However, from the standpoint of expenses, it is clear that the longer the content is, the more costly it will be. Besides, who reads blogs anyway?

First of all, let’s clear the confusion around the irrelevance of blogs by sharing some important data. According to the statistics by HubSpot:

• 80% of internet users interact with brands using both social media and blogs
• blogs bring 434% more indexed pages and increase the number of indexed links by 97%
• companies that are actively blogging have 67% more leads than those who don’t

Now you see that, even though blogging might be considered an outdated strategy, it is still relevant and delivers very good results.

As for the long-form content, this topic needs more in-depth analysis. So, let’s dive in and try to decipher the most crucial reasons why long-reads should have a solid place in your content marketing strategy.

Wait. How Long is the Long-Read?

Fair question, let’s start with it.

Of course, the length of your content also depends a lot on how much of it your audience usually reads. If they browse your articles until the middle and then leave, you might not want to post content that’s too long.

Nevertheless, for SEO purposes, the ideal length of a post is 2,100 – 2,400 words, and about 2,500 if your goal is to generate leads.

Of course, you shouldn’t create long-form content just for the sake of it if this content doesn’t carry any value. Remember what Google says? It’s all about meaningfulness.

Now, let’s talk more about other reasons why you need more long-reads in your content marketing strategy.

1. Long-Reads Bring You More Backlinks

In search engine optimization, a backlink is a link that’s coming from another website to yours. Along with other metrics, the number of backlinks is the top criterion, according to which Google ranks websites. And, in general, it is considered that the more links a web page has, the more organic traffic it receives from Google.

Of course, there are other benefits that backlinks can bring, namely:

• Improved indexing. When Google crawls websites, it discovers new web pages by following the backlinks. This is how Google finds your website as well, so the more backlinks you have to your website, the better.
• Referral traffic. If you place a link in the content for another website, the visitors of that website may click on your link, thus bringing you referral traffic. This is a great way to improve your website’s visibility.
• Better domain authority. If you build links to authoritative websites that are relevant to your industry and niche, it will positively impact your domain authority.

Apart from that, having a solid backlink-building strategy is good for your brand visibility within your niche because backlinks from related websites will spread the word about your company as well.

How do long-reads impact backlinks?

Last year, Brian Dean, the owner of Backlinko, teamed up with BuzzSumo to analyze over 900 million blog posts and find out what stands behind successful content.

During the research, he found out that long-reads get 77.2% more links on average than shorter articles. Here’s the graph with the correlation of different content lengths and the number of referring domains:

While the study failed to explain why long-read content performs so well, statistically, the majority of long-form articles appeared to deliver more backlinks, indicating that the Google algorithm, most likely, simply favors this type of content.

2. You Have an Opportunity to Improve Keyword Density

You know that keywords are also among the top criteria for a successful SEO. But a lot also depends on keyword density, which is the number of times a certain keyword appears in your content.

Naturally, the longer the content is, the more keyword density it allows. Alison Lee, a content editor at Subjecto educational website says that long-reads allow distributing keywords across the entire body of the article more equally, while short reads often look too crowded.

Beware of the high concentration of keywords

Before the current Hummingbird algorithm and the Panda update, websites used to carelessly overstuff content with keywords for the sake of ranking higher. However, once Google saw that, while such content was optimized, it still carried no value, so keyword density took a back seat.

However, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay attention to this criterion anymore. While others are focused on building backlinks and writing guest posts, keep your eyes on the ball and continue optimizing your long-reads with keywords.

The key point to remember here is how many keywords your long-read should have. There’s a simple formula for that:

• pick a keyword from one page and count how many times it appears on it
• calculate the total number of words on one page
• divide the number of keywords by the total number of words on a page
• multiply the result by 100 to receive the final percentage

For instance, if your article is 1,000 words, it should have a keyword density of 1%. Keep the number of keywords within this percentage to make sure all of them look organically in your content.

3. Long-Reads Give You a Chance to Boost Brand Authority

We already mentioned in the introduction that one of the reasons why Google prefers long-reads over short-reads is that long-form articles usually give a more in-depth understanding of the topic.

It is true – a long-read allows you to show your expertise in a certain field and back your credibility as an authoritative resource in your industry. Moreover, if you unite together experts from your field as guest bloggers, it will turn your website into a knowledge hub, bringing even more organic traffic.

Long-read content boosts social shares

You might think that people would rather share content that’s faster and easier to read, but, unfortunately, it’s not the case.

Back in 2012, when Neil Patel was still working at Quicksrpout, he ran a quick study to find out how the length of content impacts the number of social shares. The results of the study showed that longer posts received 68% more shares on Twitter and 22.6% more shares on Facebook.

