How is Long-form Content Important for Your Business?

What is Long-form Content?

In short, it's content that is lengthy, presenting a large amount of information or in-depth data, so that the audience or readers can understand comprehensively. The length of the content is typically from 700 to 2,000 words or more. However, based on SUFFIX's experience, effective articles are usually about 800 to 1,200 words (like the article you are reading). Although Long-form Content does not only mean articles, we focus on creating content in text form for easier understanding. For instance, if you want to create a Long-form video content like a tutorial, you need to start with writing the content or script in text form before producing it in video format.

 

How is Long-form Different from Short-form Content?

One can simply compare that Long-form Content is like a main meal, while Short-form Content is like snacks or desserts. If measured by content length, Short-form Content is around 400 to 600 words, usually coming with a single message and can be read briefly. This content often takes the form of Infographics, news, and content on various social media platforms.

Both Short-form and Long-form Content can yield better results depending on the goals of creating content that align with each type or channel of presentation. However, Long-form Content is more effective in these aspects:

 

Your Website Becomes More Discoverable as Search Engines Favor Long-form Content

One advantage of Long-form Content is its significant impact on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The number of words in an article can help your website rank higher in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Search engines like Google prioritize various contexts, including original content websites, backlinks from other sites linking back to ours (which may indicate the usefulness of the content), linking to other content on our website (which means having a good website structure), using keywords that align with the article, and evaluating the duration of the website visit. If readers spend a lot of time on a page, it may indicate good content. All these are contexts used by search engines to assess the quality of a website, which includes multiple elements such as design and development. But specifically, in terms of content creation, Long-form Content can perform better than Short-form.

For example, a client in the fashion industry wants people searching for T-shirts to find their brand's e-commerce website. In this case, we recommend creating a blog on the website and producing Long-form Content using keywords like “T-shirts” and related high-search-volume terms on search engines. The strategy includes using topics related to fashion, style ideas, and clothing care tips, along with a call-to-action for immediate product orders at the end of the article. The results, in terms of website traffic and search engine ranking, turned out quite well.

 

Builds Credibility and Easier Access to the Target Group

Long-form Content helps your brand or business appear more professional and credible. Presenting interesting and in-depth content, especially on topics that show thought leadership, can better reach your target audience and potentially turn them into followers or customers of your brand or business.

 

Long-form Content Creates Value Over Time

"Not just Long-form but Quality Content"

Certainly, the length of content matters, but it must also be of high quality. It must present useful and accurate information. Creating quality, long-form content ensures that the articles remain relevant over time, regardless of when they are published. Especially on platforms supporting search engines like websites, this content can provide long-term benefits, compared to social media content which tends to have a shorter lifespan and quickly gets buried under new daily content.

 

Disadvantages of Long-form Content

Having discussed its benefits, let's look at the disadvantages of Long-form Content. The main downsides are that it takes longer to produce and see results, as it requires more time and resources for research, strategy, creating content, and measuring results. In some cases, it may affect the conversion rate among certain target groups who feel that the information in Long-form Content does not match their existing understanding of the products or services, leading them to lose interest or not try them.

However, with a strong plan and strategy aligned with set goals, Long-form Content can be a worthwhile investment and yield positive results.

 

Which Businesses are Suitable for Long-form Content?

From all that has been said, it's evident that Long-form Content is like a marketing tool using content (Content Marketing), which is important for businesses in every industry. However, it can be said that Long-form Content is particularly suitable for Inbound Marketing, which focuses on gradually converting the target group into customers or service users. If your business is B2B (Business to Business) requiring time and reasoning for decision-making, presenting Long-form Content can help build customer relationships and credibility for your business.

 

Based on our experience, in some cases, B2C (Business to Customer) businesses also benefit from Long-form Content with good planning and strategy, especially when aligned with the Customer Journey at the right time. For example, in high-value real estate businesses where decisions cannot be made immediately and require visiting projects or comparing pros and cons with others, Long-form Content could be project analysis or financial knowledge to facilitate purchase decisions, thus converting interested parties into customers.

 

Businesses looking for different marketing strategies may need to focus on Long-form Content, as your business might require this marketing tool.