Your article should not be too longer or too shorter if you write it based on SEO. You can write your article within 500-600 words. It would be a nice one really.
PLEASE keep discussions of SEO out of this forum! If you write an article for your visitors, according to the SEO Gospel written by Google in their webmasters guidelines, your page will be on-page optimized and search engine ready.
I personally think 600-800 is best, but it really depends on what you’re writing about too. Have to remember a lot of users have a short attention span, so unless the material is engaging, is good to not go overboard, I think.
I totaly agree! Web writing is to contribute to the web community and try to make it a better place for everyone. If someone is obsessed in getting backlinks then he will never write good content.
I’ll add my vote to that.
Mike
Length doesn’t really matter as long as it is rich with information, and it is useful.
Don’t go rambling on about one particular point within an article for too long; that will drives readers away.
Just play around with it for a while to get a feel for what you think fits best.
Good luck. 
Well, I personally don’t care about numbers. I have some short articles and some 1000+ words. Because they needed each and every word
I’d be more preoccupied with making it original, useful, interesting, than counting words.
heh, good one
From SEO point of view, not shorter than 300 words. If you write MUCH longer, make sure you make the most important points (full of keywords relating to your title) withing the first/second paragraph.
Current search engine algorithms can detect the topic of content in as little as 200 words. However, this forum is for the discussion of web content for the living, not for machines. If you wish to discuss SEO, please do it in the Internet Marketing forum.
Don’t know how SEO came up but I’ll ignore it and focus on the original question.
Many people have effectively said keep it as short as possible, but no shorter than necessary - while this is god and true advice its pretty hard to measure.
Generally, if you cap over 500 words you might want to start considering headings and whatnot. SEO does come into this, but really it’s just about signalling to your readers whats coming up.
A big block of 500+ words without headers or images is pretty intimidating and will turn a lot of readers off. Let them see what’s coming in a quick scan of the headers.
Aside from that - no limit, no minimum, so go nuts.
If you are writing for the web visitor, you’d better start considering headings, bulleted lists, short paragraphs and clickable text links throughout your content no matter how many words you intend to write.
Honestly, beginning a piece with a word count in mind is counter-productive. In this, I totally agree with Dojo’s post (#27). What you need to do is cover your topic in a concise manner that will keep your reader’s attention.
A good idea before you start writing is to take a crash course in how readers read on the web:
- From Jacob Neilson, the guru of web writing
- From Slate Magazine: How we read online
- from UX Myths: debunkers of user experience misconceptions
500 words is typically the minimum, 750 is the minimum on certain sites, and 1000 or more words is generally leaning towards the good quality articles.
It really depends on different factors. I have written articles that are under 300 words. I have also written articles that are over 1000 words on my blog. It depends on what you are talking about. You just want to keep it interesting. It is better to write a shorter, yet meaningful article that gets the point across than a long article full of fluff.
Linda, thanks for those links. I’ve been writing for decades now, but the world has changed and writers need to adapt to the changes.
Glad you found them useful. The one from Neilson is quite old, but I don’t think the way the eye scans the page changes much with trends. The other two articles are more current and I found the second very well written, adding a good sense of humor to a dry subject.
Off Topic:
The best advice I ever got was from a fellow co-worker. When asked how long he was in the real estate business his reply was, “I’ve been in this business long enough to know that if I’m in it for another 20 years, I’ll still have something to learn.”
Content length is important in particular for web readers. More and more the attention span of many is diminishing. If you haven’t said what needs to be said in 500 words or less than you stand the risk of losing your reader. If you are writing for marketing purposes then you need to get your point across quickly. A little humor can help maintain an article’s momentum if you are going for something longer.
I like to publish articles no shorter than 350 words or 2000 characters, whichever is less. I publish longer sometimes when appropriate.
It may very depending on how you are going to manipulate the spaces of you web page. What ever it be the lengths the page must be cover fully with contents and contents may be text or image or videos. Instead of making the page with only text or only image or with only videos it is preferred to make it hybrid. Then the text length does not need much it may vary 300-600 words.