“Great content is the best sales tool in the entire world.” – Marcus Sheridan
Content marketing is ruling the world of marketing. Today, with the declining attention spans of people, content marketers are focusing on creating short-form content. But, in this busy world where most of us have short attention spans, long-form content is still valuable. Now, you may wonder if most of us have short attention spans and don’t have the patience to go through long-form content, then what makes it valuable?
The answer is ‘SEO’. When it comes to SEO, long-form content has unfathomable advantages. When your content ranks on the first page of Google, or you land among one of the top results, even if your content is long, readers will click on your blogs or articles, directly move to the section they find valuable, pick up treasures of helpful information and satiate their knowledge pangs. Hence, you should completely direct your focus to generate captivating short-form content. You should create a fine balance between short-form and long-form content.
Today, in this blog, we will explore in-depth why you should focus on long-form content.
5 Astounding SEO Benefits of Long-form Articles and Blogs
Excellent Keyword Optimization:
Everyone knows that Google loves keyword-optimized content. Long-form content enables better keyword optimization. You can use all appropriate keywords and LSIs in your long-form content. This way, you enhance your chances of landing on the first page of Google and become more accessible to readers. Otherwise, if you don’t rank well on Google, you are almost lost and your audience cannot find you.
So, keyword optimization is a must, and as long-form content enables better keyword optimization, you should create long-form content. But, remember only embedding keywords in your content or being keyword-focused is not the thing. Your content should be valuable to your readers. Maintain a delicate balance between keyword optimization and offering value, and you become more likely to top search engine rankings and reach your audience. Even if you prefer to use infographics and visually appealing images for captivating the hearts of your audience, you should try not to use them alone. Create long-form content and include infographics and other visually appealing elements along.
By doing so, you reap double benefits. You show Google that your content is more valuable than all others because it has multiple elements involved. Google is best at understanding content but it is not as good at understanding images and infographics. When both these elements are combined, you reap the best results. So, even if you prefer images, infographics, and other short-form content, you can always combine them with long-form content and reap the best results.
Longer visitor engagement:
When you come across something interesting to read, what happens? You get so immersed in the activity of reading that time flies and you don’t even realize that you have been sitting there reading for so long. That’s the magic of interesting content.
Now, imagine what will happen if you create intriguing long-form content that your readers can’t stop reading once they begin to read? You’ll have longer visitor engagement which will give the search engines an indication that your content contains valuable information and hence, your SEO ranking will witness a significant boost.
So, interesting long-form content promotes longer visitor engagement and helps you boost your rankings on Google. This is another big benefit of long-form content when it comes to SEO optimization.
Help you with link building:
Link building is one of the major goals of SEO. After all, link building helps build website authority. Long-form content works the best when it comes to link building. There are multitudinous places where you can incorporate links according to suitability.
When you write short-form content, you can’t put masses of links in it. Why is that so? This is because it makes your content seem as though it was created only for the purpose of link-building. This is disheartening for many guest posting websites. Consequently, your content gets rejected. But, it’s not the same with long-form content. You can embed multitudinous links and it still doesn’t seem like link-stuffing.
This way, long-form content helps you with link-building. However, this doesn’t mean that you can add any links to your blog or article. That’s not the case. The links have to be appropriate. If you don’t embed appropriate links the website you aspire to blog for might reject your content due to irrelevant links.
Long-form content is usually evergreen and can be regularly updated:
One of the most beautiful aspects of long-form content is that if you choose the topic wisely, it is evergreen. Yes, it is. Long-form content is easy to upgrade too. In such scenarios, it is essential to embrace change management and hop on the trend of changing strategies and tactics of SEO.
There are sections that you never have to change while there are some areas where you can upgrade things. This implies that you can utilize the same piece of content over and over which saves you time and effort. Hence, long-form content can keep your SEO game going without much effort.
