> Content index: https://quillly.com/blogs/llms.txt
> Canonical page: https://quillly.com/blogs/how-long-should-blog-post-be

---
title: How Long Should a Blog Post Be? A 66-Post Test
description: I measured word count against Google's index across 66 posts on a DR 12 blog. Here's what really decides how long a blog post should be in 2026.
keywords: how long should a blog post be, ideal blog post length, blog post word count, blog length for SEO, how many words should a blog post be
published: 2026-08-29
updated: 2026-08-29
url: https://quillly.com/blogs/how-long-should-blog-post-be
word_count: 2226
---

# How Long Should a Blog Post Be? A 66-Post Test

> I measured word count against Google's index across 66 posts on a DR 12 blog. Here's what really decides how long a blog post should be in 2026.

Canonical: https://quillly.com/blogs/how-long-should-blog-post-be
Published: 2026-08-29

## Related Pages

- [How to Get Indexed on Google Fast in 2026](https://quillly.com/blogs/get-indexed-on-google-fast)
- [SEO Content Brief: The 2026 Template That Gets Used](https://quillly.com/blogs/seo-content-brief)
- [How Often Should You Blog? A 90-Day Data Answer](https://quillly.com/blogs/how-often-should-you-blog)
- [How to Increase Domain Rating: A 2026 Builder's Guide](https://quillly.com/blogs/increase-domain-rating-2026)
- [The Complete Guide to AI-Powered Blog SEO](https://quillly.com/blogs/complete-guide-ai-blog-seo)

![a close up of a tape measure on a white background](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1703756291638-b1774ae3c186?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w4OTM1MDJ8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwyfHxtZWFzdXJpbmclMjB0YXBlJTIwcnVsZXIlMjBsZW5ndGglMjBtZWFzdXJlbWVudHxlbnwwfDB8fHwxNzg3OTYzODMxfDA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080)

*Photo by [William Warby](https://unsplash.com/@wwarby?utm_source=quillly&utm_medium=referral) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com?utm_source=quillly&utm_medium=referral)*

The longest post on this blog is 4,114 words. Google has not indexed it. Three of our documentation pages are under 560 words each, and Google indexed all three.

That's not a fluke, and it's the problem with every word-count benchmark you've ever read.

**So how long should a blog post be? Long enough to answer the query completely, which usually lands between 1,200 and 2,500 words. There is no ranking bonus above that. Google says it has no preferred word count, and on our own 66-post sample, length barely separated the pages Google indexed from the ones it ignored.**

Most articles on this question quote a number like 2,450 words and move on. This one shows the measurements behind the answer, including the ones that undercut it.

**What's on this page**

- [What 66 posts actually show](#what-66-posts-on-a-dr-12-blog-actually-show)

- [What Google says directly](#google-has-answered-this-question-directly)

- [Why length studies are survivorship bias](#why-every-ideal-blog-post-length-study-is-survivorship-bias)

- [The three questions that decide](#how-long-should-a-blog-post-be-three-questions-that-decide)

- [Length by post type](#how-long-each-type-of-post-needs-to-be)

- [What length actually changes](#what-length-actually-changes)

- [How our scorer weighs length](#how-our-own-scorer-weighs-length)

- [When a post is done](#how-to-tell-when-a-post-is-done)

- [FAQ](#frequently-asked-questions)

## What 66 posts on a DR 12 blog actually show

I paired two numbers for every blog post on quillly.com: its word count, and whether Google confirms it in the index. Sixty-six posts had both — 33 indexed, 33 not. Indexed posts average 3,158 words; the rest average 2,881. That's a gap of 277 words, under 10%, and it's confounded by age.

Here's the split.

![Bar chart comparing mean word count of Google-indexed posts at 3,158 words versus non-indexed posts at 2,881 words, a gap of just 277 words](https://quillly.com/serve/v1/019c64a2-a62f-7793-aa68-2c78316d3309/images/1a4aa2c4130f1567a5f5d87e3801edf062952379.webp)

Indexed posts average 3,158 words. Non-indexed posts average 2,881. That's a gap of 277 words, or about 9.6%.

Now hold that number up against what the benchmarks promise. If length were the lever, you'd expect a chasm. Instead you get a rounding error, and one that's confounded: our older posts happen to be both longer and further along in the crawl queue. Age explains at least part of that 277 words.

