If you’re wondering if long-form content will fit your niche, then look no further than BuzzFeed.
They’ve heavily invested in investigative journalism and have a separate section for indepth stories. The reason is they want to build a brand with sustainable assets.
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Another brilliant example is Wait But Why – a blog that publishes long insightful content (1500+ words) once per week.
These examples have proven sustainability compared to the old short form content mill formulas popular a few years ago. Search engines reward long form content.
Are they even sustaining their current traffic at such a low posting frequency?
Nope. They’re thriving with this content strategy.
Their articles go crazy viral earning hundreds of thousands of shares compared to similar short form content. Their post on Generation Y got more than 2 million shares.
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Their research-backed piece on Artificial Intelligence impressed Elon Musk.
Elon Musk
✔
@elonmusk
Good primer on the exponential advancement of technology, particularly AI http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html …
10:46 PM - Jan 23, 2015
The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Part 1 - Wait But Why
Part 1 of 2: "The Road to Superintelligence". Artificial Intelligence — the topic everyone in the world should be talking about.
waitbutwhy.com
118 118 Replies 1,172 1,172 Retweets 1,339 1,339 likes
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In fact, Google has dropped hints about favoring in-depth content by providing it a special place in its search results over short form content. image06Still, these are currently hints, right? I know of something that’ll interest and inspire you to take action – hard data. Here are 6 studies on how long-form content affects your search engine rankings, backlinks and social shares. 1. Average number of referring domain links for articles greater than 1000 words increase (from 6.19 to 9.53) – BuzzSumo and Moz teamed up to analyze 1 million articles this summer. They found that 85% of articles are less than 1000 words long. image47A major reason can be the effort required to write longer evergreen content. But, longer content consistently gets shared and linked to a greater extent. Look at the correlation numbers for shares in long-form content versus short form content. image59The strong correlation of long form with links isn’t new. Look at the data from content that get links 2012 version. image63Even in 2012, less long-form posts were written, but they got more backlinks. 2. HubSpot’s analysis of 6,192 articles found 2000+ words articles got more backlinks and social shares 2500+ word articles on HubSpot earned the most links. image642500+ words articles also earned the most social shares. image19And articles between 2,250 – 2,500 words earned the maximum organic traffic. Short form content wasn’t nearly as competitive. But this is one side of a content strategy coin.image313. BuzzSumo’s analysis of 100 million articles shows that in-depth articles get the most shares on social media In their sample of 100 million articles, short form content (less than 1000 words) was shared 16 times as often as the long-form work. 3,000-10,000 word posts averaged the most social media shares (8859).
