about word count

Google has addressed this directly. In its guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content, one of the self-assessment questions asks whether you are writing to a particular word count because you have heard that Google has a preferred one, and the answer given is that it does not. The SEO Starter Guide goes further and says that the length of the content alone does not matter for ranking purposes, and that there is no magical word count target, minimum or maximum.

Read those statements carefully, because people over-read them in both directions. Google is not saying length is irrelevant to quality. It is saying length is not a signal you can pull to rank better. A page that fully covers a topic will often be longer than one that does not, but the completeness is what helps the reader, and the word count is a side effect.

Why long posts appear to win

If you look at the pages ranking for competitive informational queries, many of them are long. That observation drives a lot of bad advice, so it is worth separating three things that get mixed together.

• Correlation is not a lever. Comprehensive pages attract links, mentions and return visits because they are useful. They are also long. The usefulness does the work. Padding a weak page to 3,000 words copies the symptom, not the cause.
• Survivorship. Short pages that answer a query perfectly exist in every results page, but they are less memorable than a 4,000 word guide, so we under-count them.
• Query mix. Broad head terms like “content marketing” are served by long overviews because the intent is wide. Narrow queries like “what is a canonical tag” are served well by short, exact answers. Averaging across both tells you very little about your keyword.

When someone shows me a chart claiming a particular average length for page one, my first question is which queries it covered and whether the pages were long because of the topic or in spite of it.

Start from intent, then set a length range

Intent decides how much ground a page must cover. If you have not yet classified your keyword, read my guide to search intent in SEO first, because everything below depends on it. Here is the working table I use. The ranges are my own rules of thumb from reading results pages, not Google figures, and you should overrule them whenever the SERP says otherwise.

How to read the SERP for length

You do not need a tool to do this well. You need ten minutes and a notebook. Here is the process I follow before I agree a length in a brief.

1. Open the top five to eight results for your focus keyword in a private window, in the country you are targeting.
2. List what each page covers, as headings and sub-questions, not as word counts. Ignore navigation, comments and footers.
3. Mark the shared core. Topics that appear in most pages are table stakes. Skipping them leaves your page visibly incomplete.
4. Mark the gaps. Look for questions that the People Also Ask box raises but the pages answer weakly, or steps they skip. This is where your extra words should go. My post on information gain, covers how to find and fill those gaps.
5. Estimate the length only now, from the outline: roughly how many words does each section need to be genuinely useful? Add them up. That is your range.
6. Record the range in the brief as guidance, with the note that clarity beats hitting the count. My SEO content brief template has a field for this.

Notice that the word count is the last thing you decide, and it comes out of the outline. That reversal fixes most length problems before they start.

Completeness versus padding

Padding is any text that does not help the reader do or understand something. It usually appears when a writer is chasing a number. I look for these patterns when I edit.

• An introduction that restates the title in three different ways before getting to the answer.
• Definitions of terms the audience obviously knows, included “for context”.
• Generic lists of “benefits” that could appear on any page about any topic.
• Repeated summaries of the same point in each section.
• Filler transitions and a conclusion that merely repeats the headings.

Completeness looks different. It anticipates the next question, names the exceptions, shows a worked example, and says what to do when the standard advice fails. A useful test: could you delete a paragraph and leave the reader no worse off? If yes, delete it. Google’s own helpful-content questions ask whether a page provides a substantial, complete or comprehensive description of the topic, and the emphasis is on substance rather than volume.

The reverse failure also exists. A post that stops after 400 words on a topic that needs 1,500 is not “concise”, it is incomplete, and it often falls into the pattern I describe in my guide to thin content. Short is only good when short is enough.

A decision table for common situations

Structure, clusters and the way people read

Because most people scan before they commit to reading, structure matters at least as much as length. The Nielsen Norman Group work cited above recommends scannable text: meaningful sub-headings, bulleted lists, one idea per paragraph and conclusions first. Those habits let a long post serve both the scanner and the careful reader.

In practice that means three things. Put the direct answer in the first paragraph. Write headings that say what the section contains, so a reader can jump to it. And keep paragraphs short enough that a phone screen holds a whole idea. A 2,000 word post built this way feels shorter than a 900 word wall of text.

How I set length inside a topic cluster

When I plan content for a topic, I give each page a single job so lengths take care of themselves. A hub or pillar covers breadth and points outward. Supporting posts go deep on one question. If two posts both try to cover the same ground at full length, they compete with each other, which is the problem I describe in my guide to topical authority. Splitting by question rather than inflating one URL is usually the cleaner fix.

This is also why I do not set a house minimum. A minimum pushes writers to pad the easy posts and rush the hard ones. A brief with an outline and a “must answer” list works better.

Questions people ask about blog post length

If you would like a second pair of eyes on which of your posts are padded, which are incomplete and which should be merged or split, that is a standard part of my on-page optimisation work. You can request a free audit and I will tell you plainly what I would change first.

More in this series (Content strategy and writing): start with Topical Authority: The Ultimate Guide to Dominating Your Niche, then explore:

• How to Write an SEO Content Brief (Free Template Structure)
• Pillar Pages: How to Plan and Write One That Ranks
• Comparison Pages: How to Write X vs Y Content That Ranks
• FAQ Page SEO: When FAQs Help and How to Write Them
• Original Research Content: How to Publish Data People Cite