Category Archives: Content Strategy

The difference between long form and short form content

Long form vs. short form content

Long form content is generally more than 2500 words and short form content is around 800-1000 words.
Long form content is descriptive, authoritative and well researched and short form content is brief and normally, doesn’t cover the topic in its entirety.
Long form content takes effort and time whereas short form content can be published in quick successions.

Do I recommend long form content or short form content?

A healthy mix of both. There is a reason.

As mentioned in the above bulleted list, long form content takes time and effort. Below I am going to explain what are the overwhelming advantages of publishing long form content on an ongoing basis, but you should maintain a balance between publishing longer pieces of content and shorter content pieces so that you have authoritative content as well as regular content.

Of course, if you have a dedicated team of multiple content writers you can publish many long form blog posts and web pages even in a single day, but if you have just one content writer (or if you write yourself) it may take a few days, even a week, to write a descriptive, well-researched, authoritative long form blog post.

Irrespective of their great benefits, one of the drawbacks of solely focusing on long form blog posts and web pages is that the frequency of publishing may be curtailed.

This is why I suggest maintaining a balance. While your longer blog post is being created, for regular updates, keep on publishing short content so that the search engine crawlers crawl your website or blog regularly.

What if you need to make a choice? Long form blog posts, without a doubt.

He’s a good infographic on the importance of publishing longform content. As usual, when I link to external infographics I just post the topmost portion and then link to the original image, and I’m doing the same here.

Infographic link on the importance of longform content

Why you cannot ignore long form content if you’re serious about improving your SEO?

If you bet highly on your search engine rankings then you must be doing lots of reading on what sort of content ranks higher on search engines, and if you prefer to keep yourself abreast with the latest, you must have come across a term called “long form content”.

Google it seems, loves longish, research-based articles and blog posts, possibly spanning multiple pages. This is called long form content.

Such content, presumably, takes lots of effort and time to come into existence, and hence, by the virtue of being difficult to create, earns ranking points from Google.

Aside from multi-page blog posts and articles, other examples of long form content are

E-books
FAQs
White papers and case studies
Interviews
Reviews
Conference or webinars scripts

Short form content on the other hand consists of blog posts, articles and web pages that are less than or equal to 1000 words. You can also have case studies, interviews, reviews and FAQs that a less than 1000 words – it basically depends on what you have to say.

Do people even read long form content? Or do they prefer short form content?

As a content writer who writes engaging content that helps my clients improve their conversion rate, I say it with difficulty that it isn’t always necessary that people read your long form content. At least not in a single reading.

They may bookmark your blog post or web page for later reading.

Having said that, it differs from business to business. B2B customers and clients are known to read a lot because a lot is at stake. For example, if you are about to spend thousands of dollars on a product or a service, the least you can do is spend a couple of hours reading about that product or service or one of its features.

What are the benefits of publishing long form content?

Long form content improves your SEO

Of course, the immediate benefit of publishing long form content is that it immediately begins to improve your search engine rankings.

There is a SerpIQ study that showed that longer blog posts enjoy higher search engine rankings compared to shorter blog posts.

Longer blog posts get higher search engine rankings

Why does long form content improve your SEO?

It’s very logical. What is Google looking for when it ranks content? High-quality content that provides all the information a search engine user is looking for.

Do you think Google just randomly ranks blog posts, web pages and articles? No. Everything is very methodical and even mathematical.

Although it takes many factors into account before it decides to rank a particular link higher, one of the most important aspects is the usefulness of your content. Most important: does it have the information the user is looking for?

Please note: if this blog post appears to end abruptly, I would like to let you know that I’m currently updating it.

Content marketing and a tropical fruit tree

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Why do you create content for your website? If you take your content seriously then you must be publishing articles and blog posts regularly. “Regularly” can be everyday, a few times in a week, or maybe a few times in a month.

The point is, whenever you are writing and publishing content you must be spending a considerable amount of time – even money – on it.

Why do you do it? Do you really believe in the power of content marketing, or are you simply trying out one of those “new fads”?

For the sake of focus, I’m assuming you understand the importance of what you’re doing.

Even when we’re serious, even when our intentions are clear, sometimes we just get trapped in a rut and keep on doing stuff thinking that sooner or later it is going to pay off. That’s why it is important to regularly step back, and evaluate our work. It’s more so important in creating and publishing content for your website.

