Gone are the days of short-form writing, here are the days of long-form content. But why is shorter content less effective? Let's find out why long-form content is king now.
Defining Long-Form Content
It sounds obvious, but long-form content is just longer pieces of writing. Right? Well, yes, but do you know how much you need to write to qualify as a long-form piece? You are in the right place to answer that questions.
Typically, search engines like Google won't care for your content in terms of ranking if it's below 500 words. Even then, it may fall into obscurity without ranking and may not even get indexed in some cases. Some people even consider articles and blog posts under 600-700 words to be too short these days for Google's ranking preferences. It's only getting more competitive on search engines, and articles with lower word counts can't compete.
If you're looking to write long-form content, then you're probably looking at anything around 1,200 words per post as a minimum.
There's no reason to stop there though, go all out and aim for over 1,500+ words per article as your own personal minimum.
When it comes to creating the content, consider learning about SEO copywriting techniques, as you'll learn not only how to write at length but how to make each word count. Keywords are key for a reason.
The Simple Benefits
It wasn't too long ago that those within the SEO community believed long-form content would be dead by now. This was mainly due to the rise of social media and the digital age. Twitter, when launched, only allowed for 140 characters at a time.
As such, people believed this was the future of content. For a while, perhaps they were right. Articles with large numbers were dismissed and not commissioned as people assumed no one would want to read 2000+ worded articles on a smartphone.
In the last few years, this perception has changed. Social media has become an ally for publishers; if you don't already have a social media presence for your business, you should consider starting and growing it.
Creating content that is sharable on social media will go a long way in drawing larger audiences and increasing engagement. Social media platforms have started building in ways for larger articles to be viewed before clicking, using titles, subheaders, images and opening lines. They also allow for quicker opening times.
Aside from that, from an SEO perspective, long-form content generally ranks pretty well.
What Google Thinks About Long-Form Content
Google themselves are generally mysterious when it comes to talking about the algorithm; these overlords keep their cards close to their chest. However, the Google webmasters blog hinted that search results with more in-depth articles would be prioritised.
Of course, they still haven't confirmed this, but it's safe to assume that it's true on average.
More Backlinks
Generally speaking, on average, you are more likely to have more backlinks within longer-form content. This is because you can fit them in more naturally and justify them in the best way possible that Google will be happy about. You will earn more backlinks on longer articles because there will be more details to quote from or use as sources for other bloggers, writers, or journalists.
You can also link to more authoritative articles in longer articles to help increase your article authority without overdoing it on lining.
Quality As Well As Quantity
When it comes to SEO, nothing is certain, but you can give yourself a big helping hand by doing what you can. Write not just quantity, but quality too. Long content can still be considered thin by Google's algorithm if it's just a lot of filler and fluff.
Do your research on the topic at hand; Google is smarter than you think, even if you think they are the smartest thing in the universe already. If you're writing repeated content that is simply incorrect, then you will be punished.
Writing for the right platform is important too; Google will know if something is out of place compared to its counterparts. Different topics on various digital mediums may require differing content lengths.
Leverage Long-Form Content Creation
Overall, quality long-form content will significantly help you to improve your search engine optimization to boost your organic Google traffic.
