Should you publish smaller blog posts?
I have always believed in the concept of “something is always better than nothing”.
If there is a choice between posting a small blog post and posting nothing at all, I recommend that you post a small blog post.
What am I talking about?
Search engine experts and, to an extent, even Google, recommend that you should avoid thin content.
What is thin content?
Thin content is blog posts and web pages posted just for the heck of it with little content on them.
This Yoast post describes in detail what is thin content.
Over the past two decades, I have maintained multiple blogs.
I had one technology blog. I actively posted content on the blog for two years and it had some decent traffic.
I’m not discussing here why I abandoned the blog, but I would like to focus on what I learned.
Beyond a point, the length or the number of words in your blog post or web page hardly matter.
What matters is the information that you provide to your visitors.
I used to publish quick blog posts on the technology blog randomly, but regularly.
Someday, when I had time, I published 3-4 blog posts. Someday, I published just one. Sometimes, none.
But, in a week, on an average I was publishing 10 blog posts.
Not very big. Never more than 400 words.
It started getting good traffic, if I remember correctly, within four months.
Ever since then, a lot has changed. Even the Google algorithm has gone through multiple transformations.
Now we live in the times of longform content.
At least the concept is promoted by most of the reputed SEO and content marketing companies.
Publish 3000-4000 words, they recommend. Even 6000.
Don’t publish blog posts; publish guides.
A complete guide to this and a complete guide to that.
There is a logic, and I do understand the logic.
When you are writing about a topic, cover the topic from multiple angles under different sections.
This way, when the visitor comes to your link, she finds everything she needs to know about the topic she has just searched on Google.
I do agree: if written well, longer blog posts mean the person spends more time reading these blog posts and this lowers your bounce rate.
A lower bounce rate is good for your SEO.
It is also good for your conversion rate.
Hence, it makes sense to publish blog posts and web pages that extensively cover your topic.
But, you can’t be writing long blog posts all the time.
If you have the budget, if you have the time, sure, you can have a content calendar and you can publish 3-4 4000-word blog posts every month.
What if you neither have the budget not the time?
If that is the case, there is no harm in publishing smaller blog posts.
As I said in the beginning, something is better than nothing.
Make sure you provide value, though. That’s most important.
If you’re simply publishing rubbish, it is going to do more harm than good.
Check out Seth Godin’s blog if you haven’t already done so.
He hardly publishes 100 words.
But, he publishes everyday.
I have been observing his blog for more than 10 years now.
One of the best-known blogs on creating businesses that stand out.
Tiny blog posts.
Of course, he’s not bothered with search engine rankings.
He is a brand in himself.
He has published multiple books.
He constantly has speaking gigs.
Even when he hadn’t authored multiple books, he followed the same format – very small blog posts.
Just a single thought.
The point that I’m trying to make is, focus on delivering value.
Then what about your keywords?
What about covering longtail keywords?
I’m not saying that you always publish small blog posts.
You publish them when you don’t have time.
For example, right now I’m publishing this blog post.
I didn’t have time. But I didn’t want to miss posting an update.