This study proved once, and for all that, first and foremost, people look for value in articles, which can only be delivered if this article is long-read. Such content gives people a more in-depth perspective on the subject. Besides, they can read the most essential information in one place, which makes most internet users favor long-form content.

Size Matters and You Cannot Deny It

Whether you like it or not, investing in long-reads is a must if you want to get good results from your content marketing strategy.

Long-form articles improve your overall SEO strategy, deliver a higher number of backlinks, allow you to optimize your keyword density, and even build up your authority in your industry. Apart from that, long-form content increases the number of social shares, making your brand more recognizable.

So, if you’re hesitating whether to invest in long-reads or not – you definitely should, and we’ve got three very convincing reasons for you. Otherwise, how else can you get to the top-ranking websites on Google?

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The post 3 Reasons Why Long-Reads Should Dominate Your Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on Tricky Enough.

Content is King – Why and How?

There is a famous saying that “Content is King“.  Have you ever wondered where it is stemmed from?  Well, the quote is by no one else than Mr. Bill Gates, who wrote the essay titled “Content is King†on the Microsoft website. He went on saying “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcastingâ€. Well, that is the power of content, and Google recognizes that. Leading search engines, including Google, prefer good content to be original, engaging, and actionable, and that answers the question of the readers.

Good content should be unique, concise, grammatically correct, and is appropriately formatted. It is the simple formula for all the aspiring writers who like to make it to the big league of online content writing. A good piece of content appearing online should engage the reader, increase search engine rankings and traffic, and increase the likelihood of quality links from other sites.

Online Content Writing

Most of the writers online are writing for a living (barring a few who are just passionate about it). We write as a freelancer or work for a publisher and agencies or an independent blogger, the parameters to excel is the same. As a good writer, you should know the basics of writing, including the grammar and the composition of the content ( blogs, articles, Essays, PR drafts, and Reports). There is more to online content writing than filling the pages with words. My post will attempt to explain the essential qualities of a good writer for online content writing.

The Art and Science of Online Content Writing – Qualities of Good Content Writers

Writers should be Readers first

If you are excellent readers, (I mean you are passionate about reading), it is a big plus point. Besides adding to your knowledge 360 degrees, it sharpens your grasp on the language, improves vocabulary, and learns more on tonality and applications. It also improves your mental skills, broadens your imagination, and you get to understand more about your audience. As a result, you would evolve as a better writer.

Be a Researcher

Online content writing is a bit different than a fiction story or novel writing. The writers know what they are going to inform the readers through the content, and they require to give a good reason to believe it. Data, historical facts,  infographics add credibility to your content piece, and the readers start looking at you as the authority on the subject. Being authoritative also helps to drive engagement and backlinks, which make your content page performing much better on search engine results pages.

Simplicity, clarity and visual treatment are the Thumb rules.

Great ideas are acceptable but more important is that the content should be easy to read and understood by the readers. Otherwise, all your hard work would go waste. For online content writing, you must keep the following guidelines in mind.

• Avoid using jargons and complex/difficult word in your content. Please do not make your readers open the dictionary now and then. They will stop reading the content and go to some other page.
• Segment your content into headers and sub-headers, and limit your paragraphs to a few sentences. The idea is to bring in more clarity.
• Usage of boldface, italics, and bullet points can serve as visual highlights for critical issues.
• Usage of infographics and impressive visuals brings relief to the readers.

Good Writers serve the Readers, solving their Problems

As “marketing†always try to identify what the consumers want, similarly, a good writer must determine what the readers wish to read, before penning a single line. Online content has to deliver value in terms of solving the reader’s query or problem. The content ought to be compelling enough to get the readers to act on something /call to action.

Give a bit of your Personal Touch.

An essential part of your success story depends on how well you can connect with your readers. Readers should feel that they are reading the story, actually written by someone and not an article generator. It is a pleasure for the audience to go through a lucid tale written in the first and second person, in the active voice. It makes him/her more involved with the content, and there is a better probability, he/she would respond either by commenting, following, or downloading ( call to action).

Learn a bit of Marketing, Digital platforms and media.

A conventional mindset of writing may not be suitable in the digital era. Instead, if you have a little bit of marketing flair, you have more advantages. Marketing mindset makes you well acquainted with the readers (potential customers for brands), their needs and wants. A good understanding of social media helps you to learn and connect with your audience better. Contents that are popular on social media tend to show up as search results on search engines as well. If you are planning a career in the online content writing domain, try to have some basic knowledge on search engine optimization (SEO) as even the best content is worthless if no one can find it on the net.

Wrapping Up

These are the essential qualities you ought to have to make it right. It is now over to you.

Do you agree with the points I have made? What are other attributes do you think essential to excel in content writing? Tell me in your comments?

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The post A Few Tips To Help You Excel in Online Content Writing appeared first on Tricky Enough.