The importance of creating new content for our blogs or webpages is consistently growing. As more and more business is done online and our companies rely more and more on SEO and getting discovered through search engines, knowing the right content to post is crucial for achieving digital marketing success. While some companies and marketing departments believe it only matters to consistently post short tidbits of information jam packed with keywords, there is actually a few benefits for creating long form content.

What is Long Form Content?

Long form content consists of guides or ebooks of at least 4,000 words in length. While it may seem like a lot of work to dedicate over 4,000 words to one project, the benefits that come with having long form content available to customers and clients can help in a number of ways. Furthermore, just one long form content piece can get you better results than dozens of short write ups.

Benefits of Long Form Content

When you create long form content, you’re going to need to get creative and put in a bit of effort, but the time spent on a long form project will pay off immensely. As you continue to give your customers more information, they will continue to return to your page and do business with you. From building trust to having a better chance of appearing on the top of a search engine list, long form content is one way to get your business to grow.

Here are some of the biggest benefits to developing and sharing long form content:

Establish Authority

If you’re not an expert on the topic, you can’t write a long form content piece. So just by outlining enough information to even complete a thorough long form piece of content can establish you as a leader and expert in your industry. While it will still need to be researched to provide intelligent information that is useful for your clients and customers, taking the time to lay out a detailed guide or ebook proves you care about sharing your expertise with the public.

Build Loyalty

Consider someone in desperate need of answers finding the information they were looking for in your guide, ebook, or other piece of long form content. Because you took the time to clearly lay out each component in great detail instead of cramming the basics into a blog or social media post, this person now trusts you. You helped them during their time of need, and now they are loyal to you and your brand. Now, consider this happening on a grand scale. When you can deliver a piece of content that answers questions people are searching for, you can build a loyal customer base in one task.

Better Search Rankings

While it can be great to get customers to trust you and understand you’re an expert of the industry, it doesn’t help if they can’t find you. Adding a piece of long form content to your website can also help get your page noticed by search engines. With a longer word base, you can naturally and effectively include multiple keywords with an in depth perspective of the topic. A website’s most popular page almost always has more than 2,000 words.

Promotional Tools

When you create a guide or ebook, you don’t treat it the same way you would treat a blog post. Rather, you can push it on social media, newsletters, and other digital marketing channels vigorously and continuously. It is also encouraged to purchase paid advertisements around the guide or ebook, giving you the opportunity to attract brand new eyes to your social media pages, website, and blog.

Increased Website Visitation

When you have a long form piece of content hosted on your website, those interested in reading your guide or ebook will need to visit your website to do so. This can help increase your analytics, keeping more readers on your website longer and ensuring they will continue to come back. When website visitors get in the habit of visiting your website every day or every so often, they will be more likely to continue visiting in the future.

More Backlinks

When you have more copy and your information is better researched and more insightful, you’re going to have more backlinks. Any marketing strategist understands the importance of backlinks when it comes to the SEO strategy and appearing at the top of a search results list. With more backlinks, Google will place your article and website higher in the ranks, and more potential visitors will see the link to your page.

There is no denying that long form content takes time to create, and if you want to create content that will deliver a great return, you’ll need to spend even more time researching, drafting, and proofreading. But if you carve out the motivation and time to create a long form content piece to display on your website, you can find a new level of success for your business.

As SEO continues to change, what worked before isn’t going to work today and if you and your business don’t continue to adapt to the necessary changes, appearing at the top of a search results list will only get further and further away. While it used to be enough to stuff a website with the right keywords and hope for the best, search engines are becoming pickier and pickier about the content they pull from. Producing long form content can give you a template for delivering a number of things that search engines look for, such as backlinks, a natural use of keywords, and detailed information, putting you higher in the rankings. Furthermore, taking the time to fully outline useful information can help develop trust between your customers and create a base of loyal customers who will continue to return to read your blog, social media posts, and purchase your services.

This article was originally written by Jessica Kane and posted on the Heyo Blog.