Increase User Engagement
It’s not a big neural jump to think that the more content you give people, the longer they will spend reading it and the more engaged they will be. Contrary to what everyone seems to be saying about short attention spans, the evidence shows that people enjoy longer content and as a consequence are more engaged with it. It’s difficult to really get into an article when it’s over before it really gets going.
Increased engagement is gold dust for website owners across the world. The more of a user’s attention you hold, the more likely they will convert. After all, that is why we’re here. To get conversions, drive sales, get signups – whatever the metric is for your business.
Thought Leadership
Just as it’s hard to really get into a 300-word article when you read it, it is equally, if not more, difficult to delve into a subject when writing to that limit. It is far too constricting, and too often shorter blog posts and articles will oversimplify subjects. Let’s not forget that the whole point of content marketing, and inbound marketing, is that users will get value from your content and you will occupy the top spot in their mind when they need your services.
Which company are you more likely to remember? The one who condensed your specific problem into 300 snazzy words, or the one that dedicated the time to answer it properly, in detail, with 2000. We’ll bet it’s the latter and that, actually, the long-form content answered questions you didn’t even know you had yet. That’s adding value.
SEO
It’s not just your users that will thank you for your long-form content. Google’s algorithms will also favour you more. Google’s rankings will look for “high-quality, in-depth content”. Google is as successful as it is because it finds answers for its user’s questions - it’s particularly good at it. Search engines find it easier to find answers in long-form content – if you don’t believe me, go back and read point one.
Even as far back as 2012, a study by serpIQ found that on average the top 10 search results on Google were over 2000 words in length. This will be in part due to the above point about long-tail queries, but also due to a larger number of backlinks. There’s no secret formula here, the longer your content, the more chance you have of generating a greater number of backlinks. It makes sense when you think about it.
For more on improving your on-site SEO, check out this previous blog.