Content marketing, although one of the most effective ways of building targeted traffic and generating qualified leads on an ongoing basis, doesn’t show results fast, unless your effort is backed by a big budget. It actually works like a tree that has to fully grow before it gives you fruits. Just imagine realizing you have been growing the wrong tree all along, or you have grown a tree that gives no fruit at all.

So how do you ensure that you are sewing and nurturing a tree that will someday give you the right fruit?

Naturally, by having a clear idea of what fruit you want to have. In terms of content writing and content marketing, you need to have a clear idea of what you want it to achieve for you – what fruit you wanted to deliver?

Not every tree can grow and give you fruit in your region. In a cold, European city, town or village you may not be able to grow a tropical tree. You either have to move to a tropical region, or you have to create the right environment for that tree to grow.

What I mean to say is, you have to understand and recognize the importance of selecting the right sapling, creating the appropriate environment, and nurturing the tree with great care before it can bear you the fruit.

When you apply the concept of the tree onto your business, creating, publishing and distributing that content is the tropical environment that you need to create, targeted traffic is a tree that you plant and grow, and qualified leads that turn into paying customers and clients are the fruits you get.

How do you define “Effective Content” for your business?

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It is all well and good to repeatedly say that you should publish content on your website and you should take content marketing really seriously. I even wrote a lengthy blog post on “20 Reasons Why Your Business Website Needs Fresh Content“. But how do you decide what sort of content you should publish? After all, it’s not merely the targeted traffic that you seek, you seek targeted traffic that converts, that changes your visitors into your paying customers and clients.

The high-quality content that converts is “effective content” for your business and every business has its own definition of effective content.

Although every business may have its own unique definition of what sort of content works for it, there are some universal traits. Effective content has universal definitions that can be applied to any business. Listed below are the most important traits that can accurately help you define what’s “effective content” for your business.

It fills a need or solves a purpose

Why does your content exist? This existential question not just applies to our spiritual lives, it also applies to the content that we publish on our websites (and blogs). Why do you publish content? What is your ultimate motive? The above-linked blog post that gives you 20 reasons why you should publish content on your business website may help you to a great extent, but eventually you have to define the purpose. What purpose does your content solve? Do you simply want to help people who come to your website looking for some advice? Would you like them to buy your product or service someday or immediately? Do you want to establish a rapport with them? Is there a great need for the content that you are publishing?

It communicates on an ongoing basis

Effective content establishes a communication channel. You are communicating your messages, your ideas, your experiences to people who visit your website, and the people who visit your website, your readers, communicate their feedback and there needs to you. They may also communicate to each other if you have established such a platform (such as a comments section in a blog).

Effective content makes you use your unique voice with a human touch

Businesses are normally faceless. Customers and clients don’t get to see the human side of people who provide them products and services. Even at slightest pretext, they give rise to doubts and suspicions. On the other hand your content allows you to give a human voice to your business and talk to your current and prospective customers and clients in a friendly, familiar manner. This is the reason when you’re trying to create effective content for your website or blog, use the language used by your customers. Avoid using jargon unless it is unavoidable. Talk in the first person as much as possible.

Here is what you should do in order to talk with an individual voice: imagine that you’re talking to a single person sitting across you. Don’t worry about your content being read by one person, by 10 people, or even by 10,000 people. Just focus on that one particular individual and write as if you’re talking to him or her. This will give you a conversational style and you will appear friendlier and more approachable.

Effective content expresses a clearly defined, focused view

There should be no ambiguity when you are publishing content on your website. Don’t beat around the bush. Be clear about what you intend to say. Take for instance this blog post – you may think that I’m writing something about content writing, but I’m precisely talking about creating effective content particularly for your website. I have a clear idea of what I’m writing, and I have a clear idea of what you should get after reading this blog post. This sort of clarity must be there in every webpage and every blog post you publish.

Your effective content should be devoid of “sales speak”

When you try to sell, you impose your views on people, and nobody likes that. For instance, if you want to hire me as your content writer, it should be your decision. Although on my main pages you may find me trying to highlight my strengths and hence, trying to convince you into giving your content writing work to me, you will also find 100s of articles and blog posts that plainly talk about how to create direct content for your website. You can create a super effective content marketing strategy just by going through the articles and blog posts published on this website and you may never need to hire me for your business. I’m fine with that.