The extremes make the point harder to dodge:

- The single longest post on the site, at **4,114 words, is not indexed**.

- **Three of the five longest posts** are not indexed.

- The three shortest docs pages — **517, 545 and 557 words** — are all indexed.

A variable that lets a 4,114-word page sit outside the index while a 517-word page sits inside it is not the variable you should be optimizing.

## Google has answered this question directly

You don't have to infer this from correlation. Google's own documentation says it twice, in plain language.

From the [SEO Starter Guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide):

> "The length of the content alone doesn't matter for ranking purposes (there's no magical word count target, minimum or maximum, though you probably want to have at least one word)."

And from [Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content), where writing to a word count is listed as a symptom of search-engine-first content:

> "Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't.)"

That second one matters. Google isn't merely neutral on blog post word count. It treats chasing one as a signal that you're writing for the algorithm instead of the reader.

## Why every "ideal blog post length" study is survivorship bias

So where do the famous numbers come from? Studies that take the pages already ranking on page one and average their length. The method sounds reasonable and quietly begs the question.

Those pages share far more than a word count. They sit on domains with real authority, they've been crawled and indexed for months, and they've collected links. Length is the easiest thing to measure, so length gets the credit.

![Vertical flowchart showing that a page must be crawled, then indexed, then judged against competitors before length matters at all](https://quillly.com/serve/v1/019c64a2-a62f-7793-aa68-2c78316d3309/images/fe7fca28e34d81df3a0b7a58a38a61664ea29bf5.webp)

Read that top to bottom. Length can only help you at the last step. Our 33 non-indexed posts never reach it, and no amount of padding moves them forward. If your pages are stuck at "Discovered — currently not indexed" or "Crawled — currently not indexed" in Search Console, Google's [Page Indexing report documentation](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203) explains what those states mean — and neither of them is a length problem.

That's the honest reframe. On a young site, [getting indexed on Google](https://quillly.com/blogs/get-indexed-on-google-fast) is the constraint. Word count is downstream of a gate you haven't cleared yet.

> **Stop guessing whether Google has your posts**
> Quillly scores every draft against 14+ SEO criteria, publishes it to your own domain, and submits it to eight search engines — then tracks which pages actually made it into the index.
> → [See your indexing coverage](https://quillly.com)

## How long should a blog post be? Three questions that decide

Drop the benchmark. To work out how long a blog post should be, answer three questions in order: what the query requires, what has to be on the page for the answer to be complete, and what the current top 10 already does. The number falls out of those answers rather than driving them.

**1. What does the query actually require?** "What is a 301 redirect" is a 400-word answer. "How to migrate a blog to a new domain without losing SEO" is not. Let the question set the size.

**2. What has to be on the page for the answer to be complete?** List the sub-questions a reader will have next. Cover them. Stop. That list, not a target, is your outline — which is exactly what a good [SEO content brief](https://quillly.com/blogs/seo-content-brief) captures before you write a word.

**3. What does the current top 10 do?** If every result is a 600-word definition, a 3,000-word essay misreads the intent. If they're all deep tutorials, a thin post won't compete.

Notice what's missing: any reference to what worked on someone else's site.

## How long each type of post needs to be

Length follows format. Here's the range each shape usually needs to answer its query completely — and the failure mode when you force the wrong number.

![Comparison cards showing typical word count ranges by post type: definitions 400-800, how-to guides 1200-2000, comparisons 1800-2800, and original research 1500 or more](https://quillly.com/serve/v1/019c64a2-a62f-7793-aa68-2c78316d3309/images/789fa17319019806d6dd8f6d398afe4201bbb5d9.webp)

Treat these as observed ranges, not quotas. A 900-word how-to that answers everything beats a 2,000-word one that repeats itself.

Writing to a number is also how posts get slow and repetitive. If you're publishing on a schedule, the same discipline applies to cadence — we covered why in [how often you should blog](https://quillly.com/blogs/how-often-should-you-blog).

Want your AI to draft against a real brief instead of a word-count target? [Connect Quillly to Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor.](https://quillly.com){cta=signup}

## What length actually changes

Length isn't meaningless — it's just not a ranking input. When people ask about blog length for SEO, three effects are genuinely real: coverage of more sub-questions, link-worthiness, and crawl cost. None of them is a direct ranking boost, and all three follow from usefulness rather than from the word count itself.

