149: Series of Blog Posts vs Long Blog Posts – Which is Better?

The Pros and Cons of Long Posts Today, we have a question from Emma Cameron.  “Hi Darren, I love your podcast! I found your 7 day intensive blogging series very helpful, and it led me to write a post I might never have gotten around to otherwise. In answering my most frequently asked question, which is 'What is Art Therapy'? This has turned into an incredibly long post which covers things which are not easily found elsewhere online. I have a question for you: is it better to leave it as a single, very long, authoritative and useful evergreen post, or should I split it up into several shorter posts? Which of those would be better for getting my website seen by more people, ranking higher in Google etc?” In Today’s Episode the Pros and Cons of Long Posts Writing a long post - Pros Readers get all of the information on one post It can increase reader satisfaction They can be quite comprehensive and authoritative Long posts get shared a lot Long posts can rank well in Google - possibly because of increased links or a ranking preference Writing a long post - Cons Long form content takes a lot of effort to research and write Unless you are an amazing writer, some of the readers may not get all the way through it Can be draining to the author when it comes to ideas for the long run Series of posts - Pros More posts to sustain you over time SEO advantage - the more focused your posts are there can be SEO advantages - A series of posts all linked to each other may rank for smaller key phrases Interconnected posts can help with SEO - Internal links A series can build momentum and give your readers a sense of anticipation A series may help build subscriber count Can help build more page views - good for stats A series may motivate a blogger to write more Can be used like a free course for your readers Series of posts - Cons Some readers will prefer to get it all at once Can sidetrack your whole blog for a bit Another option is maybe you can do both. Run a series, then compose all of it into a particular piece of content. This content can be used for an optin form or even sold as a PDF version. Further Resources on the Pros and Cons of Long Posts ProBlogger Event: Live Ticket ProBlogger Event: Virtual Ticket 7 Days to Get Your Blogging Groove Back 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view This week, I received a great email, a lovely email from Emma, one of our listeners of the podcast who asked me this question. She wrote, “Hi Darren, I love your podcast! I found your seven day intensive blogging series very helpful, and it led me to write a post I might never have gotten around to otherwise. In answering my most frequently asked question, which is 'What is Art Therapy?’ this has turned into an incredibly long post which covers things which are not easily found elsewhere online. I have a question for you: is it better to leave it as a single, very long, authoritative and useful evergreen post, or should I split it up into several shorter posts? Which of these would be better for getting my website seen by more people, ranking higher in Google?” Great question Emma, and thanks for listening. I really do love that you enjoyed the Blogging Groove Challenge. I had a lot of very positive feedback and still can see in the Facebook group a lot of people still working through those seven challenges. This is a great question and I do have some thoughts on the topic and it’s one that I think bloggers should really ponder because there’s many times where it probably does make sense to write a long post and there’s some times where a series makes more sense too. I want to give you some thoughts on how to make that decision. Before I get into that,