How Long Should a Blog Post Be? Honest 2026 Word Count Guide

Backlink.io and Ahrefs analysed 11.8 million first-page blog posts and found an average of 1,447 words, according to Shopify's roundup. Google, meanwhile, says it has no preferred word count. Blog post length sits between those two facts, and the right answer depends on what your reader came to do.

What is the ideal blog post length for SEO?

Posts written to rank usually run from about 1,400 to 2,500 words, the range Shopify gives for top performers. Shorter pieces can still do well when they answer the question fully.

SEO posts tend to run longer because they need room for both short and long-tail keywords. That's a reason, not a rule.

What the ranking studies found

Beyond the 1,447-word average, the research lands in a similar place. Onely's review of the evidence notes that HubSpot recommended 2,100 to 2,400 words for SEO, and Crazy Egg's rough rule is that posts should be about 1,500 words, a guideline rather than a benchmark.

Put together, 1,500 words is a sensible default for a post meant to rank. It's where you start, not where you must finish.

Why those averages can mislead

An average hides the spread. Onely points out that when word counts vary widely, the mean tells you little, and that length can't be separated from other ranking factors such as links, so these are correlation studies.

HubSpot's own 50 most-read articles ranged from 333 to 5,581 words, and 16 of them were under 1,500. Readers clearly found short posts worth reading.

Does Google have a preferred word count?

No. Google's own guidance on creating helpful, people-first content lists writing to a particular word count, because you've heard Google prefers one, as a warning sign of search-engine-first content, and answers its own question with "No, we don't."

Google's John Mueller said the same in a LinkedIn post reported by Search Engine Roundtable in August 2024: "Nobody at Google counts the links or the words on your blog posts." He added that even if they did, he'd still recommend writing for your audience.

Earlier, in an office-hours session, Mueller put it more bluntly: the number of words on a page is not a quality factor and not a ranking factor. Google's Search Quality Guidelines say the amount of content needed "depends on the topic and purpose of the page."

How long should a blog post be for each purpose?

Purpose sets blog post length more than any benchmark does. A product review, a news item and a pillar guide need different amounts of room, and the figures below come from the sources already mentioned.

In-depth guides and how-tos

Explainers and how-tos need detail, and beginners need more background than experts, who want a deep dive instead. Crazy Egg reports that most literature puts the sweet spot at 1,500 to 2,000 words, and that in-depth personal essays suit longer formats.

News, reviews and short answers

Announcements should be short, and Crazy Egg says short suits book or gadget reviews. If the post answers the question in 700 words, stopping there is the better editorial choice.

Cornerstone pages

Yoast treats roughly 900 words as the starting point for a cornerstone post or page, and says you can go beyond it whenever the topic needs more explanation. Its guidance on blog post length calls these numbers a quality floor, not a ceiling.

Is there a minimum length for a blog post?

There isn't a strict minimum. Shopify says so directly: "There is no strict minimum length for blog posts, although some sources recommend at least 300 words."

That 300 figure is where Yoast's text length check flags a standard post with a red light, with the advice "Aim for over 300 words for posts." Yoast adds that the check is a guideline and doesn't guarantee rankings.

In practice, a minimum blog post length is whatever it takes to cover the topic. Very short pages rarely do that, but a 500-word article is sufficient when it covers its subject thoroughly and meets the audience's needs.

Do longer posts earn more backlinks?

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels

Sometimes, but the evidence disagrees with itself. Onely reports that a Backlinko content study found posts over 3,000 words got about 77.2% more referring domains than those under 1,000.

Yet Ahrefs found a negative correlation between length beyond 1,000 words and links, according to the same round-up. Both are correlations, so neither proves that adding words earns links.

Backlinks tend to follow original, useful material, so blog post length helps only when the extra words carry something. A longer post gives you more chances to include something worth linking to, but padding doesn't.

How to choose the right length for your post

Start with three questions, which Shopify frames this way.

1. Who is reading? Beginners need more background, and experts want depth.
2. What should they take away? Explainers and how-tos need detail, while announcements stay short.
3. Why are you publishing? Posts meant for search run longer than social or company updates.

Write the outline before the draft, with H2s, H3s and H4s, as Crazy Egg advises. The outline tells you how many questions the post has to answer, and that count sets the blog post word count far more reliably than a target does.

For layout, Shopify suggests paragraphs of about four or five lines and no more than about three paragraphs under each heading. Shorter still reads well on a phone.

How to make a long post worth reading

Cut filler first. Crazy Egg's view is that it's more important to avoid filler content than to hit a specific word count, and that every word should add value. Mueller's version is that blindly adding text to a page doesn't make it better.

Add something a competing page can't copy, such as original research, a case study, an expert interview, an infographic or an interactive tool. Those are the elements Crazy Egg lists for lifting a long post above the rest.

Google's guidance also asks readers to be able to tell who wrote the piece, to see how automation or AI was used where they'd wonder, and to find content made primarily to help people. It warns against changing a page's date to look fresh when the content hasn't substantially changed.

Finish by checking each section against the reader's question. If a paragraph doesn't answer it, delete it, then publish and see how readers respond before you set the length of the next one on the FreeBlogWriter blog or anywhere else.

Frequently asked questions

Is 500 words too short for a blog post?

No, if it covers the topic thoroughly and meets the audience's needs, which is Shopify's answer. It sits above the 300-word mark where Yoast starts flagging standard posts, though shorter pieces suit narrow questions better than broad ones.

Is 1,500 words a good blog post length?

For a post meant to rank, yes. Crazy Egg's rough rule is about 1,500 words, roughly a seven-minute read, and it falls inside the 1,400 to 2,500 range Shopify cites. Treat it as a guideline, not a benchmark.

Does Google count the words on my page?

No. John Mueller said nobody at Google counts the words or the links on your blog posts, and Google's helpful content guidance says it has no preferred word count.

Can an AI blog writer set the length for me?

You choose the blog post length. FreeBlogWriter writes researched SEO posts in your voice at 500, 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000 words, and every account gets 4 complete posts, free for life, with no card. Google says using AI mainly to manipulate rankings violates its spam policies, so judge any draft by whether it helps the reader.

Sources

• How Long Should a Blog Post Be? (2026 Guide) — Shopify
• Google: We Don't Count Words Or Links On Your Blog Posts — Search Engine Roundtable
• How Long Should a Blog Post Be? — Crazy Egg
• Is Word Count a Ranking Factor? — Onely
• Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content — Google Search Central
• Blog post length — Yoast

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