How to write long-form content: 7 smart steps and examples

If you’re intimidated by writing any piece of content longer than 1,000 words, don’t be.

Long-form content can be just as straightforward as dashing off a 500-word piece.

It will take you slightly longer to do it, but there are huge benefits to reap from spending time creating long-form pieces.

For one thing, longer content tends to perform better than short content. It earns more backlinks and is most likely to appear on Google’s first page. 

Plus, bloggers continually report that longer content formats such as guides and ebooks are most effective. The ones who write ultra long-form posts (3,000+ words) are 2.5x more likely to say their results are strong vs. bloggers who write shorter posts of 1,500 words or less.

Ultimately, writing long-form content that gets results is a skill, and once you learn, you can leverage it to meet your content marketing goals.

Long-form content is any piece of written content that’s over 1,000 words in length. 

Some people will quibble about the exact word count, but almost everyone agrees that short-form content is always under 1,000 words. That means a good long-form content benchmark is 1,000 words or over.

That’s not the only defining factor of long-form content, however. To be truly long-form, the content must have depth. It needs to dive deep into a topic and provide value. It should be useful and helpful to readers, giving them the information they need.

For SEO purposes, long-form content helps you hit three connected goals:

Finally, as we move further into the age of multimedia content, don’t discount alternative content types when discussing the long-form format.

Videos, webinars, and podcasts can have just as much depth as a piece of written content and can help you meet your goals, too – and they might invite even better engagement.

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