Your clients, no matter if they are a big publication or a small business, will ask you to meet certain word count criteria. It’s important for you to understand how word count affects your readers, as well as how it affects the article’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO Loves Length

Articles with a longer word count is beloved by search engines. Mainly because it has more keywords and longer articles signal to the algorithm that the piece is more in-depth than that of its competitors. Google also records the length time of every visitor stays on your site to measure rankings in the future. As a result, websites that have visitors that stay longer will have a better ranking, while the pages with shorter stay time will have a lower ranking. Since longer articles take longer to read, website owners believe that they will up their ranking.

Readers Are Iffy

Readers, on the other hand, are going to have one of two reactions when they see a long article. Either they’ll think, “Good googly moogly, I’m not reading all that!” Or, they’ll think, “Ooo, this looks like a wonderful smorgasbord of information!”

How to Decide Word Count in Articles

If you can come up with enough relevant information about a topic, by all means, write a piece that’s 1,000 to 2,000 words. If you find yourself repeating things you’ve already said, or adding fluff to make the piece longer, stop. Short is okay as long as you’ve covered the topic and answered your reader’s question.

For example, imagine your reader googles, “How long does it take for water to boil?” That reader doesn’t want to read a funny story about the time your grandma told you a watched pot never boils. They want the answer to their question right away. If they see a large wall of text, they’ll click back to the search results and find an article that better answers their question. A good post with the information and then a little bit about why it takes water that long to boil or the science behind boiling water is the ideal.

If you’re telling a story with your article, maybe about a child who beat cancer or a hero that saved children from poverty, your readers will want you to make your piece longer. They want to get enveloped in juicy details. They want to imagine the scene. Longer write-ups, in this case, can help attract your audience to stay on your site much longer.

Remember, as a writer, your ultimate goal is to create a piece to influence your target audience. Either you want to them to share it or follow your call to action.

Well, no one is probably going to share a 250-word write-up. Why is that? Because it only covers the general surface of the subject. Remember that your output should provide a detailed explanation of the topic and engage your readers. That’s hard to do in 250 words.

Try to make a piece that includes all of the significant features that your readers think about and want to see. Once your audience recognizes that your output can help them solve their problem, then they'll share your write-up to their friends and family. As a result, happy readers will generate links to your write-up, which increases your search rankings because of higher website traffic.

Here are some basic problems that readers want writers to solve. Sometimes an article can solve just one problem, other times, it can solve multiple problems.

They have a question they need answered quickly
They’re bored and want to be entertained
They want to learn in-depth information about a topic
They want to be inspired
They want to laugh
They need to know how to do something step-by-step
They want to be reassured

How to Add Length…or Take it Away

Regardless of what’s right for the reader or SEO, your client will probably have their own ideas about the right word count… and won’t budge on it. That means you’ll need to create quality, no matter what. It can be hard. Usually writers end up in two groups. Some of us write articles that are way too long and have problems scaling back, while others can’t figure out how to make their articles long enough to reach their word count goals.

Here’s some questions to help you add length to your article:

Can I add a scientific explanation (simplified, of course) about this topic?
Can I add a personal story or connect this topic to a real-world event? (Make sure to use this one carefully.)
Are there statistics or studies that I can pepper the paragraphs with?
Is there anyone I can get a quote from to make the piece more authoritative?
Did I cover who, what, where, why, when and how?

Here’s some help for shortening your articles:

Cut out any repetition.
Cut sentences that don’t really add anything useful to the article (fluff).
Remove personal stories if the link to the topic of the article is thin (basically, don’t just talk to talk).
Simplify your descriptions.
Cut out any tangents, keep it tight!