How long should a blog article be for SEO in 2025?

Content marketing is an inexact science and that leads to a lot of debate about even the most basic parts of the job. One of the biggest recurring questions clients ask again and again is how long a blog article should be to maximise its SEO benefits.

Following an enlightening recent conversation with James Welch of Embryo – a Manchester-based content marketing agency – I decided to do some research to find a good and useful answer to the question.

(Fair warning: This is a long one with lots of research. Definitely one for the content sickos and business owners who spend all day and night thinking about how to grow their businesses!)

Why does optimising your blog content matter?

Blogs are a cornerstone of any marketing strategy and so it’s important to get them right. Put simply, great content gets your website to the top of google search rankings – and that makes all the difference when it comes to lead generation.

‍Data from FirstPageSage shows how high the stakes are. By position, the click through rates on Google are as follows:

Advert position 1 – 2.1%
Advert position 2 – 1.4%
Advert position 3 – 1.3%
Advert position 4 – 1.2%
Organic position 1 – 39.8%
Organic position 2 – 18.7%
Organic position 3 – 10.2%
Organic position 4 – 7.2%

-By the time you get to organic search position 10 and beyond – off the front page – the click through rate drops below 1.6%.

Getting your blog article into the top four positions for your target search terms is therefore extremely valuable. Click through rates that high are gold dust for any business, and great content is the key to getting there.

That’s even more true when you consider that a click through rate of 3% is considered ‘good’ for SEO according to research by Backlinko. With that in mind, the rewards for getting your blogs up high enough to rank are enormous. It’s hard to think of anything else that can offer such an impactful, cost effective return, in fact.

As an aside, the above numbers also call into question the value of pumping all your resources into paid search ads compared to the value of investing in great content for your website – but that’s a whole different article and discussion. Ideally, the two go hand in hand as part of a larger strategy, of course!

Anyway.

What does blog length have to do with anything?

So, getting your blogs to the top of search engine rankings is valuable and worthwhile for any business – but how can you do that?

There are many aspects of a blog which can affect it, including:

Is the content actually good, or is it AI slop?
Is the title relevant and searchable?
Have you targeted the article based around keyword research?
Have you made sure to add internal and external links to help build authority?
Is it well written and accessible?
Is your site set up properly so search engines can crawl it effectively?

If you haven’t thought about all of this, there’s a good chance that’s one or all of those things are why your blog isn’t working as it should.

However, just as important as all of that is the structure of your article. That means how you’ve split it up for readability. That can mean…

Splitting it into shorter paragraphs
Dividing the content up using relevant sub-headings
Using bullet point lists
You can use pictures throughout if you want, though I'm a little sceptical about that (that's another topic, again)
Summaries at various points
Pull out quotes
And other things

Similarly, how long is the blog? It turns out this might be more important than you’d think. It’s well known that Google in particular likes articles that aren’t too short.

The idea goes that if an article is too short then it won’t contain as much useful info and so be less authoritative. That in turn means that the search engine algorithm will punish it and push your article down the rankings – limiting its potential impact.

But, what’s the upper limit? Or more accurately, is there an ideal article length that maximises your chance or giving the algorithm what it wants and securing that all important high search engine ranking?

What’s the ideal blog word count for SEO purposes?

This is an area of content marketing where it seems received wisdom outweighs data by a substantial margin. Everyone has an ideal blog length that they are convinced is right. Anecdotally, I have found that the majority of clients will ask for anything between 600 and 1,200 words as standard.

But is that right? Is this based on anything, or is the average content strategy held back by the weight of assumed knowledge?

Research from the aforementioned Embryo suggests this is almost certainly the case, and that everyone involved with content marketing should reassess what they are doing.

