Content has long been one of the single most important elements in any SEO or digital marketing plan, and the last few years have revealed a specific trend within this realm: Long-form content is an extremely valuable approach. From longer blog posts to specific case studies, conference decks and other formats, long-form content is taking on more and more importance among SEO experts and internet marketers everywhere.
At Be Locally, our quality SEO services include meaningful attention to your site's content, and long-form methods have become a bigger and bigger part of our programs recently. Why is this, and what can businesses do to optimize their use of increased long-form content in several areas? This two-part blog series will go over the answers to both these questions.
One of the key benefits of long-form content in the SEO world is the way it allows you to target a greater range of keywords. Consider this: A company might have three or four main services it offers, plus about fifteen or so sub-niches of these services that it provides to different industries and groups. Each of those sub-niches is likely to include its own set of questions and keywords, meaning there are at least thirty more general keyword phrases a company should rank for in order to fully optimize their site.
This, of course, is much more difficult with a shorter article. If you only have 300 words to work with on a page, it's tough to target thirty different keywords that might also be relevant to the same topic. With an additional 200-300 or so words, though, you can target a much greater range of keywords while still including anything that could be pertinent to your business.
In addition, long-form content that's relatively simple will be incredibly easy for Google and other search engine bots to crawl. When Google can understand the context of a given page, it can rank it much more easily, which is always a boon for businesses that want to dominate their search engine results.
Link building is also a huge part of SEO for many companies, and quality long-form content can be a tremendous asset in this area as well. After all, the greater depth and detail you offer on your site, the more likely it is that authoritative websites covering related subjects will want to link back to your information and provide a valuable resource for their own visitors.
Long-form content is also a simple way to target evergreen topics that will always be of interest to your visitors, from SEO strategies to inbound marketing techniques. By offering a greater degree of content on these types of topics you can attract organic traffic year round and make it much easier for search engines to know exactly what your website is all about.
Finally, long-form content is a relatively simple way to update an evergreen page without having to sacrifice its permanent status. For many websites that are constantly producing new content, updating a page with fresh information is simply impractical due to the regularity of their schedule. This means they have to create new pages over and over again for every new piece of information they want to share, but long-form articles mean changes can be made easily without having to go through this process.
For more on why long-form content is becoming a necessity for many SEO efforts today, or to learn about any of our other digital marketing services like PPC, web design and more, speak to the pros at Be Locally today.