When creating written content for search engines, many people think shorter content is better, but every piece of evidence proves that long-form content is more effective. It’s also a fact that most of the content that ranks on the first page of Google SERPs is long-form content. 

In this article, we’ll discuss long-form content and how it can boost your SEO strategy. 

What is Long-Form Content?

There are varying definitions of long-form content, but most digital marketers agree that they’re articles or blogs with more than 1000 words. So, you can create long-form content up to 2,000, 4000, or even 8,000 words. This type of content is usually very comprehensive, informative and more useful than short-form content. This allows them to gain more authority and backlinks quickly, which increases your SERP rank. 

The goal of long-form content is to give every detail you know about a topic. This is similar to how authors at bestdissertation.com work on essays and assignments that students outsource to them. This may include the history, background, and other questions people ask about the topic. That’s why it’s this content type is usually relevant and insightful. 

Humans, indeed, have a short attention span, and the average user only spends 10-20 seconds on a website. This is why many website owners believe it’s ideal to use quick bullet points and short content to pass the point across easily. Considering that 10 seconds is very short, you might doubt the performance of long-form content. However, the reality is that they perform very well both on web pages and social media. This content form takes effort and time. It also requires lots of research and planning to ensure there’s enough relevant information to be authoritative. But if you do it right, there are several benefits that you can enjoy from it that short-form content may not be able to offer. 

How Does Long-Form Content Boost SEO?

Long-form content is far more important for SEO than short-form content. Your readers also find it valuable because it seeks to answer more than one query. So, even if they don’t read the full content, they still pick valuable information from the parts they read. There are also several SEO benefits to this content form:

1. Ranking for multiple keywords

When you put great detail into explaining a concept, you will likely add several keywords related to the topic. The two advantages of this are that it helps Google determine the relevancy of your content and also helps you rank for several keywords, unlike a 500-word short-form content. For instance, if you write a detailed 2000-word content, you could rank for over 100 keyword variations on google, but a 500-word content on the same topic might only rank for one keyword. So, long-form content increases your online visibility exponentially. 

2. Increased possibility for more backlinks

You’re more likely to get backlinks to your website with long-form content than short-form content. Other websites tend to link to long, detailed content than short ones. The idea is that longer content is more insightful and useful to the topic than short content. Additionally, long-form content demonstrates your expertise in a field or topic, making it more trustworthy. 

3. More social sharing 

This works similarly to backlinking. It has been proven that long content is shared more often on social media than short articles. This is because they solve more problems than short articles, so readers are excited to share them with their social media audience. 

Also, short-form content provides generic answers which are less surprising or exciting for readers. Meanwhile, long articles give more meaningful insights. 

4. Increased dwell time

The amount of time your website visitors spend on your website is one of Google’s ranking factors. It’s called Dwell time – the time between when they click on a Google search result and when they return to the search result page. 

To keep your visitors on your website for longer, it’s obvious that you need long-form content. They can easily skim through a short article, but a long article with lots of insights and relevant information will keep them stuck on your website. So, long-form content generally increases your visitors’ dwell time. It’s also likely that they find the solution to what they’re looking for on your website, so they don’t have reasons to move to another website. 

5. Improved domain authority 

Your domain authority is your web page’s ability to rank on search engines. The higher you rank on a scale of zero to 100, the higher your domain authority. Long-form content is crucial for improving your website’s domain authority. Given the many benefits of long articles, it makes sense that they improve domain authority, especially considering factors like social media sharing, backlinking, relevance, etc. 

Conclusion 

There are many SEO benefits of long-form content, especially when you compare them to short-form content. They’re more effective in boosting your SEO strategy and making you more visible on Google.