If your business has an online presence, you will likely find yourself in a highly competitive position to make your presence count amongst brands that have been building content and growing a substantial audience base for years. Especially if you are a new business, you might be intimidated by those brands with massive content libraries that are much ahead in the game.
But there are ways around it. You can quickly establish yourself online with the right internet marketing services and content marketing strategy. But the best way to your rescue is to use long-form content. Long-form content gives the audience an in-depth and detailed explanation of the topic you want to talk about. Plus, they make for more evergreen and shareworthy content.
In WordPress, "long form" articles refer to all those that contain at least 1,000 words and more. Long-form articles provide a fantastic chance to go deep into subjects your audience is curious to learn about. It might seem like a lot, but if done right, it can win your audience and make you stand out in the competition. With WordPress, it is even easier to create high-quality long-form content.
Long-form posts will engage your audience for a long time and truly educate them about the answers they are seeking. It requires substantial research and takes time to produce since it demands time and resources, but it positively impacts your audience. They will certainly come straight to your website the next time they search for an answer. Long-form content can be in the form of case studies, topic guides, detailed blog posts, data roundups and reviews, and much more.
In this article, we will try to understand how you can make long-form content that counts and why you need it in the first place.
Even while many people find reading lengthy articles to be off-putting, this does not indicate that you should focus on small pieces of material. Content producers today favor lengthy, well-defined articles instead of short articles, and their justifications are sound. Here are a few reasons why you should choose long-form content.
Now that you have a fair idea about the importance of long-form content, only use it for some topics. In fact, choose on a topic-to-topic basis whether you want to go for long or short-form content. With that in mind, take a look at how you must create/format long-form content and the tips you should keep in mind while writing it.
We cannot tell you how long you should write your article or the process you should follow because you must define that as the writer. However, we suggest the following tips you can keep in mind when writing to create a high-quality long-form article.
It would help if you chose a popular topic that was of interest to your readers. Keep in mind that your post should be more than simply a fragment of a story; it should be a means to help others solve a problem or learn a new concept to improve. It is also better to choose topics that won't lose their relevance over time, so they remain evergreen, and no matter when an individual searches for them, it will still help resolve their problems.
Knowing what topics in your sector are popular right now will help you attract more users to your material. You may use various keyword research tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, GrowthBar, etc., to select or get a suggestion for a topic. Create a content calendar to stay at the top of your posting and sharing schedule.
After choosing a subject, you must thoroughly research the topic. Your post will be a superb piece of content if you choose a certain niche-relevant topic that is well-researched and well-rounded.
Reading through long walls of text can be challenging, especially when reading an article on a small screen. Images help you add value to your material while also allowing you to make logical breaks. They make the content look more engaging and attractive to look at.
Each image you use in your article should be directly related to the text that follows it. For example, if the section gives instructions about making tea, add an infographic that mentions the steps in short or just feature someone making tea.
Try WordPress plugins like iList Infographic Maker that help you visualize data and information in a way that appeals to the eye and draws the reader in. Beautiful lists, infographics, charts, and graphs are simple to build and may significantly improve your content marketing strategy.
Some impressive photographs can significantly improve the quality of your post, but optimizing them is crucial so that your website loads quickly. The more individuals click away without reading your content, the longer it takes for your page to load. Try using various WordPress picture optimization plugins like Optimus Image Optimizer, WP Smush, and Imagify.
Lists can be used similarly to graphics in that they help break up long text passages and make them easier to read. They also give you a fantastic opportunity to clarify your arguments. They give a better structure to your article and look nice having a place in the article. Additionally, they offer a visual progression to your ideas and make scanning through the article easier for readers.
In WordPress, adding lists to long-form text is a relatively simple process. The format should provide you with lots of opportunities to do so, depending on the subject you're covering. Think about adding benefits, key features, pros, cons, steps, types, etc., in the form of lists to your content.
If you enjoy reading online, you're undoubtedly already aware of how articles divided into subheadings make it much easier to comprehend information. Using these components in your own material has a lot of advantages. They are ideal for breaking up long articles into smaller pieces and are also better for SEO.
Here are three suggestions for crafting effective subheadings in your long-form content:
Of course, having high search engine rankings is necessary if you want to reach the largest audience. And to do that, your content must be SEO-optimized.
It would help if you began by conducting keyword research first. The Google Keyword Planner is one of the tools that most writers use for finding and researching keywords and analyzing their competition. But wait to pack your content with keywords after you've chosen one. The content will end up being awkward and artificial for readers and search engines if you endlessly stack it with keywords. Use plugins that check for keywords in your text and the text's readability with them. This helps you improve your content for readers and SEO bots and makes sure nothing feels forced. Additionally, the plugins come in handy for putting crucial SEO tools like a sitemap and breadcrumbs on your website. It is a valuable asset for your WordPress SEO campaigns to rank your long-form posts.
It can be complicated to write an article. It is especially tiring to edit and revise your work after you've finished writing for hours. Many spelling and punctuation errors are possible, which are never good for your brand's reputation. Long-form content typically has a higher likelihood of mistakes than short form. But several tools are available to aid content writers in avoiding such errors.
These days, there are a plethora of tools that authors use to make good content that does not oversee such errors. One such program that is particularly well-liked by the general public is Grammarly. These tools must be able to check all of your spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors and make suggestions for a better delivery style. It would be best also to verify your text for plagiarism to improve content analysis.
People enjoy sharing information that they find fascinating and believe would be of interest to others. Make your material simple to share to increase your audience and the effect of your lengthy pieces. You can choose from a wide variety of social sharing plugins, as is the case with anything else related to WordPress.
You can use plugins like AddThis that lets you add floating share buttons, social profile follow buttons, and even related topics fast and easily. Such plugins allow you access stats for your most popular shared content, referral networks, pageviews, and more, which proves to be beneficial for evaluating your long-form content.
You can start promoting your goods and services in your long-form articles once you have the reader's interest and they believe you to be an informed and trustworthy source of information. After educating them on a subject, you can offer your assistance in coming up with a solution to the problem they came to you with initially.
Adding a call to action (or CTA) is one way of doing it. There are several call-to-action WordPress plugins available at your disposal. You can use these to point users to your pricing page, newsletter signup form, contact form, etc.
You can also have the option to use a shortcode to insert relevant products into your text if your website also features an online store.
Long-form content requires study and time to write, but the effort is worthwhile. You'll establish yourself as an authority, your readers will stay on the site longer, user engagement will increase, and your site's SEO will improve. Creating long-form content doesn't have to be tough; you need to be willing to put in the time to make space for these few tips above, which will help you ace your content as a writer. Use plugins supported by WordPress to make your life simpler, and watch how the article performances shine.
