Developing Long Form Content to Help Scale Your Marketing Efforts
Posted on 5th April 2023
As we move deeper into a largely technological age in which people are spending more and more time on their computers and smartphones, marketing has continued to evolve in order to keep up with the changing landscape.
While many organizations have had no problems creating a digital presence through advertisements and graphics, a striking number of businesses and marketing agencies have dismissed the power of keywords and SEO optimization.
Even many of those who have dipped their toes into the utilization of keywords for websites haven’t taken advantage of crafting longer, SEO-rich content that helps them rank and gain authority in the eyes of search engine algorithms. Whether you work at a marketing agency or the marketing department of an organization, investing time and effort into crafting an SEO-optimized presence has the potential to bolster your marketing efforts substantially.
Here is how developing long-form content can help scale your marketing efforts.
Understanding the Value of SEO Optimization
For many — even in marketing — the value of SEO-driven strategies is misunderstood and rarely taken advantage of. In order to gain a keen understanding of how long-form content can bolster your marketing efforts, it’s important to have a firm grasp of what SEO is, how it works, and how you can use it to your advantage.
Put simply, search engine optimization (SEO) is the method of enhancing the amount and quality of traffic that a website gets by adjusting and adding things to get it to appear organically on search engine results. This means that when someone types something that your business does such as “window washing,” into a search engine, your website will be one of the first things they see.
Studies have shown that more than 90% of people don’t venture past the first page on search engines. That means if your website isn’t optimized to show up on a search engine’s first page, you’re potentially losing the eyes of 90% of consumers.
By utilizing keywords and phrases throughout your website, you’re able to spread your reach and present yourself to a wider audience. While trying to go after broader keywords, such as food, is extremely difficult, more specific keywords such as “spicy Thai food,” can help you connect with consumers that are seeking out the unique products or services that you offer.
While optimizing webpages to feature keywords that help your organization rank on search engines can be a great start, long-form content provides you with more opportunities to make your website look authoritative in the eyes of search engine algorithms. Having clarity around the power that long form content has to help you scale your marketing efforts will make it easier to take the leap and start crafting long-form content for your website.
How Long Form Content Strengthens Your Marketing Efforts
To truly understand how long-form content can strengthen your marketing efforts, it’s important to dive a little deeper into the world of SEO. Search engines have certain things they look for when they decide which websites to display first in a search.
As you’re already aware, having the same words and phrases that people are searching for on their website is one key component. A lesser-known criterion that search engines utilize to determine which websites show up on search pages first is backlinks.
Backlinks are simply the instances in which webpages link to a different web page. The more websites are linking to your webpage, the more authoritative your webpage seems to search engines. Accordingly, consistently crafting long-form content for your website allows you to make your website and web pages more likely to show up on the first page of search engines.
Given the power of long-form content to get your organization’s presence in front of more consumers, it makes sense that this practice can help you scale your marketing efforts and reach a wider audience. This being the case, when you’re crafting media planning strategies to grow your marketing efforts, including long-form content is a way to make your strategy more effective.
Long-form content can vary in scale and form depending on your organization. If you have employees with specialized knowledge in various fields, that can be a great resource to tap for blog posts with high potential to be linked to. If you find that you’re involved with a lifestyle brand, blog posts that utilize fitting keywords can also be a great option.
Though long-form content is a great piece to add to your marketing strategy, it’s important to note that you’re not going to be seeing life-changing results overnight. SEO optimization takes time, so it’s important to be consistent and not give up. If you find that you’re having trouble finding writers, it can be useful to take advantage of some new and exciting technology to help get your long-form blog posts up and running.
Consumers Trust Organic Search Results More than Paid Ads
At this point in time, living digitally is nothing new to the vast majority of people out there. As such, most people have become savvier when it comes to finding what they’re looking for within a search engine.
Today’s consumers typically gloss right over paid ads and go straight to the search results when searching for something. While paid ads can be a great way to improve brand awareness, they aren’t as effective at cultivating an audience’s trust. As such, utilizing long-form content can improve your marketing efforts by making your organization seem trustworthy and authoritative to audiences who find it through search engines.
Scale Your Marketing Efforts with Long Form Content
While many people may ignorantly dismiss SEO as an unnecessary part of a marketing strategy, the truth is that SEO has the power to strengthen your marketing efforts significantly. In particular, long-form content allows you the opportunity to reach different audiences and strengthen your digital presence so that it appears on the first page of search engines.
