When you begin writing an article for the Internet, one of the first things you contemplate on is: how long should my article be? Your article should have an optimal length. If it is too short, then you will not be able to explain much about the topic; if it is too long, then it may not hold the viewers' interests. Therefore, you must carefully decide how big you want your article to turn out to be.

Writing for the Internet is quite different from writing for the print media. When you are writing for books, magazines, newspapers, etc. you are more interesting in getting facts across, putting your own point of view and even using a bit of flowery language. But this is not done on websites. Here you have a word count to work up to. Your article must adhere to some minimum and maximum count of words, which is generally pre-decided by the website owner. This would be based on the amount of web space the owner has purchased and the amount of total matter they wish to put on their website.

Hence, you as a content writer for websites are bound. You have only so many words to put your article in. So, how many words are enough? Let me answer specifically – 400 to 600 words. Yes, that is the ideal length web articles must have. Anything less than 400 words would be lacking in information and hence useless to the reader. Or, you may have space to just write the bare facts without getting to put in any of your own perspective at all. If you are writing more than 600 words, then it might prove too boring a read for the reader.

The average person who uses the Internet can be categorized as a surfer. Surfers on the Internet do not want education they just want information. Any article writer worth their salt must keep this in mind. Statistics have shown that the average Internet user does not spend more than 30 seconds per article they click. If that is the case, then the word count of between 400 and 600 fits perfectly. It would be enough to provide the information the reader wants, and also to hold their interest for the entire length of the article.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. If your article is just a post on a blog, then it can be well below 400 words. On a blog post, you must not hog the page it is simple blog ethic. In that case, you must try to say what you want to within 150 to 200 words, not more. Only if you have something really illuminating to say, must you elaborate. You must think beforehand if the information you are providing on the blog is really substantial to take up space on that page or not.

On the other hand, if you are writing an article on a website that purports to be like an encyclopedia, then you have the liberty to go much beyond 600 words. Encyclopedia owners would even accept articles of 1500 to 2000 words, since they would want all possible information on the article. When you are writing such a long article, it is better to splice the article into several sub-headings so that it becomes easy to read. Long-winding paragraphs are strictly no-no.

Word count is of paramount importance when you are writing for the Internet. There is good reason for that. Search engines like Google use the word count to calculate the overall keyword density in an article. The higher is the keyword density; the better is the chance of the article showing in the search results of Google. Hence, it is vital that you stick to a specific limit and use the keyword the adequate number of times. Generally, you must use the keyword three to four times for every 400 words you write.

When you write on the Internet, it is not just quality that matters; it is quality coupled with quantity. You are a good writer only if you are able to express what you need to say in the number of words the website owner needs.