What's the Best Size For a Blog Post?

Many beginner bloggers think that more is better and actually I am here to tell you that actually less is better.

From my experience as a professional blogger, the best length for a blog post is about 250 to 350 words. This is enough content to really flesh out one idea and yet small enough to not bore your readers. On top of that, it is easier to build strong keyword density on one topic in a shorter blog post then it is to build density in a long blog post.

For my professional writers I recommend that they write their blog post in the blog control panel and then migrate it to Word to do a quick word count, until they get a good feeling about how long a post is. The more you blog the better you get at gaging just how many words are in a typical post.

Another thing to remember is that content scanning is a typical behavior on the Web. So paragraphs that will be published on the Web should be shorter versus those in print publications. A typical web content paragraph will be about two or three sentences long versus a print version being more like five to six sentences long.

Studies have been done on Web content that show if the paragraph is too long, a reader may skip it entirely. So, when writing for the Web on blogs, remember shorter is better both for post length as well as for paragraph length.

Just as a point of reference, the blog post above is 251 words.

Creating The Best Blog Post Titles

Titling your blog post is a craft, but has a few common sense rules that are easy to follow. Not only is your title a teaser for the actual post, but it can help you with search engines if done properly.

Here are a few examples of blog post titles that not only clearly explain the post or are keyword dense:

Best Practices for e-Newsletters
Runescape - a Game Review for Parents
Best Practices on Using Music on Websites
Effective Blog Posts Titles - A How To
Webkinz - A Parent Game Review
How to Build Web and Blog Traffic
How To Become A Productive Blogger
Website Navigation - Best Practices
Game Reviews for Parents - Club Penguin Reviewed
Social Media Blogging Does It Work?

These are just a few examples but you can see several common elements. There are many searches on best practices, how to's and reviews. Take advantage of that search traffic to craft your post title to match a search query and pick up some extra traffic.

On a sidebar, take a look at this post, I have used another technique for search engines, I have deep linked to my own websites in a creative way, feeding search engines and you into my content. And take a look at the anchor text (what is included in the hyperlink). Not only is the anchor text a match for my post title, but it is keyword dense.

You can use all of these techniques easily on your own blog, just start first with a well crafted title.

How to Write Effective Blog Post Titles

Getting search engines to your blog and getting readers to click into your blog post are all based on your title and the first 250 characters of your blog content. Your blog post title is important and can generate traffic and interest so it's important to take time to make it winning.

Most of our clients are blogging for search engines and so here are a few tips to creating a good blog post title that works well for readers too.

1. Consider making your blog post a question. Think of search query phrases that a reader may use to find your information on Google and make that your post title.

2. Consider adding "How to" or "Review" in your blog post title depending on your content.

3. Include keywords in your blog post title but not as a list rather as a keyword dense phrase.

4. Consider creating a catchy title one that grabs attention.

5. Consider adding "Best Practice" in your blog title.

What is key as you think about your title is that it is keyword dense and could possibly match a search query that may match a phrase that many people are searching for verbatim. On your own blog try out different variations and see what works for you by watching your blog site traffic statistics. You'll quickly find out what content your readers are most interested in and then be able to build blog post series around that content to garner even more traffic.

Tips for Productive Blogging

As a professional blogger for many clients and one who employees five other bloggers here are the tips to being productive that I use and train my team to utilize.

1. Keep a topic log. Don't waste time sitting in front of the computer trying to decide what to write about. Keep a running list and keep ahead on topics. You would be amazed at how much more quickly you can write if you have your topic in mind before you start writing.

2. At the beginning, work in Word and monitor your word count. Check your word count and keep your posts between 200 to 300 words. Longer than that, break your post into a two part series with a teaser for the next post.

