Blog Length of 600 Words is Needed?

A client told me today that unless a blog post is 600 words or longer the search engines won't pick it up. Do you know if that's true?

My response:

I always stick to 400 words minimum with at least 1 image just to break up the text for my audience. You can skew articles by emphasizing keywords rather than using pronouns, but stick to quality coherent articles that keeps your audience on the page longer, reduces bounce rate, and increases conversions.

Other Responses:


Keith James • Will a search engine index a blog post shorter than 600 words? The short answer is yes. What is more important is that the blog post show up in the search results for the relevant keywords used in the article.

This is where things get very tricky. Sites such as DaringFireball.com often have very short posts that simply summarize and link to other posts. This is because these sites already rank high due to the quality and amount of backlinks to the site.

For a new blog, I would recommend a minimum of 500 words but the post should also be as concise as possible. What google also looks for is the frequency of posts. Instead of thinking about the length of a single article, think more in terms of words per week or month.


Jean L. Serio, CPC • Less than 250 words and your blog post may not be picked up. However if you want your post ranked higher, according to heavyweights SEOmoz, Hittail, SEO for Google, in testing for words per post they've determined 526 is the average, 447 the median number to get ranking. And your post must be optimized with keywords related to the blog topic in order to get higher ranking.

Pia Zoraya Revelo • Absolutely not true. Google's algorithm change from time to time but for now, it looks for relevant sources or we could say articles or posts with sense or those that are written with great quality. (I would know this because I deal with this algorithm change every now and then). Better create a short article with great quality than a very crappy and long one. Also, you can remind your client that it is better to create articles for readers, for real people not for search engines. Also, people will likely to pick similar articles which are way shorter and more direct.

David Bruce Jr • Will Google index a post under 500 words yes, will that post perform well? It depends, generally less than 100 words is considered "thin content" ( Google that phrase ) it also depends on what keyword phrase you're shooting for and the competition for that phrase - if the phrase was unique ( in other words you're the only one gunning for that phrase, then you will rank at the top of serps

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