Creating effective long form content for your website

Here at Pumpkin Web Design, we are Preston’s leading web design experts. From Manchester to Southport, we work with companies and businesses across the North West, to deliver effective, high quality web design and web marketing solutions. This includes SEO and content marketing. One effective form of website content is long form content. But what is this and how can this benefit your website?

What is long form content?

Long form content is any type of content that is longer and more in depth than standard content. This applies to longer pieces of video content, 40 minute podcasts and blog articles that are longer than, or around, 1500 words.

What are the steps for creating effective long form content for your website?

While attention spans in general appear to have shortened, binge watching TV shows hour after hour and sitting through 3 hour movies is becoming more popular. This indicates that if the content is engaging and interesting enough it can keep your audience’s attention for longer, allowing you to deliver a more detailed message. However, to do this effectively there are a number of steps to follow. These include:

• Defining the purpose of your long form content- any piece of content for your website needs to have a clear purpose. This will help determine the tone and information throughout the content and will help to add something that is important to your website, in particular something that has been missing so far. Long form content can take more forms and be useful for a range of purposes including explaining specific details about products or services, sharing important industry news, and of course for sales posts. The purpose of the content can also help to determine the type of long form content you should create.
• Writing enough to deliver your message and information- when creating your content try not to focus on the length or meeting a particular word count and instead just make sure that you create enough content to deliver your message. Leave out the fluff and the keyword stuffing and try to instead create engaging content that will invoke interest and deliver a clear message over time.
• Supporting text with visuals- when creating long form blog content it’s important to make sure that the website page itself is well designed. A wall of text is not going to appeal to even the most eager of potential customers or clients and so it’s important to break up the written text with imagery and visual content. This draws the eye down the page and helps to keep attention focused on your website. It also helps to emphasize and support any points your text is making which can help to reinforce the key message your content is delivering.

How can long form content impact sales and SEO?

Long form content can have a positive impact on SEO and sales from your website as this brings advantages to your website, including:

• Securing higher level organic results- on Google long form content often secures higher ranking positions than short for content on the same topic. This is because this type of content shows your industry authority and is thought to be more helpful, relevant and useful for searchers. This means that this type of content can drive more traffic to your website without paying for advertising.
• Signaling industry authority- if your website has detailed and useful long form content your company will be presented as an industry leading business which helps build consumer trust and can boost sales and sign ups.

For more information and advice, get in touch with the professionals today, here at Pumpkin Web Design.