Long-Form Content Versus Long-Form Crap

Stop it. Just stop it. If you don’t understand SEO, please don’t give advice about it. Stop jumping on the band wagon of every new SEO trend you read about and messing it up for everyone else.

What do I mean? Well, this time I’m talking about using long-form content (and SEO providers who believe that word count means guaranteed higher rankings).

Long-form content (sometimes stylized “long-form”) is content that is longer than a normal blog post but not quite long enough to be an eBook. Ask any content writer or marketer and they will give you different word counts to define it.

In general, I like to consider anything above 1,200 words to be long-form content. Others go as high as 1,800 words minimum or more. 

Is There a Benefit to Long-Form Content?

Hell, yes there is. I have seen the results of using this type of content for a while, and a recent study confirms it works.

“Based on SERP data from SEMRush, we found that longer content tends to rank higher in Google’s search results,” writes Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko and author of the study.

What did the study find? “The average Google first-page result contains 1,890 words.”

Here Comes the Crap

Some people read that content longer than 1,800 words ranks on the first page of Google and that’s all they need to hear. Now, I see articles chocked full of crap simply to satisfy a word count.

That’s not how long-form content works. It needs to be of quality and answer people’s questions. It works because people find the content useful and stay on your website longer to read it. The “time on site” is a ranking signal to Google and shows that your content is relevant to the specific search terms that took readers to it in the first place.

Trust me. If it were all about word count, you could simply write the same word 1,890 times and wind up on page one of Google. We’ve come a little ways since being able to manipulate Google in that manner.

Google is My Savior

Thank God Google is taking care of some of this junk, but I still wind up clicking on it from time to time. Knowing these articles will eventually work their way out of high search rankings gives me hope. But, it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It provides a bad example for the SEO industry. While myself and others are preaching long-form content, we now have to explain to clients why their “former” SEO provider failed with writing long-form content on their behalf.

Agree or not, I will leave you with this. This is one of the shortest posts you will ever see from me. I made it long enough to vent but short enough that you’d read it all. Can you imagine having to read me complain for 1,800 words?

WARNING – If you hate shameless self-promotion, look away now. Don’t look beyond this sentence.

Couldn’t help it could you? Okay, here we go.

In my new book, Link Juice (Understanding and Using Backlinks for Better Search Rankings), I talk about using long-form content as a cornerstone for acquiring backlinks to your website. You will also learn the right way to acquire backlinks (as opposed to the black-hat methods many people still practice).

 Available now in paperback or Kindle. If you have Kindle Unlimited, it’s FREE!