The quality of your content must be unmatched

This may not be always possible, but whenever you are publishing content on your website, give it your best shot. When I’m writing content for my own blog or website, I write it with same seriousness and dedication as I write for someone who pays me (after all sooner or later, the content that I publish helps me get more business, so in a sense, I’m being paid for this). So quantity is good, but it shouldn’t be at the cost of quality. Publish just one blog post every week, but it should be par excellence.

As a mentioned above, effective content may have different meanings for different businesses, it has a universal characteristic and the points contained within that characteristic are the ones I have listed above. What do you think about the best content for your business? Have some interesting points that you would like me to cover? Do let me know in the comments section.

20 reasons why your business website needs fresh content

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There is no ambiguity about the fact that your business website constantly needs new content. Zillions of articles and blog posts have been written so far trying to explain marketers and business owners why they should have content publishing as one of the main marketing tools. You may already be focusing lots of effort on creating content for your website.

But do you really know why your business website needs fresh content on an ongoing basis? You may have a basic idea. Most of the people see fresh content as a doorway to better search engine rankings. Yes, sure, your rankings can tremendously improve if you go on publishing valuable and quality content on your website, but most confuse it with increasing the overall keyword density. With the latest Hummingbird update Google no longer just focuses on the keywords. It ranks your pages for the real meaning they contain, the real value they deliver. Keywords matter, but not that much. It is the essence of the content that you publish. So the conventional wisdom behind constantly publishing fresh content stands defeated to a great extent.

Listed below are 20 reasons why your business website needs fresh content.

