Amount of Content Per Page

[vangogh]

One thing that can happen with longer posts is people are likely to think more work went into the post and because of that, think the post likely better and perhaps more accurate than a shorter post. I'm not saying longer posts are necessarily better, but I think they add to the impression that the post might be better.

When you encounter a long book that's very dense and maybe has one paragraph per page, you may not read it because it seems like too much work on your part. That extra work can often make you think the book is likely an important one, because it requires so much work on your part.

Longer posts do tend to get more links and bookmarks. Your typical linkbait post is usually longer than the typical non-linkbait post.

[billbenson]

For me, when I see a long post that looks like it interests me, I tend to bookmark it to read later. Frequently later never comes. In fact if VG or someone posts here a link to a blog post he likes and a summary, I'm likely to read his summary and only scan the actual post.

[vangogh]

We all do that. I often bookmark posts that I know I won't ready for awhile, but I'm bookmarking them so I can tag them to find them later. I may for example have a dozen posts bookmarked right now about some particular feature in WordPress. I don't need to read any of them now, but at some point I'll be working on that feature. I'll quickly find what I've bookmarked and spend an hour or two learn something new that enables me to continue with what I was working on.

As a site owner maybe that post didn't get read, but if enough people bookmark it then it likely is helping drive more traffic to your site.