Today, we invite you to take a break from reading up on the current political situation to join in on a different long-standing debate: how long do your blog posts and web content need to be in order to gain SEO traction? And do you need to worry about word (50 words) counts at all? What does 650 words look like?

On the one side of this discussion sits traditional marketers, who say that hitting a word count doesn’t matter. They advocate for Writing to the audience and allowing the copywriting to be whatever length it ends up at to best communicate the message.

On the other, we (100 words) have the hard-core SEO folks. These guys and gals insist that crawled content is consumed content, and that writing to Google’s specifications is the best and only way to get the web hits and traffic that modern marketing demands.

Here at Brand Presence Agency, we say: you can have your (150 words) cake and eat it too. Good content writing can accomplish both goals. And the best way to do so is to bring your copywriting team into your conversations about SEO early. After all, when writers understand how SEO and content marketing work together, incorporating word counts and other SEO best (200 words) practices into the process simply becomes part of creative content writing.

What’s the best length for SEO copywriting?

Once you’ve established that paying attention to word counts will simply be part of content writing at your company from now on, the question becomes: which length is best? Is 300 words the (250 words) minimum for blogs? Or do you need to shoot for that elusive long-form content?

The good news is that you can accomplish your SEO and stylistic goals at almost any length, whether your article is 300 words or 1,200 words. The important thing is to choose your focus and supporting (300 words) keywords wisely, and then build them into your content with context. Google knows when your content is throwaway, written only for the sake of keyword inclusion. And using keywords that don’t apply to your focus keyword will only increase bounce rate, which, in turn, lowers the trust ranking of any (350 words) given post.

There are many factors that contribute to how your content ranks in the search engines, and length is only one of them. Although longer form content (1,500 words+) has some solid research behind it to demonstrate its effectiveness, you can still rank with shorter form content when you (400 words) correctly tag your articles and make ample use of headlines (H-tags are important!). If you’re not sure what all needs to be included in content to make it SEO-friendly, working with an SEO content writing services agency can help, at least to get you started.

Consider length in content writing (450 words), don’t live and die by it

I tell my clients that a good approach to content is to create a variety of content that demonstrates expertise at every level. You’re going to need weighty content that helps solve your customers’ problems, and that’s where long pieces like white papers (500 words) and in-depth articles come into play. But you can also support that content and help boost your overall digital Brand Presence with shorter pieces that lead customers deeper into the buyer journey.

The truth is: it’s hard to be attention-grabbing at 1,500 words, but it’s equally hard to offer real (550 words) value in 150. Yet to successfully communicate your message and create a digital footprint, you need to do both.

You need to generate content and generate a lot of it, so if one piece of content you write doesn’t hit the word count you were going for, it’s simply additional (600 words) incentive to write another piece that does. And when

writing content, it’s a good idea to have a sense for how words look on the page so you know how to build out your blog posts and articles accordingly.

So what does 650 words look like?

It looks like this. (650 words).

About Brand Presence Agency

Brand Presence Agency is a design, marketing, and advertising agency located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Serving clients of all sizes across the United States, we pride ourselves on both transparency and guaranteed customer satisfaction. We specialize in everything from logo or website design, to marketing automation management, brand presence, Google Adwords advertising, geofencing advertising, and mobile advertising. By making our clients happy, we know our clients will refer more great clients to join our family.