It’s a remarkable accomplishment when people are genuinely interested in your website. But what makes it successful? The answer is content! Your website needs valuable and exciting content to gain a loyal audience.
Content is a prime factor that makes or breaks a website. Internet users turn to your content to find useful information about your brand. It further helps you to make a decision that is valuable for your business goals.
Generally, content is categorised in two forms: short or long form. While short-form content seems more suitable for people with a short attention span – most users are inclined towards long-form content.
This type of content brings in more results and unlocks the opportunity to build your brand’s authority. Consequently, it allows you to grow your business faster!
Hold on! That’s not all! Creating long-form content has several other benefits.
This article will help you understand long-form content and how you can expect benefits by creating it for your brand’s success.
What is Long-Form Content?
If you go on the internet, you will find countless definitions of long-form content. Still, the content length is debatable! There are different theories and no set-in-stone rules about what qualifies as long-form content.
Some people consider articles ranging between 700 and 2000 words of long-form pieces. Whereas other claims that long-form content can exceed 7500 words. However, according to Forbes, some experts generally agree that word count lies between 1,200 and 2,000 words in long-form content and offers critical and insightful information.
Moreover, long-form articles or content are more comprehensive than standard ones. They explore all sides of an issue rather than tackling multiple topics or being brief. They provide readers with a host of new information and successfully educate and engage the audience.
Thus, the best way to approach long-form content is not to focus on the number of words but on the value and information available instead.
Examples of Long-Form Content
Knowing the different types and examples is mandatory for choosing the best one according to your industry. Here are several long-form content examples, including (but not limited to):
- E-books
- Case studies
- Roundups and reviews
- Datasheets or brochures
- Annually posted reviews
- White paper
- Detailed blog posts
- Definitive guides
- Web pages like FAQs, testimonials, and term glossaries
- Topic guides, how-to posts, tutorials, and other educational resources, including webinars.
Creating Long-Form Content Can Benefit You in Many Ways
Now you have understood what long-form content is. Let’s explore the advantages!
- Improves SEO Rankings
When the content is long and contains sufficient information, you can easily target a range of your industry-related keywords and generate organic traffic.
The more words in your content, the more readily you may add additional keywords that will eventually rank. Of course, to rank high on these keywords, you must make your website content SEO-friendly with valuable keywords.
SEO is an essential part of creating long-form content for your website. It helps the content reach out to several people by improving the rank of your blog on google.
There are always more chances for longer writing pieces to often appear first in search results than articles with less word count. Google and many other search engines always show more detailed content and valuable information on the initial pages, enabling you for more clicks.
- Builds Trust in Your Business
People love to do business with reliable brands and companies. When you have clear, detailed, and satisfying answers on the website, the readers will trust you in the next time of need. You put value, time, and effort into helping them in the best way. As a result, they return this value in the form of leads and conversions.
Long-form content also offers a more significant opportunity to showcase your expertise in the ever-so-competitive market. Building authority helps you gain trust and credibility from your visitors, buyers, and prospects.
- Helps You Get Reviews
Every business owner might have wondered what the audience thinks about his products and services. For this purpose, feedback and reviews help the most.
Customers leave honest comments on your services every time they visit if you satisfy their needs, clear their queries, and provide high-quality information. Long-form content provides readers with in-depth knowledge of a specific topic and keeps them engaged.
Besides that, when long-form pieces on your blog give accurate answers, the readers may spend more time reading the content deeply. Readers will also give reviews, which will further help you improve your products and services.
- Increases Time On-site
Keep this in mind when your content is valuable, well-researched, and exhaustive, it will grab more eyeballs. This is one of the amazing benefits of creating long-form pieces.
Furthermore, when a person needs a complete guide on a topic, they watch a full video or read the article thoroughly. It means that people will spend more time on your site. As a result, your website will have a lower bounce rate.
The longer customers or readers spend on your page before returning to SERPs, the higher the value your page delivers to online visitors. Thus, a high dwell time is good for your SEO.
Also, it would be constructive if the content is executed correctly and the creator can retain the viewer/reader until the end. Increased time on-site can help search engine optimization and give better statistics.
Ultimately, your business can benefit as people will be more attracted to your brand and therefore are more likely to buy from your site.
For instance, a long video on YouTube will get a higher retention rate than a short video. This will cause an increase in revenue. Also, the algorithm will promote the video that has more retention rate. Similarly, long-form articles will get more on-site time.
- Gets Greater Social Media Recognition
Shorter content gets fewer shares on social media than longer content or articles. This derives from the trust you gain with your readers by providing them with sufficient knowledge. Besides that, there is a connection between SEO and social media. In general, there are multiple ways in which social media boosts your SEO rankings.
Moreover, the long-form pieces allow you to take a reader from easy to advanced material on a topic within just one post. It enables you to gather their queries in one place without clicking on another resource or site.
Providing that kind of value makes users happy. It inspires them to share the content with other users on social media.
Also, when the content has enough information and is easy to share, it helps the business or brand reach a broader and newer audience. People are likely to link to your resource in their articles.
But make sure you add multiple high-quality visuals in your posts. With the help of these pictures, you can make detailed blog posts and articles more enticing. Pictures capture the attention, make the content understandable and keep the readers engaged. This is a great benefit of publishing long-form content as it is crucial due to the increasing competition.
- More Chances of Getting Sponsors
Another benefit of creating long-form pieces is you get sponsors.
Insightful content on the site helps you get proliferated viewer retention, which further improves overall statistics. Thus, you can collaborate with more prominent sponsors since you have gained more statistics.
For instance, podcasts are long-form content, so they have better viewer retention. This allows businesses to work with more big and well-known brands.
- Earns More Backlinks
Data shows a direct correlation between backlinks and the content length that a post receives from other sites. If you build quality backlinks to your website, then you probably already know that higher backlinks on a page help it rank better on search engines and generate more traffic.
If your content includes helpful information, it is more likely to get noticed by other writers. And if they find it useful, they will reference your material within their content. This will give your content more organic links and, eventually – more exposure.
- Helps CEOs Shape Their Business
Business leaders and CEOS must show their personalities. For this purpose, long-form content assists effectively as the leaders and CEOS can express their visions, plans, thoughts, and ideas for the business or brands.
Further, this helps them to improve their reputation among the workers and employees. Also, when their presence is strong, the company becomes more robust. This noticeable change attracts more customers and helps businesses grow.
- Improves Your Thought Leadership
The last benefit of creating long-form pieces from our list is showcasing your expertise. Also, there is nothing better than elaborating on a subject to show your abilities and skills.
When your potential leads look for the answers online, you want to compete in bringing accurate and helpful information. Furthermore, if the topic is complicated, then short-form content will not suffice.
Therefore, you can showcase your knowledge on a particular subject by implementing long-form content in your marketing strategy. Further, this increases your thought leadership, boosts returning visitors, and eventually aids your lead-generation campaigns.
Bottom Line
The great thing about investing your time, efforts, and resources into producing top-notch-quality and helpful long-form content is that it has the potential for impressive returns.
An exceptional write-up won’t just help you wow the people who land on a business site or blog. You will reap long-form benefits for your business and website if you consistently deliver valuable, insightful, and original write-ups.
Thus, we produced this massive guide on the incredible benefits of creating long-form content. Long-form content is always authoritative and evergreen; don’t be afraid to try long-form pieces!