How Long Should Your Article Be?
Some people say your articles for aritcle marketing should be 250-300 words long. Is that long enough?
In some cases, I’d say that’s long enough. It really depends on your topic. For most articles, I’d say 500-700 words is better. There are two principles you need to weigh against each other for the optimal article length.
On one hand, e-zine publishers want shorter articles because if an article is too long then people won’t read it. You have to hold reader interest and shorter articles do that better.
On the other hand, you want articles that are highly optimized. Shorter articles tend to be under-optimized. As more and more people use the Internet for marketing, there is an increased level of competition for every niche. More content gives search engine spiders an easier time of ranking the content for the right keywords. To be sure, a 1,000-word article is better for SEO than a 200-word article.
So how do you take these two principles and get them to work together for your marketing good? You compromise. You take the principle of shorter is better for reader interest and the principles of longer is better for SEO and you write an article that is somewhere in the middle. Most people will read a 500-700 word article. Anything more than that and they’ll lose interest. And you can increase your chances of people staying with you for the full article if you include a couple of subheads in your article. But an article of 500-700 words will be short enough for most readers and long enough to get you adequate exposure for your SEO efforts.
I have to agree… I do *alot* of article marketing and publishers have told me that they simply prefer shorter articles in the 300 word range because people actually read them.