What are Long-Form Articles?
In simple words, long-form articles consist of a larger word count. Some people consider words more than 700 to be long-form, whereas some think that if the word limit crosses the 1800 wordmark, the article or piece of writing is long-form.
The ultimate goal of these long-form articles is to grasp the attention of the readers and unite them on a single point that is being conveyed through that specific piece of writing.
In the context of articles, plenty of details prove to be quite interacting and engaging in comparison to the more short-worded articles, making lengthy and detailed articles ideal for marketing purposes.
In addition to this, this certainly does not restrict the long-form articles to marketing purposes; they have multiple other uses too. If you want to create a website, and want to write an article, you can do so with the additional skill of word press.
However, there are companies such as Stromonic out there that take care of domain registration, web hosting, WordPress hosting, and much more facilities for you.
This article will tell you all about how you can write long-form articles, why they are helpful, and what are the necessary tools and organizations can help in giving your website an appealing first impression.
Further Details on Long Form Articles
Although most consider articles to be long-form when analyzing the total number of words, it’s not only about the words. Such articles are a recent trend amongst many individuals particularly when websites such as Stromonic have made it easier to provide top-grade web hosting facilities to people.
Some argue that articles consisting of 500 words are much better than long-form articles and they provide hardcore facts to support their argument.
One of the points they raised was that the shorter articles are convenient for an average person to read and, it also does not create an atmosphere of boredom.
Furthermore, the attention spans are short and it keeps the audience engaged. Today the world is just a collection of people who lead extremely busy lives and have very little time for reading long articles; as a result, small articles of 500 words are a better option for them to read in a short period.
Such people might just want to have a slight idea about the topic and just move on. On the other side, long-form articles are an effort to combine creativity with marketing.
Advantages of Long-form Articles
Makes the Writing Visually Appealing
Most people criticize or are not in favor of long-form articles just because they say it’s a huge chunk of words, but long-form articles are filled with subheaders, visual simulation, and many other things that make the article look appealing.
These small things make a huge difference and have a major impact on the performance of the website. The engagement-boosting techniques from Stromonic and such thoughtful articles help in increasing engagement on the website up to 2 times more.
However, sometimes the traffic reaches an extent where it has to be managed effectively or, the websites can crash. Stromonic facilitates EverCloud Pro web hosting options that are considered ideal for busy websites. Another interesting point is that when you add pictures to your articles, the number of shares you receive can reach as high as 94%.
Furthermore, if you take a glimpse at blog websites, you will notice that they are bombarded with pictures. It is because the more pictures there are, the more will be traffic on that website.
A research was conducted and, the results stated that, when a picture is included after every 75-100 words, you will get the most shares. So what does this tell us? It ultimately means that in a long-form article of 1200 words, one will require around 12 images to include in between the text to make it appealing to the reader.
If you want to do something extra, don’t just stick to visuals or the word count. Make sure things are understandable and shareable at the same time.
The use of icons also helps. After reaching a higher position in the industry, one can make multiple smaller co-websites that will be linked directly to the main website.
Experts consider the JumpStart reseller hosting package from Stromonic as the most suitable package for smaller websites that want to host their customers. The JumpStart Pro package costs less than 10$ that lasts for a month and, allows up to 3 TB of data transfer. The JumpStart also has two other more affordable packages.
Higher Quality Content
The long format helps in creating better content. There must have been many times when you come across a post that promises to be a “complete guide” only to find that it does not provide the required information. It sure is quite frustrating and, one cannot avoid it when you have to stick to the length of traditional blog posts.
Long-form content allows one to dig deeper into a topic, including research and interview commentary. It can make your content more precise, informative, and enjoyable to read.
Impact of Long-Form Articles on SEO
Let us now talk about why is there a need for long-form articles and what impact can it have on customer engagement. For instance, Google is home to millions of users and so you can get the most traffic from Google for free. However, Google prefers content that is of a long-form type.
According to research, the longer the content in the websites, the more backlinks will be generated by it. It creates a snowball effect as the more links your content gets, the stronger your overall off-site SEO will become. That is the reason why long-form content holds the higher organic spots on search engines.
However, there is one setback to writing such long articles. The longer the articles, the more memory it will consume which leaves lesser storage for other work purposes. Because hard drives have become relatively expensive, this is becoming a concern for many individuals in the industry.
However, there is no need to worry as Stromonic facilitates its customers by providing dedicated servers starting from just 500 GB to a whopping 3000 GB at comparatively affordable pricing. It is aware of the rising concerns of such individuals and subsequently provides such services that are easily accessible by all.
