Did you know there was an sweet spot for blog post length? It’s approx 300ish words according to my research.
So how do you count your words? As I’ve said many times before don’t use Word to type your blog posts, so that means using Word’s count facility is out of the question. So what should you do?
Well when you are next writing a post on your blog, glance to the right just under the SAVE and PUBLISH buttons is a handy little word count gem built straight into the core of WordPress. Keep typing and watch the little counter increment every few seconds.
September 21st, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Arrrgh! I have been struggling with counting my words for ages, I have been copying my post out and pasting into a text editor for almost a year now. How the hell didn’t I spot that before?
Your blog is without doubt the most useful pocket of info I have ever found.
I could kick myself for not spotting this!
J
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Any particular reason you settled on the 300 word mark David?
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Kenny, I did a search in google for: ‘optimum blog post word count’ and then trawled the results. I then took a unscientific average of what people were saying and came up with approx 300ish.
It seems that a short but substantial post is preferred by blog readers as it doesn’t take up too much time but still delivers the goods.
Thanks for the comments
Ian
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
i often find its difficult to gauge how long a post should be so i will try your recommendation
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:13 am
What version of WP is this in? I can’t find it in mine, but I could definitely use it.
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:14 am
Hi Jill, I don’t have any ‘old’ blogs as I do the rounds and update them as soon as a new version is released, but as far as I know it’s been a feature for a long time. My WP version is 2.6.2 currently.
If you are struggling with updates (and I recommend that you do update WordPress) then can I suggest these two plugins:
A back up plugin called WordPress Database Backup because you should always back up before an update – and InstantUpgrade to automate the upgrade for you. This last plugin is a beta version which mean it might be unstable, however I have had no problems on all the blogs I’ve used it on.
Hope that helps
Ian
April 19th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
hi, this is a handy feature. I was curious if there is any way of counting all the words written on a blog? A sum total of all the posts on the blog? It will be of great help if you can shed some light on this.
Thanks
N
April 19th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Hi, I haven’t seen this feature, even in the upgraded WP admin. But I bet there is a plugin that will do the very thing you are after!
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Thanks for the information. I was just recently trying to figure out my word count when I found this post. Very cool.
Mike T.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Hi Mike – not sure what version of WP you are running but as of 2.7 the word count has now moved to the bottom grey bar of the input window.
Ian