How to Determine the Ideal Length for Your Article

Ask any writer what's the number one thing that stops people from reading your article. Most likely, you will receive an answer like “The Headline” or some may also consider “The Introduction”.

But let's imagine you are searching for information about any specific topic on the internet. You click on a Google search result, and suddenly you find yourself staring at a 5000-word long novel. Chances are, you're going to leave the page and look for a shorter piece that delivers the information you need in a faster way, right?

As you can see, the length of the article plays a much bigger role than most of us realize. But what is the ideal length to aim for? Let’s find out by analyzing the behavior of your average reader.

You have 9 seconds to convince

9 seconds is the attention span of a goldfish. And your average reader. Within this short period of time, the person clicking on your article will decide if it’s worth reading.

Dr. Jakob Nielsen conducted an interesting study on how the average person reads an online article. The short version is: They don’t. He found out, that the reader scans the page, rather than reading it word for word. Thus, he concluded that it’s not the content length that scares off your reader, but how scannable your text is. Nielsen defined a few key factors that are responsible for catching your readers attention:

Highlighted keywords

Bold words stand out in-between all others and allow someone to quickly pick up some information, without reading the whole article.

Meaningful subtitles

Don’t use subtitles that only make sense in the context. Express important information with them. Someone only reading the subtitles, must have a good idea of what this article is about.

Variety

Use all the tools you have available to make every paragraph look slightly different. This kind of variety is way more attractive to the readers’ eyes. Different formatting options, bullet lists, and graphics help you achieve that.

Credibility

The study also shows that credibility is an important factor for Web users, since they don’t have any connection to the writer and thus, don’t know if the source can be trusted. To increase credibility, use high-quality imagery and hyperlinks to the according sources.

Use half the word count of conventional writing

They also found a way to measure the usability of an online text. Users had to read texts and were then asked some questions about what they’ve read. Factors such as task time, error rate, and subjective satisfaction then defined the usability of the online text.

Using only half the word count then a conventional text, lead to an increase of usability by 58%. So generally, we can conclude that shorter texts are not only easier to read, but also more likely to be remembered. Of course, as a writer, you don’t have an exact conventional word count you could break in half and define as your optimal content length. But now you know that shorter articles are more attractive, as well as effective and thus, you can stick to a shorter writing style.

The optimal content length

Now that we have examined the reading behavior, we still don’t know what’s the optimal word count for your article. What we can say is this:

• Length doesn’t matter as much as how scannable your text is
• Shorter articles are considered more effective

The amount of words you want to use depends on how much you have to say. A 700-word article is fine, and so is a 2000-word article. Write down whatever is on your mind, but do it in the shortest possible way.

The more you write, the more of your articles will find themselves in a specific word range. For instance, in my case, this is between 700 and 1000 words. I found this range to be long enough to say whatever needs to be said and short enough to not bore the reader to death.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is no “too long” or “too short”. The length of your piece is determined by how much you have to say. However, try doing this in the most compact way possible.

Write a few articles and see what works out for you. Find your sweet spot.