How Long Should Your Solar Blog Posts Be?

Because many copywriters in the solar industry charge per hour, per word, or per page, this is a fairly popular question.

As a marketer within a solar energy company, you don’t want to spend more money than you have to – and the money you do spend needs to generate results.

So how long should a blog post be?

Before answering that, you must first determine what the ultimate goal of your blog post is.

Broadly speaking, there are 3 main types of blog posts – at least in the corporate world.

1. Brief Announcements or Tidbits.

Usually 100-300 words, you should use these to update your readers on a new feature or upcoming event.

Think of them as an FYI for your audience.

Because really short solar blog posts are typically spur of the moment, they’re not outsourced very often, and they don’t carry much SEO value. I sometimes receive requests for these, but most clients simply handle them in-house.

2. Tips, Lists, How To, What Is?, Did you Know?, etc.

From 300-1200 words, these types of blogs are what we usually think of when we imagine a standard post. They can have a lot of SEO value when they include the right types of keywords and formatting.

I’ve read countless SEO gurus who claim that 300 words is the bare minimum you should budget for a blog post of this type. I don’t know if it matters that much, but 300 words has become the standard. Rarely do I write blog posts shorter than this.

3. Anchor Pieces

1000 words on up, anchor pieces are reserved for those really important subjects that need a lot of clarification and explanation.

In the solar world, anchor pieces are ideal for diving into really technical topics, whether you’re talking about PV technology or green legislation.

They can be a pain to write, but they’re also great at driving traffic – a lot of traffic – for a long time. Anchor pieces have tremendous SEO value when executed correctly.

Extremely informative and valuable, anchor pieces often become downloadable e-books or PDFs in their own right. Other times, the copywriter will break up an anchor piece into several pages with “Next” and “Previous” buttons to guide the reader.

What Is the Ideal Length for Your Budget?

If you write your own blogs, the above length guidelines are exactly that – guidelines. Time is the only cost involved, so you can write as little or as much as you want.

But if you’re outsourcing your projects to a freelance solar blogger, you want to receive the most bang for your buck, right?

After all, if SEO is your primary goal and you’re paying by the word, aren’t two 300-word blogs better than one 600-word blog?

Yes and no.

In strictly SEO terms, having two 300-word posts probably will drive more traffic to your site than having one 600-word post (usually). But SEO is only half the battle. You also need to engage and potentially convert that traffic.

Solar SEO is extremely important. Believe me. But the message and presentation are more important. The focus should be on quality and not length.

In recent years, Google has increasingly encouraged marketers, copywriters, and SEO consultants to focus more on valuable content than on SEO guidelines. If you write enough informative content that helps people solve their problems, you’ll naturally rise up to the top… regardless of the length.

In other words, write for people – not for search engines. Make sure the length of each blog post is suited for the reader.