Do long blog posts make people not want to read them? I think so. That or that fact that they aren’t laid out in a way that I can easily get the jest of the blog post within 20 seconds. By making the blog post easy to read with built points or lists and pictures it makes the blog post more intriguing to me. Also the fact that the blog post need to be interesting! If it doesn’t catch my attention I close the page and move on. So what should you do to make a shorter and better blog post? Well first thing you can do is read these three questions below and answer them and see how good your attention span is and what kind of blog posts will catch your attention. Question #1 - How much soil is there in a hole measuring one meter by 1 meter? (see the correct answer a couple lines below) None, it’s a hole. Question #2 - A man dressed in all dark clothes is walking down a country lane. All of a sudden a large black car without any lights on comes around the corner and screeches to a halt. How did the driver know there was a man in the road? It was daylight. Question #3 - A mute person goes into a shop and wants to buy a toothbrush. By imitating the action of the brushing he successfully expresses himself to the clerk and the purchase is done. Next – into the shop comes a blind man who wants to buy a pair of sunglasses, how does he indicate what he wants? He would simply ask. How did you do? If you answered all 3 questions correctly you are okay because you have a good attention span. However you should be careful it could get worse. If you answered only 1 or 2 correctly you need to concentrate and calm down. If you haven’t answered any of the questions right you need to stay more focused! So whats the point? The point is the majority of people have a very short attention span and want results from a blog post right way. If they don’t like what they see they will move on. People get distracted easily. So write something good and get on with it! Short, interesting, and sweet! That’s what will work. Can we do anything about this? No not really. Just need to hope those people who have an attention span are visiting your site so you don’t get a crazy bounce back rate.
We need to find how to get articles more attractive to visitors. I heard about hypnotized writing skills.
Longer post is good for SEO, as i am aware of, i mean it also depends on keyword density. Though i personally like to read short post and straight to the point post, but search engines likes long content with ideal keyword density..
Excellent post Michael! Finally somebody is posting something useful and not writing a couple of lines and linking to their blog content for the full story. Kudos! This is why most blogs fail. They write for search engines and not for people. Sure, they may attract some long-tailed search terms and garner a little more traffic ... but odds are those people come, read nothing, and leave just as quick as they got there.
It depends on the goal of blogging. I personally prefer to have more traffics, because it increases earning both with adsense and affiliate. That's my goal for blogging, money and money lol..without traffics it is hard to get, because search engines traffics are targetted, the chances to "buy" is higher than other blogger friends, because blogger friends know our tricks..and search engines traffics found my posts by typing their keywords. My personal opinion, and goal of blogging, money.
I consider money making blogs that contribute nothing a splog. I thought we were talking about actual blogs here. Sorry, I misunderstood the conversation.
I agree. Write for people to read and not for search engines. You should post something that's well thought of. That way you will gain more readers and traffic.
Hey Guys! Blogs are for PEOPLE not Search Engines! I agree with Cjeoffroi and Dodger. Why write a blog if you are making it for a search engine? Overall you won't get much traffic and it won't be quality traffic and in the long run you will not make money. You need people to follow your blog. If they don't follow it you won't get return traffic and referral traffic, etc. Also eventually Google will see what you are doing and your site rank will go down. You can't consistently write for search engines. Anyways - that's my 2 cents
I highly doubt the sincerity of your answer. This coming from a guy who is actively promoting automated indexing and comment spamming tools. It is not a stretch to believe that you are in the other camp -- splogs.
Surely the answer here is a short blog introduction which hits on the key aspects of the article on the home page with a "read more" link at the bottom? This would allow people to see what its about straight away and then decide if they want to read more or not. Also it would allow for many blog introductions to be on the same page, and the user to choose which they want to read more on.
What does this have to do with a short blog post? You are thinking of excerpts vs. full summary on an archive or home page. That is not what this thread is about.
As far as I think shorter posts are much better than the longer posts. Time is money and you shouldn't waste. Lengthy posts not only wastes your time but it also wastes readers time.