What is the best word count for an online article or blog entry these days?

There is no upper or lower limit on word counts if it comes to SEO. People just put a word limit so that users who actually reads them think its good. People believe that more words means more insightful content.

I have experimented with this at some length. Quality is the most important thing really and Google will see how many people stay on the page over the long run. However, I have found that longer and more in depth articles can work better for rankings. Look for the highest ranking article of your title and 'out do' that one for the best chance. I wrote an article of 3500 words just recently because the one I found which ranked number 1 on Google was 4000! I couldn't write anything more so settled at 3500! I would say 4-500 words should be a minimum. The longer and better your article, the better its chances of ranking are...

I try to go for long texts as they are easiter to rank. 3000+ word articles will rank a lot better than any 300 word article.

Nobody is going to think that you have anything remotely original to say in a 300 work text.
They are much better for long tail searches as they will cover and rank for a range of these.
People will come back to read more or come back to read again. Does not happen for a 300 word text.
Better chance of people linking to your text as it will have more credibility as a reasource if it is 3000+ words.


This is a good example of long form content:
Naltrexone Alcohol

From the Yoast pannel:
"The text contains 6396 words. This is more than or equal to the recommended minimum of 300 words."

Obviously when you serve up a long form read, you need to take better care of your reader than you would with 300 word comment.

There are plenty of sub divisions into sections and paragraphs.
There are plenty of graphic elements to lighthen up the long read.
It has also got some video content that helps too.

I think, the ideal length of a blog post is 7 minutes, 1,600 words

This is interesting stuff. I've always worried about being too long-winded in articles so save that for my books, but both Shenpen and Timmo7890 make good points. I'm surprised a 3000+ word article can rank higher, but I will definitely try this out in the near future and see what happens with it.

Thank you for your replies and advice. Greatly appreciated.

I would say that it can pay off to write at least 500 words or even better 700 words to get a good ranking.However sometimes an article with less words can rank well also,like for instance an article/ blogpost with 400 words. It depends on the traffic that the content receives also.

How many words do you need to cover the subject properly? That's how many you need. Really.

I think an article with at least 500 words ranks better keeping in mind that it also depends with the traffic it receives.