Give people a reason to visit your website repeatedly: People don’t do business with you on their first visit, especially when you are not a known brand or personality. You need to create a rapport and for that you need to encourage people to come to your website as frequently as possible. How do you achieve that? By constantly providing them the content they seek. May it be information, may it be humor, may it be useful tips and tricks, whatever, your fresh content should be able to draw them to your website again and again.
Educate your visitors: Educating them doesn’t mean raising their literacy level, it means they should be able to learn as much as possible about products and services you are offering them so that they can make an educated decision. This way they feel empowered. They don’t want your marketing message thrust down upon their throats. They want to make their own decision. When they buy from you, it should be their decision, not your constant prompting. This can only happen if you properly educate them. After that, even if they are not happy with your product or service, they won’t hold a grudge against you.
Keep your visitors informed: Fresh content on an ongoing basis keeps your visitors informed. They know when you are making changes to your offerings. When you launch new products or services, they instantly get to know about them. In case some new developments are happening within your organization and you would like to share them with your business, this can be a good content publishing opportunity.
Generate content for your newsletter: You don’t need to separately create content for your newsletter – I hope you are publishing a regular newsletter for your business. Once you have built yourself a nice mailing list, you can always send the highlights – they can be weekly highlights or monthly highlights – with these highlights linking back to the actual webpages, articles and blog posts on your website.
Establish your authority: What is authority, especially in the business world? It’s not just having the knowledge of your field, but also the ability to share your knowledge in such a manner that it is also useful to people who have access to that knowledge. They should be able to use that knowledge for the betterment of their business as well as personal lives. Only then they see you as an authority figure and once they begin to see you as an authority figure, they begin to trust you and when they begin to trust you, they don’t hesitate before doing business with you.
Generate direct traffic from social media: Although you may decide to follow your own pattern, the conventional wisdom says that there should be a 70-30 ratio when you post content on social media and social networking websites. Of all the links that you post, 70% should come from other websites publishing valuable content that you would like to share with your friends and followers, and 30% should come from your own blog and website. There are many websites that get more traffic from Facebook and Twitter than from Google and other search engines.
Create content targeting different devices: People may be accessing your content using their computers, laptops, LCD TVs, tablets and mobile phones. One way is to scale your existing content according to the screen being used at that particular moment. Another way is creating multiple versions (without duplicating) for different devices. You don’t need to create unique content for every device under the sun, but you can definitely create content for computers, laptops and TVs on one hand and tablets and phones on the other.
Develop community around your brand: When people repeatedly come across your content – on your own website/blog or on other social media websites – a vibrant exchange of ideas takes place and when you share your opinions through your content, people too like to share their opinions regarding your content. When they regularly start talking about your content in general and your brand in particular a community begins to develop around your brand.
Target different groups: Often it is not possible to target all prospective groups through a single page or blog post. For instance, as a content writer I would like to target as many niche businesses as possible because every business that wants to sell needs compelling content, which I can provide. So why not create pages and blog posts targeting web designers (who may need content for themselves as well as their own clients), SEO marketing experts who want to use content as an SEO tool, hospitality industry, lawyers and attorneys, accountants, interior decorators, and so on. They can all use my content writing services and I can create specialized pages for them. You can achieve the same for your business and different niche groups you cater to.
Establish yourself as an expert: Would you like to do business with a novice or an expert? Of course if you are looking for professional services that really perform well for your business, you go for an expert. But how do you know if a person is an expert? When he or she repeatedly shares his or her knowledge and experience with you. As a professional content writer I should have lots of things to say about content writing, whether it’s about writing content for my clients or about writing on various topics and for various mediums. I should be able to tell you what sort of content performs well for my clients. Through my writings I should be able to differentiate between lousy content and quality content. The more I share with you, the more you appreciate my content and use it to improve your own content on your website and blog, the greater is my impact as an expert content writer. This can be applied to any field.
Create link building opportunities: Although according to the latest grapevine your page rank may no longer depend on the number of quality links coming to your website, links still matter. They help search engines decide how valuable your content is. This is especially true in the times of social media where individual endorsements are preferred over algorithmic ratings. In fact this is a reason why more and more search engines are incorporating social media and social networking updates into their generic search result pages. Anyway, people are not going to link to you unless they find value in what you have published. You need to provide lots of quality content on an ongoing basis so that they have a greater choice.
Encourage engagement on social networking websites: You can interact with people without posting content from your own website and blog but then you are always talking about other people. Engagement maybe there but this engagement may not lead people to anywhere. On the other hand, if you post content from your own website or blog and if people talk about your content and then you interact with them, the engagement level is totally different.
Show your visitors that one thing or another is always happening at your business: You publish content on your business website primarily for two reasons: to educate your visitors about your products and services and to inform them of the latest developments happening at your end. Launching a new product or service? Opening a new branch in a different city or in a different country? Attending or hosting a business conference? Releasing an upgrade of your product? Doing some charity work? Just hired a great talent? Added a new section to your website? You can share all these things on your website so that people know that there is always something cooking up in your company or organization – in a positive manner.
Get your employees involved: Encouraging your employees to create content and publish it regularly on your website or blog is a great way to keep them motivated and charged up. When they can articulate themselves they feel more a part of the entire process. It also shows your visitors that your workforce is communicative and full of ideas.
Give search engines more content to crawl and index: The search engines love to crawl and index new content. The more you publish, with greater frequency they visit your website. The added benefit of this is, you set a pattern in such a manner that whenever you add something really useful that you think should be indexed and ranked as soon as possible, it is done. I have personally seen blog posts appearing in Google within a few minutes of their publishing. Publish fresh content on your website as much as possible to make search engine crawlers more and more greedy.
Attract traffic for longtail keywords: The Hummingbird Google update has rendered targeted keyword optimization redundant. It is more about longtail keywords – complete sentences and phrases, just the way we speak, rather than just keywords. Create lots of content that provides answers to questions your prospective customers and clients have. For instance, if somebody searches for “where can I find a competent content writer for my web design company?” he or she should be able to find my website. This is the way people normally talk to each other.
Give people a reason to spend more time on your website: The longer they stay, the greater is the chance of them doing business with you. You need to engage your visitors with interactive and useful content. This can be achieved by adhering to a uniform quality standard. If you like this blog post, and if you find it useful, then you will think, hey, this website may have more content that I can use and apply on my own website. What happens? You stay longer on the website. Some of you may even think, well, if this guy knows so much about content writing and content marketing, I might as well hire him for writing content for my own website.
Cover every possible keyword in your niche, legitimately: Keywords of late may seem to be losing their sheen, especially after the Hummingbird update, they still do matter. There are many people who are still going to use your keywords. For instance, there are people who are still going to use terms like “content writer” and “web writer” to look for the services I provide. Continuously publishing fresh content gives you an opportunity to cover all the necessary keywords belonging to your niche.
Create an ultimate information resource: Create an information resource for yourself as well as for your visitors. As you work on various projects you will go on learning new things and gaining experience, and in the hub of various activities, many things may slip out of your mind. Not if you record them on your blog or on your website. You can always keep coming back to your content and check out how you handled a particular situation a couple of years ago.
Create material for your book: The guys at 37 Signals created a book out of their blog posts. Why not? You have already compiled so much information and you have already received feedback from your ardent followers, why not compile that information, based on all that positive feedback that you have obtained, into a book? Even if you don’t want to sell that book, you can offer it for free to your visitors. You can ask them to subscribe to your email updates in lieu of downloading your book.

