Get to the point with the fewest words. Cut your online word count to around 50 per cent of the words you’d use while writing for print.

That’s just what your online readers prefer. Every word puts a cognitive strain on the brain of your reader. They have to read and understand the meaning of each word in the sense of your sentence. Save them from a waste of energy by removing needless words.

If you’re writing in-depth on a topic, you’re necessarily going to write a long article. The principle here is to delete needless terms, regardless of the length of your article or tweet.

It takes time to be succinct

Writing concisely takes more time than just writing whatever comes to your head. It’s sort of like the art of writing letters. Find a way to get about the argument in as few words as you can.

How to reduce the number of terms

Next, write your article or post without thinking about the word count. Don’t be self-critical – it’s important not to obstruct the flow when you have a creative idea. When you finish, check your article to make it concise:-

• Revise complex sentences to make them easier, more concise and shorter.
• Delete redundant terms and phrases
• Stop repetitive terms and phrases like the City of Chicago, the month of June, the entire community (the group is the whole group)

Useful Software

There are tools to help you do this such as Grammarly and Hemingwayapp. Grammarly app picks up spelling mistakes as well as grammatical errors. You can use the Hemingway app online free of charge by pasting your content over the sample text. This app is going to:-

• Highlight the complex sentences that require revision
• Highlight needless terms
• Provide a count of words
• Create suggestions as you type in

This app is based on an automated formula. There is no definition of the poetic licence or the need to invoke feelings in your readers. There will be occasions when you want to circumvent his advice.

Word count – minimum recommended for search engines

There is a minimum of 300 words recommended for Google and other search engines – some say 500. Some claim you’re not likely to perform well in search engine results if your article is less than 300 words long.

Posts that cover an in-depth subject and are as long as 2,000 words are said to rank higher in search engines if they are rich inappropriate keyword phrases.

At the end of the day, I think it’s best to write for your audience and not for Google and other search engines.

The secret is revision, revision, revision.

You can find ways to enhance your content every time you come back to review your content, even years after you first wrote it.