This is part 8 of a blogging series about bad blogging advice. In part 1 I shared 11 pieces of bad blogging advice and below is a brief recap of what we have covered in this series so far. In this blog post we are going to cover another bad blogging tip: don’t write more than 300 words.
My research has shown that an average blog post is between 400-600 words and that is the area at which Google will start paying attention as well. However, this is not a hard and fast rule but rather a guide. Below I have provided a brief outline of the first 7 tips in this series. When you get tip 8 you will see my thoughts on word count and blogging.
#1 If you just write it they will read it.
#1 is flat out not true. Just because you write blog posts and release it, it does not mean that your readers will find you. There are so many reasons for this. Read the full blog post here: Bad Blogging Advice Part 1
#2 Design doesn’t matter.
There is much more to design then pretty pictures even. Design includes the font type, the spacing between the lines and how the text fits on the page. Read the full blog post here: Bad Blogging Advice Part 2
#3 Blog on a free domain and move it later.
This is a subject that I am so passionate about that I wrote a three part blog series on it. The links are listed below and so in this post I will make one statement. Invest in your company and believe in it enough to buy your own domain name and host it yourself. Read the full blog post here: Bad Blogging Advice Part 3
#4 Write amazing content
This is a controversial topic and frankly it is a vague tip.What exactly is good content? How do you define it other than to say that you know it when you read it. The problem with the statement is that it stops people, I sure know that it has stopped me plenty. Read the full blog post here: Bad Blogging Advice Part 4
#5 Blogging will save your SEO problems
I do believe that blogging can make an impact on your search engine rankings but it is not the SEO solution that you may have been hoping for. I like to think of SEO as ongoing action item list. However, before we get too far read a brief summary of the first bad blogging tips below. Read the full blog post here: Bad Blogging Advice Part 5
#6 Blogging is easy, just write some stuff
Perhaps that is true if you are journalist but for the rest of us, writing is the hardest part. If you are a natural born entertainer who loves being on stage, it is difficult to understand why the rest of us want to puke the entire time. Read the full blog post here: Bad Blogging Advice Part 6
#7 Don’t worry about it, those images are free because they are online.
First, let me scream! Arhhhhhhhh! Ok thanks. This issue is becoming even more confusing because there are more and more places to get these free images. The problem is that you must carefully read the rules related to any specific image.
#8 Don’t write more than 300 words.
This is terrible advice but I do understand the spirit behind it. I teach that a good rule of thumb is write between 400 – 600 words on average. This is enough content for the search engines to pay attention and generally enough to share a few valuable tips or make a good solid point. However, these are just guidelines and not rules.
The truth is that you should write just enough to make your point. Say whatever it is that you have to say in as few or many words as you need. Do not let some word count quota be your driving force. Instead, let your idea be your driving force.
Write down your thoughts, create your message and then edit.
A while back I wrote a blog post on this idea. I kept the post under 200 characters to make a point. The purpose of this post was to say that short posts are sometimes a good idea. I did not keep it short to show that short posts are ok. I made it short because I just didn’t need to say much on the topic to make my point.
Check out the post by clicking on the link below. One of the things that you will notice about this post is that I tried to make it visually stimulating by adding large colorful text and an image that spoke to the situation. Sometimes too many words just get in the way and I would know because I am the queen of too many words. Recently my editor deleted 10 words out of a sentence and there were still 10 words left.
https://www.iteachblogging.com/blogging/length-everything-ya-know/
How many words do you try to write for each of your blog posts? Have you seen a difference in traffic to your site based upon number of words?