Tuesday, 20 September 2016

The Ideal Length for All Online Content

Are you writing the right length of content?

In the online world, size does matter. (It does in the offline world too, but let’s leave that for another time). And that doesn’t necessarily mean that bigger is better either. Google has time and again indicated that relevant, original content is the real king in the online world. It only then makes sense to find out what qualities this ‘king’ needs to embody to ensure our overall well being.

Content is used in various ways online. From  social media to blogs, there is a constant tug to make content more readable, clickable and likable. So here are some scientific insights on how you get your content length in order to make it better. Of course, you’ll have to try specific cases over time with close monitoring to know how things work for you.

1. Your website:

Domain name: Though most of us cannot go back and change the name of our website, this is a good rule of thumb for the future to have the domain name length at 8 chars which is short and easy to remember.

Title tags: Keeping this at 55 chars or fewer including your prime keyword which works well from an SEO perspective

Meta description: 155 characters of fewer is best to convey a summary in search results clearly

2. Your Blog:

Blog Headline: A good headline is the ‘hook’ to draw people into your blog. While we’ve discussed previously on the type of headline words that get attention, the ideal headline length is set at six words only. According to KISSmetrics, we tend to pick up only the first three and last three words. So keeping the length at 6 words makes for the entire headline to be read through

Blog content: We know of Google’s love for good quality original content filled with the right citations. But good things don’t come easy and you’ll have to push 1600+ words to get some SERP ( Search Engine Result Page) love which translates to a 7-minute reading time

Blog paragraphs: This comes more from an intuitive sense. People enjoy reading / sifting through when it is broken into small chunks of text. Rather than the number of words it’s the width of the paragraph that comes into play. Keep this at 40 -45 characters i.e. 8 – 11 words.

3. Your emails: Email subject line: We are on a dispute on this one. In a study by Mailchimp, it was found that the ideal length of a subject line is 4-15 characters. But subject lines that work better have timely and useful information even going up to 50 chars or more.

4. Your social channels

Twitter: Good tweets are those that can invoke engagement from its audience in the form of retweets. Ideal length of a tweet can be 100 chars minus the link and 124 with a link. Hashtags to be kept under 11 chars

Facebook: Did you know that Facebook allows you to write 63,206 characters in a status update! That’s around 15,000 words. Yikes! We sure hope not to come across someone who takes this as a challenge. On the ideal front, the best length of an update on FB is just 40 chars. Short, crisp and easy to scan through during a news feed surf.

G+: Do you still loyally post on G+ hoping someday Google will shower you with attention? (All of us debate it and yet do it)  If yes then keep your post length to 60 chars to gain maximum visibility.

All in all, while these can be a guideline, do share what works for your audience.

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Happy Learning
Training.com 

1 comment:

  1. When it comes to creating great content, we all know it has to be first and foremost engaging and interesting for users. But what about designing this content? Below are a few SEO design tips to consider when creating your content. More Information

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