With little writing skills I started blogging and many of the bloggers told me that publishing content be very long i.e 2000 to 300 words per post. They didn’t have to be exactly 2300 words, but anything in that range was acceptable.
Let’s be honest. I don’t think people want to read so many words about particular sectors or topics. Consider someone looking up “how to tie a tie” on Google. Would you be interested in reading 2000 words? Or even a thousand?
Google now looks at whether someone clicks on a search result and then immediately exits. If a lot of people are quitting a particular article, Google knows it isn’t very good and shouldn’t be ranked so high.
But, does word count impacts performance of your rankings or overall traffic, and how does it vary by industry?
When I had looked at the 1000’s of popular articles in varied industries below are the results gathered based on the social traffic, SEO traffic , content quality and backlinking.
The average word count observed for each industry is far less than 1000 words. I was really shocked, how come a post below 1000 words contains all the information a user needs.
But it’s really amazing when I have gone through the popular articles on various industries. All those articles highlighted the main theme of the post rather than spilling out the nonsense. They exactly pointed to the subject required briefly so that it won’t be boring for the reader to go through it.
Now let’s dip a little deeper.
What is the average word count pertaining to each and every industry?
- Automotive industry -wordcount-474
- Construction-427
- E-commerce-589
- Economics-619
- Education-897
- Energy-640
- Engineering-306
- Entertainment-856
- Insurance-637
- Investment-673
- Real Estate-576
- Retail-678
- Sports-612
- Technology-907
- Travel-887
Most people don’t write 2300-word blog pieces, as you can see. In most sectors, it isn’t practical to have all content be extremely thorough.
For each industry we looked at, the average word count was roughly 900 words or less.
Let’s have a look at the many types of material that were created for each business.
It differed by industry, but “How To,” “What,” and “Why” pieces were popular across the spectrum.
Let’s take a look at the word count for each content category by industry.
What is the average word count for various content genres by industry?
We looked at the four most prevalent categories of posts in our study:
- “How to” posts
- List posts
- What posts
- Why posts
The average word count for each of them per industry is shown below.
Average word count for How to post on various industries.
- Automotive industry -wordcount-1026
- Construction-372
- E-commerce-1589
- Economics-408
- Education-1136
- Energy-944
- Engineering-44
- Entertainment-1754
- Insurance-637
- Investment-1071
- Real Estate-1090
- Retail-944
- Sports-0
- Technology-871
- Travel-1347
When compared to the average word count per sector graph displayed above, “How To” posts are significantly lengthier.
Engineering had a significantly smaller percentage, but when we looked into why, we discovered that a lot of engineering content was biased toward videos. That makes sense when you realize how complex many engineering-related topics can be.
In addition, we looked at over 10,000 popular stories from around the web. As a result, not every industry had the largest sample size.
Average word count for the list based posts on various industries:
- Automotive industry -wordcount-299
- Construction-281
- E-commerce-1039
- Economics-447
- Education-11385
- Energy-544
- Engineering-1720
- Entertainment-754
- Insurance-1108
- Investment-1071
- Real Estate-683
- Retail-744
- Sports-773
- Technology-1096
- Travel-0
For most businesses, the average word count for “List-Based” posts was similar to that of “How To” entries.
However, this was not the case with posts based on the word “What.”
Average word count for the what based posts on each industry:
- Automotive industry -wordcount-956
- Construction-573
- E-commerce-854
- Economics-180
- Education-1286
- Energy-1697
- Engineering-1844
- Entertainment-0
- Insurance-1508
- Investment-563
- Real Estate-778
- Retail-1119
- Sports-699
- Technology-1453
- Travel-1284
“What” posts were on average longer than “How To” and “List-Based” ones.
Average word count for why posts on each industry:
- Automotive industry -wordcount-640
- Construction-681
- E-commerce-525
- Economics-1190
- Education-0
- Energy-1122
- Engineering-988
- Entertainment-1611
- Insurance-802
- Investment-1015
- Real Estate-2201
- Retail-425
- Sports-729
- Technology-1378
- Travel-1584
Finally, the graph above depicts the length of posts based on “Why” by industry.
Let’s have a look at backlinks now.
At each word count barrier, what is the average number of backlinks for posts?
Based on the length of the content, this is the backlink count.
Keep in mind that we’re looking at the most popular articles in each industry. This number of backlinks does not apply to all articles.
- 500 Word Count-803 backlinks
- 1000 word count-833 backlinks
- 1500 word count-1745 backlinks
- 2000 word count-1823 backlinks
- 2500 word count-1089 backlinks
- 3000 word count- 961 backlinks
- 3500 word count-1714 backlinks
- 4000 word count-688 backlinks
- 4000+ word count-494 backlinks
Posts with word lengths of 1001-1500 or 1501-2000 receive over 1700 backlinks, as shown in the graph above. The same goes for word counts of 3001-3500 words.
According to this graph, striving for a content length within these three-word count areas has the best chance of generating more backlinks… presuming your content is of a high standard.
What is the average amount of traffic received by posts with different word counts?
Backlinks alone aren’t enough.
Even if you have a large number of backlinks, you are not assured traffic. The average traffic for posts depending on word count is shown below.
- 500 Word Count-1283
- 1000 word count-1374
- 1500 word count-1285
- 2000 word count-2261
- 2500 word count-892
- 3000 word count-14401
- 3500 word count-4942
- 4000 word count-3856
- 4000+ word count-218
The most traffic was created by posts with a word count of 250-3000 words. It was followed by posts ranging from 300 to 350 words, and then 350 to 4000 words.
If you’re optimizing for traffic, sticking to a word count of 2501 to 4000 words is the way to go, but that may not be the case in every business.
Each and every industry is different based on the word count, backlinks and traffic.In the field of education, it is obvious that people prefer content that is under 500 words long. At the same time, posts with 350-4000 words work well in the entertainment market, while posts with 4,000+ words work well in the technology or travel industries.
Conclusion: Does word count impacts performance?
From the standpoint of backlinks, ranking, or traffic, a high word count isn’t a guarantee of success.
The information above, on the other hand, can assist you figure out roughly where you should aim your article for your industry. You can achieve a lot of success if you combine it with your SEO and paid advertising efforts.
In essence, you don’t really want “junk” in your material, and you should keep it short and to-the-point. At the same time, you need your essay to be deep and comprehensive enough for folks to realize all of the ideas you’re attempting to make.
You should also utilize subheadings, as I did in this article, to make it much easier to skim your information, which is particularly important if it is lengthy. Examining your sources and seeing how you can extract better data from your content to draw statistical inferences can also be beneficial.
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