Long-Form vs Short-Form Content: Which Is Better for Your Blog?

Small catchy phrases and videos have historically been the norm for conveying messages. Be it a description for a product or an outright selling of an idea, a summary description would suit the purpose for many. However, in the recent age of growing technology and increased competition, marketers and big organization companies have shifted their style of delivering products to include long phrases in their descriptions.[irp]

Nowadays, people prefer checking for product descriptions and details of anything through blogs. This has become a widely accepted source of information among the masses such that there is a growing competition in the audience about which is the best platform to look for and
thus having a high search rank to the audience has become the easiest way to get to them. Google search results has also grown in its sophistication to rank articles with words as many as 1000 at the top. This has called for a dynamic shift from short written articles too long ones.[irp]

Why You Should Prefer Long-Form Content Writing

An article containing 1200 to 2000 words is considered a Long-Form. This is what you are likely to get if you searched on Google. there is a growing interest in the masses over numbers scaling as high as 1000-30000. They are now considered to be the standard for any product description.

Back in 2013, the tradition was that 350-600 words were the standard for consideration for normal practice. That is, a short brief description of a product sufficed the purpose. The numbering is still currently considered but in writing or drafting of basic guidelines internally by[irp]
big companies in their day to day operations. Such guidelines would involve internal resource
allocation or time management among the stuff.

The scaling competition and content saturation over the internet have prompted many companies (larger ones at that) to adopt inbound marketing and are forced to make long-form blog articles to describe their products. This was not the case back then where if you were to search on Google any keywords relating to an article, it would give you results of poorly written articles by novice copywriters that would do little to serve your intended purpose, even though the outcome of your result was optimized by keywords.

Today, several changes have been made on algorithms by the Google team to bring quality content to every keyword searched on the internet and is brought to the top of search engines. By description, these articles detail content with over 2000 words which are also believed to be the highest quality post that answers your question. Such are the developing challenges brought to the attention of marketers.[irp]

Thus, the need to outrank the competition is such that one needs to develop content offering the highest quality. A content that ranks #1 on Google search result is one which has been known to deliver more value than any other search result under the same keyword sought i.e. the more growing a keyword is competitive, the more valuable the content has to be.Companies that would normally deliver 4-5 short-form articles about 500 words a week have now started working within the same budget in coming up with high-quality 30000-word masterpiece articles for their product and publish about 2-3 in a month yielding to the most top sought results. To achieve this, the company sets out to its marketing team into thorough product researching so as to make sure that they get the most accurate results. And embark into writing articles about it making sure that they deliver in the same intended value when they are to be sought under selected keywords on Google aiding into maximum conversion.

The Target for the Long Posts

As I have clearly demonstrated, long-form articles are less likely sought after much less read by anyone who searches for them online. Should an individual stumble upon a long article describing a product, chances are they would only go through, say half of it, then save the content on their browser for future reference. In addition to that, should they read through and find the article description worthwhile, they will end up sharing the article to their friends.Which much less strengthens the market for the product and a good name for the company. Moz, a search engine giant, conducted a research on more than one million articles and this is what they had to say, “Long form content consistently gets higher average shares and significantly higher average links”. Here is why you need to shift from short-form to long-form articles.

1. Long-Form Contents Gain Traction

What I mean to say is that long forms are the surest way to which you can get value. Long-form articles aren’t written just so that the targeted word count is reached, but that the content in it be

so valuable to even exceed the word count. It allows you to take a reader from a basic understanding to more developed material on a subject within one post. Having that kind of value attracts more people to your content in such a way that they would even share it and this would place your article in high authoritative positions.

2. Long-Form is Attractive to SEO

Long-forms improve the chances of an article to be discovered on Google. The more informative and detailed your post has the greater its chances are to gain more traffic on Google Organic search. This would create for your post a chance to pop up, say, in the top ten results of search engines. And as such, your post would be shown to have more preference and maintain attention for longer.

In addition to that high rich content markets itself. Better Google algorithms have been developed in such a way that they have an eye for quality. If your article bears more weight, Google will actually give it more traffic on the web. Moreover, long-form contents rich in information are now known to garner more backlink. And obviously, with more backlinks the higher your article climbs up the ranks.

3. Long-Form Articles are Your Number One Brand Advertiser

This comes without a question as an example that would relate to your top most sought after names of people in your industry. People make it a habit to always refer to that one person who knows a lot about something. If they need some work done or some help to go about something, they will always approach him/her for help. The same case reflects among companies within the same industry. With time it becomes well known to the masses that one company produces longform articles offering the best articles there is the market. This would give you autonomy and
market dominance over other companies. There would be no debate as to the quality your company produces and would cause your brand to be more reliable and dependable to deliver many subjects.

4. Long-Forms Content Promotes Your Forum

People have a thirst for information. They will go miles to in search of it and when they found a good source they will with it. Long-form contents offer an appeal to new readers in your forum. A detailed outlook of what you are all about at the front page has been proven by many to pull people into signing in to your website. Arguably, it is not that people lose their concentration over long articles. It is either that they find them boring or fail to deliver on the intended purpose. Also making your articles longer without offering any particular information is unnecessary and would look bad for your image.The Question of Quality over Quantity Everyone seeks after quality in everything. Your content doesn’t necessarily need to be long and yet be filled with pointless ill-constructed sentences. You would rather stick to short essays that offer quality information than try out long-form article writing that would be detrimental to your brand.

The quality of article form adopted should serve the situation and goal at hand. For one, try to understand what your audience best responds to. You can do so by giving them a taste of alternative forms on your blogging post. Incorporate videos or animated clips over time and gain their responses.Try changing your writing skills and pick up on topics that warrant massive details. For example, there are some reality shows that gain popularity in the masses but all they require is just cameras and photographers to spread the gossip. They do not require much time for detail
analysis.
Thus, it is key to try as much as possible to deliver on a topic without any room for questioning.You would rather spend few words but deliver on a matter than draft 1000 words and fail to get to the point.

 

Conclusion

The style adopted in writing of an article has a crucial role in its success. Key features such as the audience and the intended goal are to be factored. Also up for consideration is the “value” you are to offer and your ability to deliver on it.cameras and photographers to spread the gossip. They do not require much time for detail analysis.

Thus, it is key to try as much as possible to deliver on a topic without any room for questioning.You would rather spend few words but deliver on a matter than draft 1000 words and fail to get to the point.

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