How long should a blog post be?

'How long should a blog post be?' gets a lot of confident, contradictory answers. The honest one: as long as it needs to be to genuinely answer the question — and no longer.

Match length to intent

• •A quick, specific question deserves a short, direct answer.
• •A big topic ('how to choose a web designer') warrants more depth.
• •Padding a post to hit a word count hurts more than it helps.

Quality over length

Google rewards the page that best answers the searcher's question, not the longest one. Write to be genuinely useful, structure it well, and stop when you've answered it. A tight, helpful post beats a bloated one every time.