The company’s excellent Word Count Study looks at the average ‘meaningful’ word count in the top 10 Google results for 24,774 of the most commonly searched keywords. After crunching these numbers, the research suggests an unequivocal conclusion:

Position 1 – 2,855
Position 2 – 2.923
Position 3 – 2,683
Position 4 – 2,479
Position 5 – 2,422
Position 6 – 2,363
Position 7 – 2,267
Position 8 – 2,244
Position 9 – 2,230
Position 10 – 2,242

It’s hard to come to any conclusion other than blogs and articles with a word count between 2,500 and 3,000 offer a significantly higher chance of ranking high on google than shorter articles.

What’s more, the research shows that the average article length for each google position increased by between 200 and 400 words over a 10 year span. It’s not completely possible to say why, but I would suggest that people are looking for more in depth information, more context and more value from what they’re reading.

(Another aside – isn’t that interesting in the era of AI slop content and people insisting that no one has any attention spans or interest in longer form writing?)

But anyway, I really do urge you to read the full report. It’s thoughtful and useful for anyone involved in content marketing, either executing or planning a strategy.

It also delves a bit deeper into related questions like what difference using a question for the header makes, or how word count interacts with features like the “people also ask…” on Google.

While the report is careful to note that: “Content volume is just one factor that will help a site to rank well in any industry,” the data shows that “across millions of websites across thousands of industries, sites that have more content than others are overwhelmingly more successful.”

That paints a clear picture than any serious content marketer (otherwise known as a “writer”) can’t afford to ignore. Depth and higher word counts play a significant role in getting your material to the top of search engine rankings.

What is everyone else doing?

Given that the average blog length to get on the front page of Google is 2,500+, it comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that the average blog length is a lot, lot shorter than that.

According to Orbit Media, the average blog length has held steady for the last six years:

2019 - 1,236
2020 - 1,269
2021 - 1,416
2022 - 1,376
2023 - 1,427
2024 - 1,394

Furthermore, that same research shows only a small percentage of bloggers regularly "go big":

Average 2,000-3,000 words = 10%
Average 3,000+ words = 3%

To me, that looks like at least 90% of bloggers out there who write regularly are leaving a lot of meat on the bone when it comes to search engine rankings. It says to me that nine out of every 10 content marketers are not giving themselves the best chance of getting their material where customers are most likely to see it.

Given that our whole business is about getting people onto websites, that is a huge oversight.

Or - it's an opportunity for YOU to put yourself in that 10% (or 3%) who are writing blogs which are in that 2,500-word range that google seems to love so much.

If you're reading this, you can apply it. Give yourself a head start on 90% of your competitors immediately!

What to do with this information?

No one likes stats and research with no context or conclusions. So, what to do with the information that longer, more in depth blogs perform appreciably better than shorter ones across more than 24,000 keywords?

And more so, that all indications show that the average effective length of a blog is rising as the years go by?

1 – Invest in content properly

The number one thing that any company can do with this information is decide to invest in content. I would say that, of course, yes, but that doesn’t make it not a good idea.

As shown above, good organic content is absolutely the key to getting to the top of search engine rankings. Publish great, useful content pieces between 2,000 and 3,000 words that gives your potential audience the information they want and you will be well on your way to generating those all-important organic leads.

The key there is “useful”. As alluded to above, algorithms are becoming increasingly intolerant of manipulative SEO practices and content that is generated by “AI”. What once seemed an easy method to game the algorithm began to backfire once people stopped clicking as much.

Loads of bad information puts people off searching which impacts the bottom line of companies like Google. They don’t like that, and the consequences devastated many of the most annoying sites on the internet when the company changed its algorithm to discriminate against what it called “spammy, low quality content” in March 2024.

2 – Make sure you are getting as much from your content as possible

Number two is to make sure all that content is getting used as well as possible. The difference between writing content and coming up with an entire content marketing strategy can be found here.

You want to make sure what you’re writing promotes the overall goals of the business, whatever they are at the time. Then you want to make sure that your content is repurposed in as many ways as possible. If it’s good, you want to be using it to the fullest potential.

That means turning a great piece of content into many other things, including:

Social posts
Email campaigns
Downloadables (i.e. guides, fact sheets, etc)
Case studies
Webinar notes
CPD or white paper content
Include as part of the company brochure or sales packs
Use for staff training
And so on

A good SEO-focussed content marketing strategy can take six months to really show results and perhaps even longer if the task is to turn round a tanking website.

