Long Form Content or Short? Which one works?
There has been a lot of debate around long form content vs short form content and which content works the best.
So, what are the findings? Well according to studies done by @Backlinko and @BuzzSumo “Long Form content gets on average 77.2% more links than shorter articles”.
What does this mean?
In order for your content to be read, ranked and ravely reviewed you need backlinks.
Backlinks are basically votes from other people on the internet to your content which states that they agree with your opinion.
Did you know that 94% of all content will never receive any backlinks? This is because on average, there are 87 million posts that go out on a monthly basis. That is a ton of content, no wonder links are so hard to come by.
Long form content gets more social shares
Another benefit of long-form content is that it generates more social shares.
What does that mean for you? It means that there is a buzz created around your opinion piece which ultimately means that more “eyeballs” see your content.
More eyeballs mean that there is more chance of your content receiving external links from people on the internet who agree with your opinion.
The more external links, the better Google ranks you, and the more users will click on your article. It’s a win-win situation.
Writing long form content is not the only thing that matters
So, what else matters? There are several things that also make content more appealing to your users, which will, in turn, generate higher social shares.
We have compiled a list of 3 tips to make your content appealing:
- Write powerful headlines
- Interlink your content
- Write as if you were talking to someone in person
Let’s look at each one of these tips in a bit more detail.
Write powerful headlines
The first thing your user sees is the headline or title of your article – therefore it makes sense if it was written to grab your user’s attention.
The generation of voice searchers is here and it’s very real. You should tailor your headline to your user’s problem or at least answer their question directly.
Let’s look an example: If your user is looking to buy red sneakers (takkies in a South African context) and uses the phrase “buy red sneakers now”, thousands of results will appear on Google.
Your user will most likely click on the search result that matches their intent.
Once he/she has clicked through to your page they are expecting to see only red sneakers – therefore it is imperative to consider the user’s experience once they have clicked through to your website.
Always try and match your user’s intent once they have clicked through – this decreases the bounce rate and increases the likelihood of a share – why? Because his/her expectation was met and exceeded, he/she felt like sharing the experience with his/her friends and followers.
Interlink your content
Do you consider your user’s journey? If you answered no, you should definitely re-look your strategy.
When you interlink your content, you are ultimately guiding your user on a journey through your content.
Not only does it act as an assistive user metric it also assists with channelling authority throughout your website as well as decreasing your bounce rate.
How do you create links within your website? – this is the question that is going through your mind right now, right?
Well it’s simple really if you are using a WordPress site you highlight the text in the edit section right click and insert a relevant link to the content (within your site) and that’s it.
Such a simple task is so important not only for your user but also for Google because it also assists the Google bots to navigate content on your site.
Therefore, linking your content internally is a really important part of your strategy that really shouldn’t be overlooked.
Write as if you were talking to someone in person
This topic has to be the most important of all.
Have you ever read a piece of content that is so technical you feel like you have no idea what you just read, or you have to re-read a piece of content several times just to understand what the content was about?
And now you’re sitting at your screen nodding your head because we’ve hit the nail on the head…
When writing you really should write as if you were speaking to the user on the other side of the screen face to face.
When you do this your user automatically understands and feels as if they can relate to you on a human level.
Taking the guesswork out of the content equation will again make your content resonate with your users making them want to share your content with their networks.
There’s this saying which goes like this “Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Meaning your Long Form content will be Read, Ranked and Ravely reviewed – if you follow these 3 simple yet important steps.