Are your blog posts too long? In today's instant gratification world, people will blog hop so quickly, they may click on over to another blog before they even get to see your post's third paragraph break. How long should our blog posts be?

If you study your web site stats, you'll probably see that your average visitor spends around 47 seconds in your site. Assuming your web page loads in about 17 seconds, that's about 30 seconds of "reading" time.

If the average person reads 200 to 250 words per minute (reads, not skims), that's about 100 to 125 words. (If you're curious about your own reading speed, check out How Fast Do You Read?)

Then again, people skim on the web. I estimate that visitors will be able to "read" 500 words per minute, which means your typical visitor will probably view half a page (letter size) of text while they're at your site, before they leave.

(If you wish to be more precise about it, try the Word Count WordPress Plugin.)

If your blog post is too long (more than 2 taps of the PageDown key), your visitors might leave before they even get the chance to see your call to action.

Here's a suggestion: Mix it up. Offer both long and short posts in your blog.

Based on my experience, short posts do a better job of gaining a desired response from the reader. An example of such a response would be a request for more information, or subscription to a mailing list.

So, what is the right blog post length? Study your web stats, understand your visitors better, and experiment. :-)

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Manuel Viloria is your friendly multimedia internet publishing coach who helps you gain more traffic for your web sites. Whether it's through blogging, podcasting, article marketing, videoblogging, email listbuilding, or even through Web 2.0 or social network marketing, you can increase your website visitors today. For more information, please visit Make Money Online | ManuelViloria.com.

First Posted: November 20, 2007 | Filed in: Writing

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