Cater to different segments
Content that aligns with the thought process or inclinations of only a particular segment of people or readers is short-lived. Why is that so? This is simply because such content connects with only one group of like-minded people. Usually, short-form content only accommodates one perspective on things due to its short nature.
Thus, it can only attract a limited segment of the audience. Whereas, long-form content can accommodate diverse segments of the audience by accommodating different perspectives. You don’t have to be inclined towards one perspective in particular. Let your audience know all the perspectives that you can present and leave the rest to them.
Let them enjoy their autonomy and form their own conclusions. By being suitable for multiple types of readers, long-form content makes you accessible to a broader group of readers.
Now that we have explored the benefits of long-form content, let’s proceed to discuss how to create captivating long-form content. If your blogs aren’t captivating, your readers won’t read them till the end. Hence, it is crucial for you to create posts that your readers can’t stop reading once they begin to read.
How to write captivating long-form content:
Offer value to your readers:
is the basic thing. You should offer value to your readers. Whatever topic you choose to write on, conduct in-depth research. Gain some expertise in it and write things of practical value. Don’t just skirt around the subject, go into it deeply and serve your readers with valuable gems to cherish.
Every reader who clicks on your blog should dive into valuable information. That’s when your content becomes captivating. If you succeed at delivering high quality content to your readers, many of them might also share it on their social media accounts. This way, you might also get authentic content publicity. So, offer value to your readers and that’s your way forward to succeeding at long-form content SEO.
Form your paragraphs incomprehensible sections:
There is no fun in writing if your readers can’t understand what you have served them. They’ll click on your blog, read a few lines, get frustrated and go away planning not to ever return back.
That’s the level of frustration readers experience when they can’t comprehend your content. If you aspire to captivate the hearts of your readers through your long-form content, you should write intelligibly with strategic planning. Moreover, you should also segment your content into comprehensible sections.
Why segmenting? Long-form content requires segmenting because the white space you offer, the easier your readers can read your content. When eyes are comfortable, the readers are more likely to stay and read your blog till the end.
Keep a conversational tone:
To keep your readers engaged, it is best to keep a conversational tone. When a blog or article is highly technical, it becomes hard to maintain your focus. But, a lighthearted conversational tone keeps the readers interested in your blog. Things don’t seem monotonous to them. So, you should keep the tone conversational. Write as if you are sitting with your readers and talking to them.
Write an engaging introduction:
Your blog or article’s introduction is your first impression on your readers. If the introduction isn’t catchy, you have lost the game right in the beginning. Given that, your article’s introduction should be catchy. Write it in the best possible manner. Include facts, figures, and compelling examples.
Make every word worth reading. If your introduction does the magic on your readers, then you’ll see them reading your blog till the end. No way should you focus more on the paragraphs in the body of the blog or article. Focusing on those paragraphs is important but compromising with the introduction is not. So, keep the introduction your priority in all pieces of content.
Include visual elements to make things exciting:
Long-form content performs well when it comes to SEO. But, sometimes it can be overwhelming for the readers to see lots of sentences, and paragraphs lined up. Then what should you do? Include visual elements to make things exciting. After every few lines, you should include an image or two to give your readers a break from the continuous saga of words, sentences, and paragraphs.
As discussed in the initial section of the blog, long-form content is highly beneficial from an SEO perspective. Despite people having short attention spans today, long-form content works well in many circumstances. If your content is valuable, it doesn’t matter if it’s long, your readers will read it to the end. Long-form content also enables you to include more backlinks, and keywords, thus helping you rank better on Google.
Further, to avail all the benefits of long-form content it is essential for you to make it captivating. The second section of the blog includes tips to make your content compelling. Do consider them while generating a post next time. Doesn’t matter whether you are posting on your company’s website or on some other website as a guest blogger, you should try to utilize these tips. Once you begin implementing them, you’ll see tremendous results for yourself as these are tried and tested tips. Now, wish you All the Best and immense success in your SEO endeavors.
