It’s a tough question to answer, but an important one  nonetheless. Just like finding your posting frequency, post length depends heavily on the depth you go into, niche,  readers, and even your posting frequency. Now, I’ve read a ton of theories that say very short or very long posts are horrible SEO wise, but I believe that finding your ideal post length should again revolve around the topic at hand, the overall niche, and two other variables, so I won’t be touching on SEO here. Maybe another post though.

1. Deeper the depth means longer the length

It seems pretty obvious, but when you look at post length it should mostly depend on just how deep into a topic you go. This post – for example – goes into what I would call some detail, making it an average length, around 500 words long. But if you go into more depth like I did in my post about getting comments on your blog you need to have a longer post – about 1000 words – to cover everything you need to.

2. Your niche really matters

Think about it this way – if your writing news updates, like engadget does, your posts are typically going to be short compared to say a tutorials which usually need to go into a lot of detail.

3. Your readers really matter too

We’ll as long as your writing for people and not search engines your post length should revolve around them. People now-a-days have a very short attention span, including myself, but there are ways around this. You could make your posts readable or at least scanable – which are two very different things – making sure your readers can go through an article and it won’t seem like a task to them.

4. Posting frequency – more posts means shorter posts

Now this doesn’t always hold true but the great majority of the time when people write more posts it means that they are shorter – again think about engadget or uncrate. They post multiple short articles through out the day.

My goal here was to give you a basis of what I think post length should depend on. But in the end it boils down to these two questions, “did I explain everything I needed to?” and “can this do the job in a shorter post?”

Image By lissalou66

The age old question, “How often should I post on my blog?” I’ve seen this same question asked way too many times on forums, I always tell them the same thing. “It varies from blog to blog.” Some blogs just naturally need more posts than others to make their readers happy.

What your posting frequency depends on.

1. Your niche.

The topic of your blog is the biggest deciding factor of how often you should post. Typically a blog with a wide niche or a niche that has a lot of breaking news each day, such as a gadget blog or pop culture blog, will need a lot more posts than a blog that’s nuclear engineering.

2. Your writing style.

If your like me you like to write longer, quality, in depth posts so you can get away with posting once every 2 or 3 days. Where as some people like to write short and to the point posts, they can do an easy 4 posts a day.

3. Your readers preferences.

It’s a fact that your readers will unsubscribe from your blog or out right stop visiting because of your posting frequency. Some people like 4 or 5 posts a day while others may not like more than 3 or 4 a week. It’s up to you to find a fair medium that will make all your readers happy.

4. Where your traffic is coming from.

A huge part of posting frequency has to do with where the bulk of your traffic is coming from. If you have mostly  search engine traffic you want a lot of posts daily, as this means you will have more pages in search engines, which will translate to more visitors. But if you’re like me and you get the majority of your visitors from other sites (forums, blogs) and rss feeds, you don’t have to necessarily post as much.

Pros of Posting More.

1. Posting more means you have more pages search engines.

Every new post is like another landing page to your blog, the more landing pages you have the more search engine traffic your likely to get.

2. Your subscribers see you more.

Weather your subscribers are seeing you in their inbox or their RSS readers your getting them to se you more and more with each and every post.

Cons of posting More.

1. Your readers unsubscribe.

In a survey done by ProBlogger.net, blog readers voted on the top reasons they unsubscribed from a blog, the #1 reason they unsubscribed was because posting frequency was too high.

2. Running out of ideas.

Unless you have a team of bloggers or your just great at pulling posts out of thin air, your going to get writers fatigue. When you start posting 2 to 5 times a day on some blogs your gonna run out of ideas/content pretty quick. If you have a niche with a ton of daily news and you post a lot each day, you will slowly lose  passion for the topic and end up with a dead blog.

Pros of Posting Less.

1. More reader engagement.

I have noticed that when you post less frequently you get more reader engagement, more comments and more conversation with each post.

Cons of Posting Less.

1. Less traffic

This may not always hold true but most of the time you will see a decrease of traffic if you decrease your posting frequency. Posting less was actually number 2 on the top reasons people unsubscribe from blogs.

To Sum it all up.

I’s not as simple as posting more and getting more traffic, readers and subscriber.

• Your frequency depends on the niche of the blog, your writing style, your readers and your traffic sources.
• Posting more can get you more search engine traffic and gets you seen more by subscribers.
• Posting more may turn your readers away and cause writers block.
• While posting less can get more reader engagement, it can lessen your traffic.

What do you think of posting frequency? Is quality better than quantity?

Image by: gutter