3. This is the important one for professional bloggers, time yourself. I can knock out a quality post in less than ten minutes. Train yourself to write quickly, effectively, and stay on topic by using a timer. Typically new bloggers will pore over posts spending as much as 30 minutes per post with an excessive amount of word smithing. You simply cannot do the volume of blogging you want to do spending that amount of time on each post, plus clients do not pay to cover that amount of time for a post. The going rate per post is $10 to $15 so if you are spending 30 minutes to create a post, you are selling your work way to cheap! By clocking yourself, you keep your post short, sweet, and on topic.

4. Work in the control panel! It takes more time to work in Word, once you have the Word count issue down, move your post to notepad, and then move it into Blogger or WordPress or correct non-compliant characters. Save time and work directly in the control panel. Don't have a good spell checker? Use ieSpell browser plug-in and stay out of Word.

5. Set a time for your blogging. Mine is first thing in the morning without fail. If I try to fit blogging into my work day later on, something always happens; a phone call, an email, an urgent task, and then blogging gets pushed back and doesn't happen that day.

6. Try working ahead. This is a hard one for some, but for effective professional bloggers a real time saver. Many of our bloggers have full-time professional jobs. Some prefer to knock out a full week of posts ahead in one day and then just setting a future publish date. This can be great if you are blogging on a thread and have a multiple part series. Do all your posts for the series in one sitting allowing you to keep the content that you have researched clearly in mind in just one sitting.

Blogging for fun is a whole different arena than when you are making money from blogging. So consider my tips and start to become a more effective blogger today!

Feedburner PRO Tracks Feed Visitors

If you are blogging and don't have Google Analytics installed in the footer of your blog and don't have your feed URL wrapped by Feedburner, you are missing out on great information that will help you to understand your readers better.

In my own personal case, I used to blog Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at Web-World Watch and only on Tuesday on Blog-World Watch and only on Friday on Design-Wold Watch. After watching my Feedburner stats, I found out that Blog-World Watch was my most popular feed and changed my writing schedule for increased writing frequency to feed my audience. With these great free tools installed what could you find out about your own readers for your own blog to help you blog more effectively?

Lots! Feedburner used to charge a monthly subscription charge to have PRO level stats. Since being purchased by Google, Feedburner PRO stats are free. If you are already using Feedburner, you just need to click the PRO link in the control panel to be able to get more information about your readers like how many are subscribed, what pages the aggregate audience has viewed, how many have clicked in. Don't worry, there is no personally identifiable information just summaries. But the summaries can help you to identify is your audience growing, shrinking, and what do they like to read.

Knowledge is power! If you want to grow your reader base then you need to understand why people read your blog. Once you know, take concrete action to improve your writing for your audience.

So, as in my case wrap, your feed with Feedburner, enable PRO tracking, and make sure to install Google Analytics, and then you to can blog for your audience more effectively.

Use Labels Effectively

If you are using Blogger or Blogspot as your blog platform your option is to create labels at the bottom of your blog post. It is important to use this feature to help search engines sort your posts and for users to navigate to other blogs of interest.

Label Name Selection
Choose keywords as your label names. I like to use all lower case for my label names as then my words will match more potential search queries than proper case or all capitals. Sometimes even I forget, but try to stick with lower case

Labels as Navigation
I've worked on some blogs where we pre-select labels and only use this labels as we are using the labels as a type of blog navigation. This is a good idea if you are really working on SEO tactics and are employing a ghost blogger to one help give them focus and to prevent label bloat.

Choose Labels Judiciously
If you are having trouble with Blogger publishing your posts, it is time to change your label program. Get in and delete labels, regroup posts and chop your label bloat. Blogger simply has real trouble in publishing custom FTP blogs where you have more than 20 labels. Watch your publishing screen if you are having trouble, you will see that every time you publish Blogger has to reload all your labels and appears to get hung up here if you have lots of labels on your posts. If you have four, five or more labels on each post, Blogger will definitely have problems with custom FTP publishing.

WordPress Categories
This is somewhat the same as Blogger Labels. However in WordPress you won't have the publishing woes that Blogger custom FTP does when you get a lot of categories on your blog. Still keep in mind some of my tips about navigation, capitalization, and keyword use.