Are you struggling to rank individual blog posts in SERPs? The blog posts that you publish don’t get enough organic traffic?
If search engine ranking is your biggest dilemma, consider creating long-form content as it is one of the proven techniques to increase organic traffic, social shares, and user engagement.
Long-form content is any content with 1200+ words. This is the minimum. However, the average word count for long-form content has increased to three thousand to 10 thousand words. Yes, this is too much of content.
Writing a couple of three+ thousand word blog posts every week means serious business. But this is how it works today.
There are several proven benefits of creating long-form content for your blog.
It ranks exceptionally well
Google has clearly stated on its blog that it helps its users find in-depth articles. You cannot ignore what Google says, right?
According to a 2015 HubSpot study, articles with a word count between 2250 and 2500 receive most organic traffic.
Things haven’t changed much.
Not just that long-form content helps you rank high in search engine results but at the same time, it helps you drive more organic traffic than your competitors.
Even if you don’t acquire any backlinks for your long-form article, it will rank naturally for low-competition long-tail keywords.
It earns more backlinks
The HubSpot study also revealed that blog posts having more than 2500 words garner most backlinks naturally.
A study by Moz showed similar results. Articles with more words acquire more backlinks.
Yes, you don’t have to do much in terms of acquiring backlinks. This is because if your articles deliver exceptional value and your content is better than anything else that’s out there, people will link to it.
Brian Dean used a long-form article to generate several backlinks to his article which doubled his blog’s traffic in 14 days. The referring domains linking to the blog post increased in a couple weeks.
The idea is to reach out to influencers and other bloggers who write on similar topics and show them your long-form article. Tell them why your article is better. If it is valuable, they will link to it without you having to ask for it.
It’s shared
Long-form articles are loved by the readers so they share it more than short-form content.
BuzzSumo analyzed 100 million articles and found that long-form content gets more social shares as compared to its counterpart.
According to Quick Sprout, blog posts longer than 1500 words receive 68% more tweets and 22% more Facebook likes.
A post by Josue Valles has more than 4K shares. Guess how many words the article has? It has around 10K words.
If you’re creating content that is best in the industry, readers will share it. You just have to make them go ‘wow!’ and, guess what, it gets a lot easier with comprehensive helpful articles.
It increases user engagement
Long and detailed blog posts have this amazing ability to keep your readers engaged. The readers spend time reading articles leading to an increase in average time spent on the site.
According to a Pew study, articles with higher word count boost user engagement on cellphones. The study found that the average engaged time for articles increases as the word count increases. Articles having 1000 to 4999 words had average engaged time of 116 seconds while articles having 5000 or more words averaged at 270 seconds.
Keep adding words if you intend to increase user engagement.
It is no surprise. If the content is well-written and detailed, your audience will keep reading it. This is what keeps them hooked and engaged.
Conclusion
Long-form content will never disappoint you in terms of ranking, organic traffic, acquiring backlinks, user engagement, and social shares. You just have to give it your best.
The idea isn’t to produce fluff just for the sake of word count. You cannot write 1500 words on every topic.
Keep it natural and interesting. Don’t try to hit that 1200 words or 1500 words mark. This is not how it will work.
Write naturally. Do your homework. If you’ve enough material, go for it.
If you don’t have enough material, change the topic or write a short post.
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