I’ve experimented with posting long articles and short blog posts. If you’re wondering which style you should, it really comes down to whichever is easier for you to write.
It’s not how long the article is, instead it’s how often you post. I try to write a mixture of long and short blog posts, and try to publish daily. If you’re still unsure what to do, I’ve outlined the pros and cons of writing a lot, or short snippets.
Long Posts
A long post is generally characterized between 600 and 1200 words, you shouldn’t longer than that because people won’t read that much, and also, search engines don’t particularly enjoy long articles either.
Pros-
The good things about longer posts is that they’re usually keyword dense, and can be extremely in-depth. It’s a lot easier to analyze and explore ideas if you have 600 words, instead of trying to force it into less. Because of being quality documents, they can lead to many back-links and much attention. In regards to keyword density, long articles are less effected by comments because of their length.
Cons-
The downside to long articles is generally their length. Most readers don’t actually take the time to read articles if they’re long, instead they skim the information. Also, it’s usually harder to maintain a keyword density of 3% to 4% in longer articles. Lastly, because they take longer to write you generally post less, which means less indexed pages.
Short Posts
By short post I refer to posts between 300 and 600 words. Writing a post that’s less than 300 words is highly discouraged. They don’t rank well, and most search engines discount these as not possibly having truly useful information.
Pros-
The best part about writing shorter posts is that they’re easier to write. You can write broad statements, without having to be in-depth, and they’re great for relaying your feelings rather than statistical or analytical data. Since they’re easier to write, you can post more often which leads to more pages being indexed.
Cons-
Since they’re shorter and you can’t write much (because if you did they’d be long) the posts are generally not earth-shattering special. You might get away with an article here or there that you get lucky with, where you’ve said something to incite people; but usually short posts don’t convince people to link to it, and are not considered pillar posts.
I usually write short posts, and when get a chance write a long article on a topic that really interests me. It’s hard to write long posts everyday, and I’d rather write more often. What do you do? Do you swear by shorter or longer posts? Which works best for you?
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