In the meantime, making sure that you use what you write in as many forms as possible is a great way to start getting an instant return on investment and make sure it doesn’t feel as if you’re throwing money into a black hole.

For example, a single blog might be part of an overall series of work over months which gradually moves the site up google’s rankings. On its own, that blog is a small cog in a machine you’re building as you go.

However, if you turn that blog into an email which re-engages an old lead or brings in new leads, it has additional value in itself too. Likewise if you use that blog post to inspire a social campaign which takes off, or turn it into a useful PDF which warms up an old lead.

Everything you write is part of a whole, but make sure to use it separately too as much as you can. If you do it right, all positive interaction will feedback into google anyway and that individual blog can play an even bigger role in your strategy.

Write once, use five times – that’s the aim!

Does every blog article have to be 2,500 words to be useful?

No, definitely not! While the top rankings on google and other search engines may be packed out with longer content, it’s not realistic to make everything you post on your site into a 2,500+ word epic.

It’s not realistic in practice most of the time. Do you have that many hours or days to every single blog post? Not many do. Also, you have to think about quality. It’s not just blog length that gets taken into account, but also how good and useful the content is. Bloating your blogs to reach a word limit will see you penalised in other ways.

Like I said at the very beginning, this isn’t an exact science.

Basically, it depends on what it is. If you’re doing a company news article or a short explainer then there’s not really much point in making it 2,500 words or more. Get the information out there and share it across all channels as needed.
Semrush divides it up into four different types of what they call ‘search intent’. To quote them:

Navigational intent: Users want to find a specific page (e.g., “reddit login”)
Informational intent: Users want to learn more about something (e.g., “what is seo”)
Commercial intent: Users want to do research before making a purchase decision (e.g., “best coffee maker”)
Transactional intent: Users want to complete a specific action, usually a purchase (e.g., “buy subaru forester”)

If it’s informational or commercial, consider going longer. If it’s navigational or transactional you want to give people the shortest route to their goal.

It’s all about thinking strategically

For me it’s about strategic thinking. You don’t need everything to be super long, but you do need to be going into greater depth on your most important keywords and topics.

If your business is selling a construction site safety software for example, you probably want to go long on topics like how safety SaaS reduces injuries, saves money, increases productivity or saves construction programme time – or all of those things!

If you are selling property it might be worth doing long explainers on the state of the UK market, future house price growth prospects and where the best places to buy might be located today and in the next three years.

Or if you’re running a marketing business focussed on content marketing strategy for property and construction businesses, you might want to do some long pieces showing off your skills as a ‘freelance construction writer’, or ‘property content marketing expert’ or ‘construction marketing specialist writer for hire’. (Ahem.)

Once you’ve got your big articles, you can link off to other smaller articles and create little ecosystems of knowledge and expertise that Google will see as authoritative sources.

This is sometimes described as making a ‘pillar page’ that supports a whole other range of content. You also see it as ‘knowledge centres’ or ‘information hubs’ on some sites where everything is split into topics based around central pages.

In conclusion…

We made it, thanks for sticking with me, fellow content freaks and sickos.

As with everything in marketing, there is no one size fits all answer, but in general the research suggests that if you’re writing something informational or commercial which you want to bring people to the website, you should write somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 good informative words about it.

Bring in…

What people actually need to know
What people might not know already
Your personal perspective
Credible industry research and viewpoints
Your experiences and what lessons they has taught you

Overall, be specific and useful and you are on the right track. Writing is a means to an end – all the expert knowledge is in your head and in your track record already. You should tell your customers and potential future customers about it at length!

To do that, you need to get on to the front page of search engine results. To do that, you need to invest in content.

Want to upgrade your website with some great writing that will boost your brand and your sales potential? Get in touch today for a free consultation chat and get started.

If you want to learn more about me first, you can look at my “about me” page, my portfolio and a quick overview of my services.