These are some compelling reasons why your business website needs fresh content on an ongoing basis. Can you think of more reasons? Do share your opinion in the comments section.

A quick note for people who may have already read a blog post titled “15 Reasons Your Business Website Needs Fresh Content” – a scraper website had hijacked that blog post. So I deleted that blog post, rewrote, added five more reasons and published it again.

The Two Why’s of Publishing Content on Your Website

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You are continuously publishing content on your website, right? You have read raving articles and blog posts about the power of content marketing and how it outshines conventional marketing and how it brings inbound traffic to your website without having to spam people. But you know what, content marketing isn’t just about creating and publishing content. You need to have a clear direction. One thing is indisputable: as a business you DO need to publish high-quality and highly valuable content on your website. But what purpose does that content solve? How does it help your business generate more leads and consequently, more business? How does it help your visitors make up their minds, preferably, in your favor?

In order to implement an effective content marketing strategy you need to figure out the two why’s publishing and promoting content:

Why are you publishing content on your website?
Why should your visitors care about your content?

If you are able to figure out these two why’s you have got something really good going on. Let’s go into some detail now if you are not in a great hurry.

Why are you publishing content on your website?

I assume you are savvy enough to know that you need to inform your visitors; you have to lay your cards on the table so that they are convinced you are not holding something up your sleeve. The great thing about having a website is that it is available to everybody 24 x 7 x 365. The bad thing, although it is not a bad thing and it depends on how you organize information, is that people are not able to talk to you. There is a more than 95% possibility that they are visiting your website for the first time. If you are a known brand, you have crossed a major hurdle already, but if you are not, people are not familiar with you. They doubt you. Even if they don’t doubt you, they need some more information about you, about your product, about your service, and about the way you do business. They might be impressed with your website design but when it comes to spending money, people are more cautious. They are interested in words. You need to convince them that you are a genuine business offering a genuine product or a genuine service. How do you do that?

Publish content that informs them without manipulating
Publish as much information as is needed in order to make a conscious decision
Organize your content in such a manner that it can be easily accessed as soon as it is needed
Share your knowledge and wisdom so that people trust you

This is one aspect. The above points take care of your business once visitors are already on your website. Your content should also be able to draw more visitors to your website. This can be achieved by creating compelling content that people want to talk about and even share on social media and social networking websites. Your content should also motivate them to sign up for your regular updates so that you can constantly keep in touch with them.

Try to define clear-cut goals for every blog post and article you publish on your website. There should be a well-defined measuring parameter so that you know you are in the right direction. The measuring parameter can be anything. Do people sign up for your newsletter after reading your articles and blog posts? Do you get mentions on Twitter? How many people favorite your article or blog post on Google+, Twitter or Facebook? How many people directly approach you after accessing your content.

These are just my assumptions. Every business has unique requirements so you can draw your measuring parameters according to your own goals and objectives.

Why should your visitors care about your content?

You may care about your content because, well, it is your content and you think it is going to have a positive impact on your business. But what about your visitors? Why should they care about your content? What do they get out of it? Are you offering them something that they cannot get from other websites? Are you creating an experience for them? Are you empowering them? Are you educating them and then letting them decide whether they want to do business with you or not?

Take for instance my website, or this blog. I provide professional content writing and content marketing services. Why should you read my blog posts and my other pages on the website? When I publish content on my website my primary purpose is to share what I know with you. Then after reading, whatever you have learned and absorbed, you can either apply on your website on your own, or you can hire me. I solve two purposes here: display my knowledge and give you a choice whether you want to use that knowledge on your own or you want me to pitch in.

For a successful content marketing strategy it is essential that you are able to define these two why’s before creating 100s of webpages and blog posts and then realizing they mean nothing.