**Coverage.** Longer posts can answer more sub-questions, which wins more long-tail queries. The win comes from the coverage, not the words.

**Link-worthiness.** Thorough resources earn links more readily than thin ones. That's a human response to usefulness.

**Crawl cost.** Every page you publish spends crawl budget. On a low-authority site, 20 padded posts compete with each other for a budget that a handful of strong ones would have used better.

That last one is why publishing more, longer posts is often the wrong move for a site that's under-indexed. Authority is the real bottleneck, and [raising your domain rating](https://quillly.com/blogs/increase-domain-rating-2026) moves more than word count ever will.

## How our own scorer weighs length

Quillly scores every post against 14+ weighted SEO criteria before it ships, and content length is one of them. It's worth being specific about how little it counts: the floor is 1,200 words, the target is 1,800, and above that there's no bonus and no penalty at all.

The scorer treats **1,200 words as the floor** and **1,800+ as the target**. Above that, there is no bonus and no penalty — the top band is open-ended, so a 5,000-word post scores exactly the same as an 1,800-word one on length.

More to the point, length is worth **under 6% of the total score**. Keyword coverage, meta tags, heading structure, internal linking, readability, image density and FAQ structure each carry more weight. If you want the full breakdown, it's documented in [how Quillly scores your content](https://quillly.com/docs/seo-scoring).

We built it that way on purpose. A scorer that rewarded length would just teach every writer to pad.

## How to tell when a post is done

Forget the counter. Run this check instead.

1. **Answer the headline question in the first 150 words.** If you can't, the post isn't focused enough yet.

2. **List the reader's next three questions.** Are they all answered on the page?

3. **Cut every paragraph that repeats a point.** Restating an idea in new words is padding.

4. **Read the intro and the conclusion back to back.** If the conclusion adds nothing, delete it.

5. **Check the SERP.** Does your page cover what the top results cover, plus something they don't?

If all five pass, the post is the right length — whatever the number says. For the wider workflow this sits inside, see our [complete guide to AI-powered blog SEO](https://quillly.com/blogs/complete-guide-ai-blog-seo).

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How many words should a blog post be for SEO?

There's no required number. Google states it has no preferred word count, minimum or maximum. Most posts that fully answer a query land between 1,200 and 2,500 words, but that's a consequence of covering the topic, not a target to hit. Write to the question, then stop.

### Is a 500-word blog post too short?

Not if 500 words answers the query. Definition and quick-answer pages often perform best short. On our own site, three docs pages under 560 words are indexed by Google while a 4,114-word post is not. Length only becomes a problem when it leaves the reader's question unanswered.

### Does longer content rank better on Google?

No. Longer content often correlates with better rankings because thorough pages tend to sit on established domains and earn more links. That's correlation, not cause. Google's documentation says content length alone doesn't matter for ranking purposes.

### What is the ideal blog post length in 2026?

The ideal blog post length is whatever fully answers the search intent behind your keyword. Check the current top 10 for your query: if they're 800-word explainers, match that depth. If they're 2,500-word guides, you'll need comparable coverage to compete.

### Why isn't my long blog post ranking?

Most likely it isn't indexed, or your domain lacks the authority to compete for that query. Check Search Console for the page's index status first. Length can't help a page that Google hasn't indexed, and padding an unindexed post changes nothing.

### Does blog post word count affect AI citations?

Structure matters more than length. AI engines pull specific passages, so clear headings, direct answers and tables do more than volume. A focused 1,200-word post with a clean answer up top is more quotable than a rambling 3,000-word one.

## The bottom line

The honest answer to how long a blog post should be is that the question is a proxy for a better one: *have I answered this completely?*

Three things to keep. First, Google says outright there's no preferred word count, and calls writing to one a search-engine-first habit. Second, across 66 posts on this site, indexed and non-indexed pages differed by 277 words — under 10%, and confounded by age — while the longest post on the blog sits outside the index entirely. Third, length is downstream of crawling, indexing and authority; it can't help a page that hasn't cleared those gates.

Write until the question is answered. Then stop, and go spend the saved hour on the things that actually gate your traffic: getting indexed, earning links, and covering queries nobody else has answered well.

Want the SEO score, the internal links, and the submission to eight search engines handled the moment your AI finishes a draft? [Start a 14-day Quillly trial — no card required.](https://quillly.com){cta=signup}