Why is long form content making waves in content marketing?

Content marketing is an integral part of SEO, and both must work in tandem to provide the best marketing results. Despite being quite different in concept and implementation, the fact remains that SEO and content marketing must complement each other to succeed in online marketing. Therefore, one can safely surmise that SEO cannot do without content marketing, and the opposite is also true. To launch a strong SEO campaign, you must back it with an effective content marketing strategy.

All marketers are aware of the above approach, and as each one tries to outwit others, the task of blending SEO with content marketing is quite challenging. Seeking guidance from a reputed online marketing agency that specializes in SEO can make the task easy. You must make the content easily relatable to the business or brand by giving it a distinct tone and tenor that the audience can quickly recognize and relate to, and you must know which content will resonate with the audience.

Creating high-quality content should be the only goal so that it is relevant to the audience, makes interesting reading, and is well structured. But the question that you must face is about the content length that corresponds to high quality. This leads to another question of whether there is any relation between content quality and its size. The confusion about whether to create long-form content remains because there is no clear-cut answer to it. It all depends on the context and the situation that determines what content length would help users to quench their thirst for information.  But if you pick some of the top-ranking content from the search results, it will reaffirm your faith in long-form content. Long and high-quality content drives more traffic and ranks higher while ensuring more leads, conversions, and revenue.

Long form content

There is no specified length of content that you can use as a yardstick to identify long form content, but any content that exceeds 1200 words can come under the category. However, there might be some people who would like to peg the number at 1500 words to treat it as long-form, but the bottom line is that in-depth content regardless of its length is high-quality content. Such content would explore the topic in more detail and contain actionable information that would certainly be quite elaborate to share maximum information. The depth and dimension of the article and not the word count determine whether it comes under the long-form category.

Long-form content is different from essays and can acquire any form by not depending on text alone. The goal is to create high-quality content by using a mixture of text, infographics, and images to make the content interesting and attractive.  Why long-form content is drawing marketers so much will become clear on understanding its traits and features.

Beneficial for SEO

Despite the debate about what constitutes long-form content, the reality is that it has the power to improve search ranking. There are numerous instances to support the claim that long-form content does a world of good for SEO. A study conducted on 20,000 keywords seen against the average content length where these have been used revealed that the first 10 ranks in Google SERP was occupied by the content of a minimum of 2,000 words.  Going by the exact word count, the top content had 2,416 words, and the tenth content had 2,032 words. The study provides valuable insights, even though it remains inconclusive.

It seems that users are most interested in getting instant answers from search engines; the ground reality is different. Of all the information that people seek, only 10% of information relates to their daily needs, which are available from much detailed content. It points to the fact that users are keen to exploit long-form content, which has compelled Google to introduce rich snippets and knowledge graphs to enable users to pick up the right content.

More conversions

There is no denying that long-form content leads to higher conversions, and marketers are well aware of it. Several businesses have reaped the benefits of long-form content and enjoyed higher conversions. There is no specified length of content that can do the trick. Still, as long as it is attractive in presentation, carries authentic and in-depth information, and makes exciting reading that keeps the audience engaged, it will surely drive conversions. Better engagement translates into lower bounce rates that send positive signals to search engines about superior content quality, which improves the ranking prospects.

Enjoy higher social shares

When any content enjoys wide sharing across social media, it is a sign about its good quality that attracted people so much that they felt like sharing it. The shareability of content is a sign of its goodness that keeps increasing with longer content and demonstrates that longer content enjoys more sharing.  Data collected from a study shows that for a 1,000-word content, the sharing rate is 4,500 times, and it goes up to 8,000 times for 2,000-word content. Although the popularity of memes and videos make us believe in its high potential to go viral, the fact is that long-form content is equally likable to Facebook users. If videos rank first in virality, long-form content comes second to it and stays very close. Despite the rise in mobile users, long-form content is having a field day across the social media platforms.

Quality matters most

Long-form content conveys value to users and a reason for its wide acceptability.As longer articles are focused and comprehensive, its intrinsic value is higher than any short content. The quality of the article makes all the difference, and you cannot write quality articles by restricting its length.  Creating long and well-organized content must be your goal that contains several small sections to sustain the interest of viewers.  The attraction of content is as much in its quality as it is in the method of presentation and the structure that ensures quick grasping. Let the content evolve without looking at the word count until you feel that there is nothing new to add.

Since long-form content is synonymous with good quality, it has high acceptance across the SEO horizon.