Search engines are becoming stricter with their content criteria over time. Long-form content has become one of the most effective types of content in terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Without utilizing its benefits, getting an audience would be difficult.
SEO is the process of optimizing your content so that it appears in search results. In other words, it increases visibility in search engine tools. For business owners, this is an important step to master. Content marketing is a powerful way to reach your target audience worldwide. With the help of long-form content and SEO, you’ll reach your audience in no time.
Search engines have adapted their requirements for search rankings. Now, long-form content fits the criteria. It contains many similar keywords, so it appears in several search results. Search engines usually label such content as resourceful.
However, SEO can also be your enemy. Some people put in irrelevant information or details to satisfy the word count, which can reduce audience engagement and satisfaction. It also misleads or weakens the keywords used in the content.
Here are a few things to consider to rank higher in search engines.
SEO foundation for long-form content
Keywords are essential to focus on. They can help you understand the language your audiences use, keep your content relevant, and push your content to fit search queries. However, it’s important to understand that search engines work differently on different platforms. Here’s how long-form content SEO works on popular platforms:
- Blog post: Other than inserting keywords in headlines, tags, URLs, meta descriptions, and file names, comments are also important. Readers prefer to see interactions; you can put in your keywords while at it. Search engines also prefer only one or two keywords in blog posts. More than that, they’ll most likely mark it as spam.
- Website: For websites, you just need to insert keywords in the URL, titles and headings, meta descriptions, body text, and internal links. Search engines prefer the general SEO rule for websites, which is a keyword density between 0.5% and 2%.
- YouTube: Long-form video content usually performs better for the algorithm as you can insert more keywords naturally. Besides the content, you should also input keywords in the file name, title, description, tags, subtitles, and transcriptions.
Aside from keywords, putting headings, subheadings, and bullet points can improve readability. It divides your content into comprehensible parts so search engines can easily understand the structure. This increases your search ranking.
Optimizing content for search engines
There are two sorts of SEO that you can focus on. On-page SEO is the optimization of your content instead of external strategies. A few things to consider when it comes to on-page SEO are:
- Title tags: Put keywords in the title (preferably if it’s around the beginning of the title and naturally incorporated), but don’t stuff it. Keep it between 55-60 characters, and include your brand at the end of the title tag.
- Headings (H1): Putting keywords in the headings works effectively, but don’t mislead the audience about your content. Misleading can decrease user satisfaction.
- Alt text for images: Naturally include keywords in the text and keep it between 8-10 words.
Once you publish your content on your website, Google bots will review your page. Your content will appear in search results if it fits the ranking criteria. Technical SEO helps ensure that your content is easy and fast to access to these bots and the audience. If the bots can’t access it, your content won’t appear in the search results.
To prevent this, you should consider optimizing a few things. Other than mobile-friendliness, it is important to keep the URL as short as possible and include keywords in it. You should also inform the bots that your website is available for assessment. This can be achieved through using XML sitemaps or Robot.txt.
The power of backlinks
Backlinks are links on another website that lead to your page. Your website’s validity increases with the number of sites that link to it, increasing its rank and traffic. There are multiple external ways to get backlinks:
- Guest posting: A great strategy where you write for someone else’s website. Both parties benefit from this since you can place a backlink on their site while they get new content for the audience.
- Outreaching: Reaching out to business associations has always been a great idea. You can also contact websites that have broken backlinks so you can replace them with your site.
- Content promotion: There are many sites where you can insert your page as a source, like HARO (Help A Reporter Out).
Some backlinks wouldn’t be as effective as ones that are relevant and authoritative. Backlinks from reputable sources increase your site’s authority. Additionally, the site that links to your page must discuss the same topic. Backlinks from sites that haven’t linked to you before also increase your site’s credibility.
Create engaging and shareable content
Search engines prioritize user’s satisfaction. If your content doesn’t satisfy them, it won’t rank high in the algorithm. Search engines consider a few types of user engagement to rank your site, which are:
- Mobile optimization: The majority of internet users use mobile devices. A website that is hard to navigate on mobile would lose many audiences. For that reason, search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites. Adjusting your site for mobile users would rank you high in the search algorithm.
- Dwell time: This refers to how long users stay and interact with your website before clicking off. Longer dwell time means your page is relevant and useful to users, increasing your ranking. Dwell time depends on your website’s readability, navigation, and content quality. Without any of these, users are more likely to click off quickly.
- Semantic search: Search engines have focused more on users’ satisfaction than specific keywords. Your website will be ranked based on how well you answer their questions in the search bar. Keywords are still as important, but this is essential to ensure relevancy. Your website must be informative and should not include irrelevant details.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): It is a very important type of engagement. CTR is the ratio between the number of clicks that your page received and the number of times it is shown. This shows the importance of creating an engaging headline.
Social media also plays an important role in widening your audience. Other than backlinking, users can know about your content through sharing on social media. Although this doesn’t directly contribute to your search ranking, it still can drive traffic and promote your page.
Measuring and tracking SEO success
To know whether your strategies have worked, you can use several important tools to track your performance. They give specific data on users' preferences and how well your site upholds the search ranking. Additionally, you would likely know which area to improve if anything is holding back engagement. Here are some SEO metric tools:
- organic traffic
- keyword rankings
- search visibility
- traffic value
- referring domains
- indexed pages
- indexed coverage errors
- core web vitals
- website health
Making content requires careful consideration of the audiences’ satisfaction and the search engines. By meeting the needs of both, you can create engaging, high-traffic content.
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