You don’t need me to tell you that the internet is a highly competitive place for all businesses, regardless of the industry you’re working in. With customers creating their first impressions of you in less than a second and a saturated network full of endless content; you need to be at your best to succeed.
Articles still remain one of the most popular sources of content on the internet and remain a great way to share information, promote a business or product, or to entertain. Within this niche, we have ‘long-form articles’; articles that are typically longer than your standard articles and are written for a specific purpose.
Within this post, we’re going to explore everything you need to know about creating and writing long-form articles for your WordPress business; covering when and if it’s a good idea, how to write them, and how to make them perfect for your audience.
A Brief Introduction to Long-Form Articles
A long-form article will generally fall between the 2,000+ word mark. For perspective, your stereotypical internet post usually sits around the 500-1,100-word mark, so this is at least double what you would normally be writing.
The main purpose of a long-form article is to draw the reader in using the opportunity you’ve created to really connect and communicate and ultimately to effectively send a message, generate engagement, or start a conversation.
What’s more, long-form articles tend to be much more evergreen that your general internet article (suitable for reading at any time, date, or year), and can help you tell stories with detail, relay a wealth of information, and really hook the otherwise short attention spans of an average reader.
Whether you’re marketing products or just trying to pull readers and internet users to your WordPress website, writing long-form content could be the way forward.
When to Use Long-Form Articles
There are so many reasons as to why you would start writing long-form articles. The most common of which is to tell a story; giving yourself more than enough room to go into detail of what happened and exploring the message you’re trying to send.
If you’re talking about something academic, you may need enough space to go in-depth with what you’re saying, covering all perspectives and angles that gives the reader all the information they need for the purpose you’re writing for.
What’s more, one of the most popular forms of online content are listicles, many of which will extend past the 2,000-word mark due to the comprehensive amount of information they hold on their given subject.
When choosing when to use a long-form article or not, the best thing to do is to decide the purpose of the article and what you’re trying to achieve with it. If you’re creating an information-rich experience for your readers, a long-form article is the way to go.
The Benefits of Long-Form Articles
As we’ve already discussed, there are plenty of benefits that come with writing long-form articles, but there are some other not-so-obvious ones that can-do wonders for your WordPress website. From an SEO perspective, long-form articles are highly beneficial.
Not only will your readers be spending more time on your site reading your content (and reducing your bounce rate), the engagement rates of long-form content also tend to be a lot higher. This is because you’re actively engaging your reader is a conversation, typically about a specific topic or niche that will attract people that are interested in such things.
The lower your bounce rate, the more readers you have and the more engagement your content has, the greater authority you’ll have developed within your niche, and once other websites and organizations start linking to your article, you can start to move your way up the SERPs.
Writing Your Own Long-Form Articles
While it’s clear that long-form articles can be a great investment to your WordPress website, writing the content and ensuring it’s perfect is an entirely different matter. To make sure your content is professional and ready for your readers, here is a list of tips and advice to remember.
Researching the Content
Your long-form content is only going to be as good as the information you put in it, so it’s important to take the time for research and gather everything you’re going to want to put into your content before you actually start writing it; even more so than you work with short-form content.
By planning beforehand, you can make sure you don’t miss anything out of your content, and you have a plan on how you’re going to approach the subject. While jumping right into the writing part can be ideal for storytelling to help make it genuine, planning will ensure you cover all the bases.
Put Your Reader First
As with all forms of content, one of the biggest considerations you need to have in your mind is that of your readers. At the end of the day, your readers are the reason you’re writing this content, and if they’re not enjoying the experience you’re giving them, the article will flop.
Whether you’re thinking about your language choice, the formatting, the style, the tone of voice, and even the way you lay it out, make sure you’re researching your reader and learning everything they’re going to want from your content and the best way to present the information to them.
Formatting is also vital for your reader’s benefit. Be sure to use headings and subheadings to break up your writing and try to stick to no more than three lines of text per paragraph. This is because walls of text can be intimidating to readers and they’ll click off your page. You can also try including lists to break the text up.
Use Images
While we’re on the subject of walls of text being intimidating to your readers, if you’re only using words in your long-form content, you can guarantee that the majority of your readers are going to get bored. To give their eyes a break, you need to make sure you’re using images.
You have complete freedom here of what images you want to use, but you’ll want to make sure it’s relevant to your content and high-quality enough to grab your reader’s attention. Be sure your images don’t slow your website down, and you use the correct tags to boost your SEO ranking.
Check Grammar and Proofread
Once you’re happy with the content you’ve written, before you upload it to the world, you need to make sure you’re going through the content for accuracy and precision. This means proofreading the content and checking the grammar.
Track Analytics
Once you’ve finished writing your long-form articles, you’ll be ready to upload. Be sure to share it on your social media pages, your website, and share links on other websites and forums. However, you need to make sure you’ve got the ability to track the success rates of your article.
Since you’re posting on WordPress, you can use the built-in statistics system, or your preferred WordPress plugin of choice. It’s so important to track how well your long-form article does. There are plenty of plugins out there that can track how many times it’s shared, where it’s been shared and how long each reader is staying on the article.
Not only will this help you make edits to the article that you’ve written so it can continue to perform, but you can also apply what you learn to any future long-form articles you produce for your WordPress website.
Summary
As you can see, when it comes to writing long-form articles for your WordPress website, there are plenty of considerations you need to be thinking about. While long-form articles won’t be suitable for all purposes, they can be extremely beneficial in some.
With the right amount of planning and care in the quality of your content, it’s easy to see why long-form articles could be exactly what your WordPress website is looking for.
