The benefits of long-form content are often overlooked by bloggers because of a pure lack of awareness. Increasingly, over the years, long-form content has become the holy grail for bloggers and search engines.
Creating long-form content is laborious work. That’s why bloggers are constantly looking for easier solutions and alternatives.
That’s also why, since the early days of blogging, statistics have been piling up about ideal blog lengths.
so what’s the popular question about the content?
You guessed it…
“Do we create long detailed posts or short ones?”
The answer is not that simple, because there’s a catch.
Guess what?
Reader attention spans are shrinking. Online readers are impatient and want to read less.
Yet, surprisingly longer posts seem to rank higher on search engines.
What a strange contradiction.
Isn’t that quizzical?
That’s what we’ll try and understand in this post. And also the benefits of long-form content.
The fact is, that despite the apparent contradiction, there are a couple of reasons why longer posts rank better.
And if you understand the reasons behind long, wordy posts, I’m sure you’ll also grab some of their benefits.
One of the consistent observations by SEO wizards is that longer content grabs higher user-engagement and more backlinks.
Now that’s a huge payoff.
And that’s not all. There’s much more to these advantages.
But before going into the benefits of long-form content, what is long-form content?
Let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
- Is Long-Form Content Only About Length ?
- Why Long-form And Not Short-form?
Is Long-Form Content Only About Length ?
Long-form content is that which is detailed, long, and delivers epic value.
It offers a ton of information and massive in-depth insight into a subject.
In the initial days, it was considered that any content above 300 words qualified for long-form. But today this count has increased almost 10X.
Effectively, this kind of content is definitely that – L.O.N.G!
Matter of fact, a word count anywhere between 2000 and 2500 words is a commonly accepted long-form content.
However, word count itself is not a rigid definition of long-form content.
Before any word count starts concerning you, your content firstly has to be comprehensive and contextual.
Neil Patel of neilpatel.com says that long-form content should effectively have three attributes:-
✔It should be deep.
✔Must be comprehensive.
✔It should be keyword focussed.
But I would go onto add that it should also convey the famous “ E-A-T” aspects
▪Authority
▪Trustworthiness
In spite of these demanding factors at the center, today we have long-form content that ranges anywhere from 3000 to 10000 words!
Can you imagine writing 10000-word posts, day after day?
It’s tedious-serious business, to say the least!
And if it’s not done right, then creating such gargantuan content amounts to nothing. You’re unlikely to gain any benefits of long-form content.
What a sheer waste of time.
But for the saving grace of the factors mentioned above.
Yet, for obvious reasons, we’re not studying content creation methods in this post. We only want to grab the benefits of long-form content.
Still, its possible you’re wondering “what’s the easier alternative to long-form content?”
It’s only natural that most content creators are stumped by this dilemma between the two forms
So what’s the solution?
We’ll get to that. But before that ….
Lets take a brief look at the dilemma between long-form and short- form content.
Why Long-form And Not Short-form?
Well firstly, there aren’t any strict delineations between long-form and short-form content, based on the word count alone.
But it’s a commonly accepted fact that any content up to 1200 words is the short form. And anything that’s 2000 words and beyond, belongs to the category of long-form content.
Still ( I’m repeating myself ) word count alone doesn’t qualify.
What will eventually save you is depth, comprehensive content and E-A-T (expertise, authority,trust).
I’ve said this before, and you just can’t miss it…
A lot of readers are simply not into long-form content. They are in a hurry for quick, bite-sized information to run along with.
And if your readers are too absorbed by short-form stuff like Twitter or Buzzfeed then they won’t read your long, detailed posts.
Whatever you may do.
But statistics tell you that long form content far outranks short form, and that it’s even good for your long term success.
Now that’s a dilemma. Isn’t it?
What do you do?
In such situations, all you do is test out your content lengths against audience engagement.
It’s possible that unwittingly you’re pandering to an audience that may be hooked to short-form content.
That’s why despite your epic content you may not be making great progress. Hence you won’t get the sought-after benefits of long-form content. So the solution lies in listening to what your tests tell you.
But that’s not all.
You can do a bit more to deal with the situation….
Resolve That Content Dilemma
While we cannot have a one-size-fits-all strategy for content, there are three aspects that help you decide better; user intent, target audience, and marketing objectives.
User Intent .
It very essential to ask why the user has landed on your site.
What is the reader’s keyword intent ?
In fact, the keyword intent of your readers reveals an immense lot.
At the very least you will be able to answer this…
Is it possible to convert with short-form content itself? Or can you succeed with long form content?
Target audience.
Why is target audience important?
Here’s why.
They’re the ones for whom you’re creating content. Period.
So you would serve yourself well to do some target audience research .
What does that involve?
Well, you simply examine a few stats and demographics of your target audience. What are their educational and professional backgrounds?
Are they tech- savvy folks, who’re into short-from media like Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter?
Or are they in positions of long-term decision making? Do they prefer a detailed evaluation?
Also, make sure you outsmart the competitors in your choice of content types
Marketing Objectives.
If your goal is to enhance brand awareness quickly, then short-form content will do well.
But if you want long term customers to revert to you for recurring needs, then long-form content is the way to go. Eventually, you will see steady benefits of long-form content coming in.
Looks like some pretty uphill work, but bear with me.
To clear the fog, let’s take a peek at some examples of long-from content first.
Examples of Long-form Content
So far we’ve gone over this alread