As an SEO professional you might be caught up between the hallway of long-form content and short-form content. A question often would have crossed you mind that what content will offer value to my audience and most importantly which content optimize SEO activities in more efficient manner?

The realm of content marketing presents a wide range of content forms, all associated with their benefits. There is no way you can say that a content marketer will only rely on long-form content to drive a business throughout its lifetime. And there is no way a digital marketer can rule out the importance of short-form content. It’s all impossible! However, the benefits of the short form content have always been immense popular while the extraordinary advantages of long form content are yet to be discovered. 

That being the case, in this blog we would like to shed light on the benefits of long-form content and its benefits for SEO efforts. However, before getting into the depth of exploring benefits of long form content, it is essential to know that what google consideres as a long form content. 

What is long-form content?

Any content that runs from 1,000 and above is considered long-form content. Long-form content is generally known to offer valuable insights to readers with a deep dive into every aspect of a topic. Fundamentally, long-form content is a one-stop solution and a reader needn’t research several facets of a topic.   seo services primelis

Although most content marketers and SEOs would prefer short-form content, i.e. content that is below 1,000 or 800, there is no way that content can support every stage of a content marketing funnel. 

Long-form content is also beneficial and in fact, associated with a range of benefits. Research conducted by Moz revealed that long-form content attains relatively a higher share volume and average links than other content forms.

Insights also disclosed that websites with long-form content are more likely to rank higher on SERPs than their counterparts. So, how does long-form content boost SEO?

5 Benefits of Long-form Content for SEO

Long-form content can help to empower SEO strategies in many ways, for example;  

1. Builds Brand Authority 

Behind content creation are goals like brand awareness, conversions, and SERPs visibility. But brand image and authority are other benefits of content creation. One of the best ways to ace SEO and brand authority is by investing in long-form content like pillar pages.

Long-form content generally covers a wide range of topic facets that can offer insights to the target audience. For example, if a person is searching for “the crucial steps to follow while building wealth” long-form content is imperative. 

Whether it’s a blog or an article, it must cover essential dimensions like “what is wealth creation”, “the essential steps to build wealth” and perhaps “how to retain it”. It may also be essential to conduct a gap analysis to assess competitors’ content and offer insightful information to the reader.

In this way, a writer can also offer content that meets the Google E-A-T algorithm. This can help the website to appear on the first page of SERPs. Additionally, a brand or business can build its authority both on SERPs and in the marketplace.  seo services primelis

2. Drives Traffic 

Long-form content generally caters to keyword optimization, a crucial facet of search engine marketing. With long-form content, an SEO team can extensively target a wide range of keywords that can increase traffic to a website.

It also provides a plan to use long-tail keywords more organically. However, it should be noted that keyword optimization isn’t about keyword stuffing. Keyword research and optimizing content with the right keywords are some of the best SEO strategies to enhance the efficacy of SEO efforts.

Long-form content provides a platform to use a range of vital keywords that can help a site to generate organic traffic and become more engaging. Additionally, this increases the time spent on a page or a website.  

3. Offers Value to Readers 

Although certain topics can be summed up in a 700-word count, long-form content can help a writer exhaust every aspect of the topic. There are many topics on the internet that would be more engaging and interesting when comprehensively covered.

With that, summing up the content in a few lines would show incompetence and a lack of expertise in a given niche. A lengthy resource, therefore, caters to several stages of content requirements like ideation, “how to”, and implementation that a serious researcher may be looking for.

Creating long-form content also requires a writer to perform research in order to understand the interests of the target audience. In this way, the writer can pen down actionable insights that can add value to the readers. This allows readers to always choose the same content piece or website because of its quality. 

4. Increases Social Media Sharing

A great content piece is worth sharing and there are greater chances of a long-form article or blog being shareable. An extensively covered topic can help a reader engage more with the content and understand every aspect of the topic. 

In return, a reader can share content with other social media networks. This can boost organic traffic to a site. Sharing quality content has proven to optimize conversions and improve profit margin for businesses. seo services primelis

Some of the best approaches to increase the sharability of content is to create high-quality content and couple it with CTAs. Calls to action (CTAs) allow content readers to take the required action. This in the long run improves SEO results.  

5. Caters to Link-Building 

Link building is a reliable SEO strategy and almost every SEO professional would love to attain links from third-party websites. The fact that long-form content ranks higher on SERPs, can increase a site’s traffic and DA. 

More importantly, the content can become more preferred by other bloggers, and publishers who would want to reference quality and performing content. Therefore, any SEO professional or content marketer shouldn’t assume long-form content to be a mere gambling avenue. 

It can indeed help one create thoroughly researched content that can help in link-building and increasing a site’s domain authority. 

Long-form Content Vs. Short-form Content

There is no doubt that short-form content is highly used in several digital marketing aspects. In fact, this type of content can be ultra-engaging and appealing to readers. Short-form content can work best when it comes to marketing or advertising goals i.e PPC ads and for that, its usage is still very much viable. However, long-form content can serve best in many arenas like blogging, and cultivating long-term content strategies. On the other hand, long-form content can also support a website by improving its authority and ranking on SERPs.  seo services primelis

Bottom Line

Whether it’s long or short-form content each type has got its space in the SEO realm. In fact, SEO professionals can rely on long-form content to win links and rank higher on SERPs. All that they have to do is to create high-quality content and update it whenever required. This will help to keep the content relevant and SEO-friendly.  

Read: Everything You Need to Know About Programmatic Advertising