The number one concern marketers have when they decide to invest in content marketing is how much and how often they should deliver to their audience. 

When you’ve finally decided to streamline your business blog ideas, you were on Google looking up how long should a blog post be. That’s how your journey in understanding how to rank content for free on Google began, didn’t it? 😁

Sure, you’ve heard about paying to get views and while indeed big numbers look good on paper, if you don’t stand a chance in converting any of those avatars, then you would have paid for nothing much. 

Organic growth it is then.

Is long-form content the best content?

So if you want to boost your business blog starting today and have it build a community 3 months from now, what would be the best blog length to get the job done?

It’s trendy nowadays to say long-form content is being favored with ranking on Google. The reasoning is that longer articles naturally encapsulate more backlinks. 

Not only that but the latest studies on the matter have shown that they also outperform shorter articles when it comes to social shares on social media platforms.

That is the generally accepted rule. 

But does that mean that all the blogs from all the industries should have articles aiming for 1000 words? 

Only if the glove fits. 

Entrepreneur blog vs. big name blog

General mass studies are good at providing general mass results. 

You can sneak a peek at the results, and see what makes sense for your business ideas. 

In all truthfulness, the best use of studies is understanding the processes that went into arriving at the end results. If you’re a niche creator going over a study focused on the current content marketing trends related to big fast-food chains, the data will do nothing for you. 

The content that works for a multi-million dollar shoe company whose logo and catchphrase everybody knows does not (and will not) have to work for your Etsy shop business. 

As much of a no-brainer this statement seems to be, you’d be surprised at the tactics young entrepreneurs will try to force onto their businesses. Why? Simply because they read a study or two on the internet with which they found a couple of commonalities.

Ranking on Google organically is a matter of common sense

Take food and travel bloggers, for instance. Set aside for a second what the random study you found about the best blog length regarding these industries said and use your common sense. 

Would the targeted audiences of food and travel blogs be interested in reading through 1000 words or are they here for the cool aesthetics? 

No doubt that bits of texts support the images and videos in these scenarios and not the other way around (as opposed to what your typical blog best practices advise), and no doubt that insisting to have a 1000-word article out is a useless thing to do in these cases. 

You should aim at putting out content that pleases real people out there, not to appease the questionable online blog authority. 

TripAdvisor is doing it, and take a look at just how solid their Domain Authority is and that number of links sure is impressive. 🤩

Content marketing strategy no-brainers

For sure the best chance to rank blogs on Google is to pay attention and accommodate your competitive advantage. 

If you’re a food and travel blogger, you have no business wasting your time scrolling through corporate blog best practices. 

If, however, you want to use content marketing within an industry which already has a few well-known content giants dominating the market, the first thing you need to know is that all hope is not lost for you. 

Freshness distance is a real thing and it can put your business in an advantageous position should you channel it correctly. The truth of the matter remains, however, that it is not just going to happen overnight.

Here’s how to navigate content marketing to get real results.

• do a Google search of your respective keywords 
• compare the word count of all the content listed on the first page [articles or not – remember the TripAdvisor point made above]
• compare the DA and the number of links of each entry [Moz will assist you just fine]
• draw averages of the DA, word count, and number of links
• write your articles with those average results in mind

If you want to put in a bit of an extra effort, as you’re analyzing the first page content that came back as a result of your keywords search, you can also make notes:

• of the additional keywords that were used [you can find them in titles, subtitles, and in the meta-description]

• of what site visitors are commenting [you can pinpoint what kind of content stirs conversations]

• of their social shares [what are the platforms on which they are mostly shared]

This is how you keep your competitive advantage because you’re rooting yourself smack dab in the middle of all the trends that are relevant to your specific niche.

Lastly, do not neglect search intent. 

All the points made so far are useless unless you also count in search intent. Why? Because while content and links mainly bring you the traffic, search intent brings you the conversions. 

If the searcher is happy with what they found while scrolling on your page, they will be sticking around, and when they stick around enough you can start having positive ROI conversations with potential investors. 

Now isn’t that something to make it all worth it?😏

Blogging and SEO blogging content strategy entrepreneurs Google rank long-form online marketing organic search popular content search intent