Furthermore, a study was conducted by CoShedule and, the results highlighted that an article with a long-form format ranks much higher than any other article. Further research about CoShedule showed that larger sites on the internet contain a much higher domain authority focused mainly on publishing longer content due to its multiple benefits.
Additionally, they also found out that if the content is longer, it will have better keyword optimization. In addition to this, such content will get more backlinks and, these long-form articles were lengthy but exactly to the point.
However, even after such results, they failed to find out the connection between content length and rank. Most simple considers it as an algorithm set by Google.
All of this brings us back to the question of whether we like free content. If so, then the only way to bring in the most engagement is through word count pumping and writing relevant to the topic.
7 WordPress-Friendly Tools and Plugins for Long-Form Success
Optimizing content is vital for reaching that goal of having max benefits and, Neil Patel did it by changing a few things.
He changed subheadings to make them look more appealing, doubled his initial word count, and kept the content updated. All of these made his website rank at 100,000 words and doubled the monthly traffic.
WordPress is the best website creator is ideal and can help in multiple tasks, that is why Stromonic brings you WordPress hosting with per month charges as low as $1.45.
However, moving on with long-form, the help of some tools can make things easier for you. The following are some:
Evernote – One of The Best Note Taking App
In simple words, Evernote will prevent your ideas from scattering all over the place and keep them in one single boundary. It is a notepad that allows you to store text, images, audio, video, screencaps, task lists, and even websites.
It is to make the whole experience user-friendly and consists of several additional features for the user’s benefit. The basic plan is free of cost and gives you the option of uploading 60 Mb of notes each month. It has the following perks:
- Sync across 2 devices at the same time
- Copy and paste web pages, images, and PDF files.
- Search for text inside images.
- Send notes to other
- Password-protected mobile app
All you need to do is make an account on Evernote. Signup on the website and, a form will open and, you will have to insert the correct credentials, verify, click on some options and after verification, your account will become active.
Grammarly – Make your Writing Smooth and Smart
Grammarly is an affordable app that uses Artificial intelligence technology to fix your mistakes in your article and make it error-free. Grammarly makes use of its high-tech contextual intelligence to differentiate between homophobes and replace the word best fitting in the sentence.
However, this does not mean you leave your article entirely in the hands of Artificial intelligence. You will miss out on a lot of errors if you do so.
Therefore, it is a better option to go through it manually one more time to remove any mistakes the software is unable to identify.
Using Grammarly is simple and, one does not need to download it. Just link it to your Google account and install a plugin into your browser.
Now, whenever it identifies any incorrect text, Grammarly will correct it for you. By purchasing the premium version, one will be able to do a lot more than just grammar mistakes; it will also remove any issues in the sentence structure and make your wording connective and fluent.
Yoast SEO – Optimize Content
Not everyone is an SEO expert and, it requires time and practice for you to learn about all the ins and outs of SEO. However, if you desire to be a virtual expert in SEO, Yoast is the best option out there.
Yoast will analyze and identify the keyword density, passive voice, no-follow links, and much more that can help in ranking your website on the top. It is what makes Yoast different from others.
Image Optimization – Sleek Down your Images
According to recent research, 43% of the entire webpage weight is taken up by images and, this percentage is even higher when we talk about long-form articles.
If you have a webpage that publishes long articles with an abundance of images, it is best to optimize the images. One disadvantage is that if there are more than required images along with a lot of text, it will slow down your webpage and, visitors might be annoyed by the time taken to load it. Pages that take more than 7 seconds to load lose more than 30% of their visitors.
Some of the best WordPress image optimization plugins are:
CoShedule – Create Editorial Calendar
Organizing your material is the most important; part of the plan. If things aren’t organized, confusions arise and hence the work quality is affected. An editorial calendar will help in mapping out and publishing your content.
Include Table of Contents
The table of contents is an overview of all of the text you have written. You will have to include the main topics along with their page number so that readers find it easy to look for their favorite topic.
It makes it easy and quick to read the article as a person can conveniently find what they are searching for instead of scrolling through the entire article.
This feature causes the audience to repeatedly visit your website as he finds it simpler and user-friendly in comparison to other websites. Moreover, it makes things more organized for them. You can use the Easy Table of Contents plugin to create organized tables for your blog posts.
Post Reading Time
Another trend nowadays is that majority of websites also include the time that an average person would take to read the article. Adding an estimated post-reading time can grab the reader’s attention.
Having this brings a sense of relief that reading the article would not take much of one’s time and, he can quickly go through it and move on to other tasks.
Moreover, you can add small icons that act like clocks so that each reader can calculate their time. One of the best reading time calculator plugins is: Read Meter – By Brainstorm Force.
