How Long Should An Affiliate Blog Post Be? Blog Post Length

If you're a blogger, you've probably asked your editor more times than you'd like to admit, "how long should an affiliate blog post be?" And most of the time, you'll get an answer along the lines of "however long it needs to be."

There's some truth in there — you shouldn't be bound by a word count that's too short or too long. Any experienced blogger, however, will tell you that there is an ideal length for how long your blog posts should be, especially when specific criteria such as your audience, topic, the structure of the post, and your promotional channel are considered.

How Long Should An Affiliate Blog Post Be?

The ideal affiliate blog post length for SEO is 2,100-2,400 words. Although this is not restricted, in fact, it depends on who you ask and the data they present. But one thing they all have in common is that they all agree that long-form content is king. Most bloggers now write posts that are more than 1000 words long. Longer blog posts take longer to write than shorter ones, but there are significant advantages to doing so.

What Is the Optimal Affiliate Blog Post Length?

You've probably heard the phrases "attention spans are shorter than ever" and "people only want bite-sized information." However, this does not imply that your blog posts should be brief. When it comes to affiliate blog posts, longer is often better.

While attention spans are decreasing, the average word count of blog posts is increasing. According to IsItWP, the average post length increased by approximately 42% between 2014 and 2018, rising from 800 to 1,151 words.

According to a Medium article, posts with an average read time of 7 minutes drew the most attention.

HubSpot used this data to calculate that the ideal affiliate blog post length is 2,100 words, based on the reading speed average of native English-speaking adults of 300 words per minute.

Then, examined its blog content and discovered that the magic number for a blog post is ideally between 2,250 and 2,500 words.

As these word counts show, the ideal blog post length varies depending on who you ask. But one thing they all have in common is that they all agree that long-form content is king.

In fact, most bloggers now write posts that are more than 1000 words long. Longer blog posts take longer to write than shorter ones, but there are significant advantages to doing so.

The Advantages of Long-Form Affiliate Blog Posts

Longer blog posts also help you establish authority in your field specially on affiliate marketing. With long-form content, our readers can be confident that we know what we're sharing regarding blogging.

Longer blog posts perform excellent in almost every metric, providing more value to readers and demonstrating your expertise.

Let's look at some more benefits of long-form affiliate blog posts.

Improves Search Engine Results Ranking

You must optimize your blog posts for SEO to attract more readers to your website. This includes using relevant keywords, adding internal links, creating readable URLs, and ensuring your website is SEO friendly, among other things.

However, the word count of your blog posts affects how well your content ranks on search engines like Google. Longer blog posts perform better in search results.

So, how many words should a blog have for SEO purposes?

To rank well in search engines, a blog post should have at least 300 words. However, long posts (1000 words or more) rank higher than short posts.

CoSchedule discovered that posts with around 2,500 words typically rank the highest.

Increases the amount of time spent on the page

Users will stay on your website for longer if your blog posts are longer. Furthermore, the longer they stay on your website, the more likely they are to explore more of your excellent content.

According to Neil Patel's findings, people stayed on the long-form content page 40% longer than the average page and looked at 25% more pages than the average visitor.

More social media shares

According to research, long-form content receives more social media shares.

QuickSprout discovered that posts with fewer than 1,500 words received 174.6 tweets and 59.3 Facebook likes on average. Over 1,500-word posts received 293.5 tweets, and 72.7 Facebook likes on average.

They also discovered that a blog post with more than 1,500 words receives 22.6% more Facebook likes and 68.1% more tweets than a post with less than 1,500 words.

More social media shares can bring more visitors to your blog—your blog posts could even go viral! Long-form affiliate blog posts also help you rank higher in search engine results, which means your blog posts will be seen by more people online.

What constitutes short and long affiliate blog posts?

The online world is heavily reliant on definitions. There will be too much room for misinterpretation of this post if we do not accurately define a long post and a short post. To be clear, most SEO and data analytics experts believe the limit is 2,000 words. Anything over 2,000 words is considered lengthy. Logic would dictate that anything less than 2,000 words is short.

Unfortunately, this definition allows for far too much interpretation. Is a 1,500-word blog post that brief? Compared to a 2,000-word post, a 1,500-word post is only a paragraph and a closing comment short of 2,000 words. In reality, short posts are less than 1,000 words long. The value determines everything between 1,000 and 2,000 words you provide to the individual reader and the industry you serve.

The situation is different if you work in a service industry and regularly provide in-depth guides. If you provide valuable walkthroughs and service guides to your customers to help them become acquainted with a product or service, 1,000 words may be considered short.

The best explanation is that 2,000 and up is long, 1,000 and under is short, and everything in between is open to interpretation depending on your audience/industry.

Minimum Length of an Affiliate Blog Post

There is no official minimum length for affiliate blog posts, though Yoast recommends at least 300 words. However, a lot of data suggests that longer blog posts should be the norm rather than the exception. This practice will assist your website in gaining authority in the eyes of search engines, which will allow shorter blog posts to rank higher.

While longer blog posts tend to perform better, this does not mean that every blog post you publish must be longer than 2,000 words. If you believe you have adequately covered your topic in 300, 800, or 1,000 words, go ahead and do so.

Final Thoughts

Writing longer blog posts benefits both your readers and your blog's success. But don't get too caught up in the word count or the elusive ideal blog post length.

After all, there isn't a single ideal blog post length for all topics!

Instead, concentrate on providing your target audience with valuable long-form content.