In one of the great Bob Bly’s ezines, he recently quoted:
“How long should your blog posts be? According to research by web design firm Orbit Media, the optimal length for a blog post as far as SEO goes is 1,500 words. SEOmoz, found that blog posts with between 1,800 and 3,000 words attract 15 times more inbound links from other web sites than posts with less than 600 words. HubSpot reports that blog posts of 2,500 words or longer get the most shares on social media.”
Which then prompted this question from one of our mutual readers:
“Ben, did you read Bob’s email how come you only put your short emails up on your blog and not make them longer”
My answer:
Because I don’t blog for inbound links or shares or SEO.
I blog to build an email list.
Funny story about this:
My pal Jim Yaghi (a for-real computer scientist who understands the rigorous discipline it takes to do a for-real scientific test) did some experiments with this, where he put valuable content-filled articles on sites that encourage use-generated content. And, he tracked the number of views his content got with the number of shares it got.
Turns out more people (way more) shared it than viewed it!
(Much less read it.)
How can that be?
Well, it could be because people don’t share content, they share headlines. And/or, it could also just be that people are more into sharing 3,000+ word articles than they are *reading* them, much less buying from them, or responding to them.
Really, I don’t know.
(This is just me brain farting and your results may be completely opposite.)
And, I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to get shares or SEO if that works for you.
I don’t believe in the mythical one-best-way of doing things.
Whatever the case:
I don’t worry about length. What I focus on is how to get the visitors I do get to opt-in. And, not only opt-in, but opt-in in such a way where they are “prepped” to buy. (Or, at least, be prepped for my daily emails they know, going in, are going to offer them something.)
And guess what?
I discuss this in far more detail in the August “Email Players” issue.
I can probably count the number of people on four fingers who agree with my ways of doing this sort of thing. But, I can assure you we have higher quality lists than most people (although admittedly smaller lists). Get way less spam complaints. And, have hefty conversions for both our own products and products we sell as affiliates.
You can, too.
And, with just your current traffic.
Details in the August issue which goes to the printer in about a week.
Subscribe ye here today to get it in time:
Ben Settle
