The SEO And User Science Behind Long-Form Content
Nobody wants to read long pages of content on the internet. Columnist John Lincoln disagrees, providing compelling evidence that this type of content gets read, ranked, and converted well. Are you struggling to rank some keywords that should be easy? Are you having trouble attracting an audience to your site, even though you think you’re offering some great information? If so, then maybe you should consider adding more long-form content. To put it briefly, long-form content can make you look like more of an expert in your field, increase the likelihood of engagement and sharing, improve your search engine results page (SERP) rank, and increase your audience because of your content; you will be viewed as an “authority” on the subject. All of that works to your benefit and translates to better brand awareness of Living Tired.
What Is Long-Form Content?
Long-form content is defined in various ways throughout the Internet. However, the consensus is pretty clear: If you’re looking to get past a 500-word mark so that the search engines take notice of your content, then you’re not publishing long-form content. My rule is that anything less than 1,200 words isn’t long-form content. I’d advise aiming for over 1,500 comments since 1,200 is (in my opinion) the minimum. That way, you’ll have a competitive advantage with the extra cushion.
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But why not go all in? Set a goal of 2,000 words for your long-form content. I haven’t published a post of fewer than 1,000 words for some time. I am generally going for 1,500 to 7,000 words now.
A Recently Recognised Benefit
The benefits of long-form content in the digital sphere have only recently begun to gain recognition. Believe it or not, it was long believed that digital long-form content was a bad idea: When readers started moving to the internet, media analysts thought long-form journalism was in trouble. Attention spans were going to fade. Readers wanted short, snappy they wanted 140 characters, and not much more (though a listicle on the side couldn’t hurt). Who would want to scroll through an 8,000-word article on an iPhone screen?
Naomi Sharp
Many are now realizing that the inevitable “death” of long-form content was greatly exaggerated, and digital marketers are discovering that long-form content is precious for both users and search engines alike.
The SEO Benefit
The exact algorithm that Google uses to determine which pages should go straight to the top of the SERPs for a given query is a mystery (at least, it is to everyone outside of a certain corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California). However, curious engineers can tinker and experiment — as much as the search engines will allow them — to gain some insight into what ranks well.
Long-Form Content Ranks Very Well
Back in 2012, serpIQ conducted a study involving more than 20,000 keywords. The results showed that the average content length of the top 10 results was more than 2,000 words. The average number of words for the content in the #1 spot was 2,416. For the #10 spot, the average number of comments was 2,032. That evidence is fairly conclusive. If you want your articles to rank well, consider using long-form content.
