Blog

People have become busier than ever, and with their attention spans getting shorter; marketers and business owners have long ago been warned against posting long content. It has been a general rule of thumb to produce content that’s concise and clear; otherwise they may risk losing their audience.

 

 

Given this situation, is it wise for business owners to give their audience long-form content? According to experts, the answer depends on how you’re able to utilize the long-form content. Nevertheless, long-form content can provide surprising benefits to a website, one of them is better brand authority.

 

 

A lot of experts tried to give their own definition of long-form content. The general consensus, however, is that a post that merely attempts to breach the 500-word mark just to make search engines notice their content is not a long-form content. Most experts also peg long-form content to be around 1,200 to 2,000 words of written content, or roughly longer than a 30-second TV ad and a one-page magazine add.

 

Years ago, marketers tended to avoid publishing long-form content. Analysts feared that people’s attention spans started to shrivel, and they will begin to look not only for short content, but snappy content that gives them everything they need to know at once. It was not until recently, however, that a renewed interest for long-form content, and its benefits for a website’s SEO, began to resurface.

 

 

In a serp IQ study conducted in 2012, which involved more than 20,000 keywords, they found that the average word count of each of the top ten results had more than 2,000 words, with the content on the top spot having 2,416. Furthermore, though the actual benefits to SEO haven’t been established yet, the Google Webmasters Central Blog hinted that the search engine prefers long-form content.

 

According to Pandu Nayak, creator of the Panda algorithm update, they found that 10 percent of their users’ daily information “involves learning about a broad topic.” Many marketing experts found improvements to their web traffic upon publishing this type of content.

 

 

As enticing as these results are, this does not mean that long-form content should be published everyday. As content marketing expert Bill Belew explains, this type of content should only be used judiciously, and under the right circumstances.

 

First, businesses should realize that they are writing for themselves and begin creating a framework that can help them tell great stories. This can be achieved with help from SEO companies in Indianapolis, like MyNetWire.

 

Business owners wanting to win at SEO need to accept one truth: the best practices will change, and will continue to change, whether you like it or not. Try not to get yourself comfortable with your current strategy, since, chances are, it will be to your business’ detriment in the long run.

 

 

Today is the dawn of a new age for search engine optimization, but businesses need not worry about this. As overwhelming as it sounds, getting yourself accustomed to the new era of SEO isn’t difficult, especially if you’re able to get a head start as early as now. Take a look at how SEO changed in the past few years.

 

 

During the past few years, SEO was about duping search engines into ushering a website into a top spot in a results page through tricks and gimmicks. Doing these today will only bring harm and penalties to a website, for what Google is looking for in a high-ranking website is an exceptional user experience. A website that makes its visitors happy will be rewarded with higher rankings.

 

 

Back then, link building was all about inserting as much keyword-rich links as possible to build authority online. Quantity of links collected by a website matters less today, as Google favors links that are organically earned rather than hoarded. Websites should now aim to build links from authoritative and relevant sources to ensure that they will do better when it comes to rankings.

 

 

Google now takes into consideration the number of users clicking to your website and the amount of time your visitors spend on your page. These factors show Google how relevant and useful your website is in answering your visitors’ queries and problems, and will reward you with a higher ranking on their results page.

 

 

One thing that remains unchanged in SEO is the importance of producing high-quality content, and this will continue to remain relevant for the years to come. Users want, and need, various forms of content, and search engines reward those that produce great ones.

 

 

The recent update, dubbed by marketing experts as the Mobilegeddon, only shows that mobile-friendly websites will rule search engine rankings. You’re putting your business in grave danger if you fail to optimize your online presence for mobile users.

 

In the end, the new SEO caters to users above all, and business owners can achieve this by seeking help from SEO companies in Indianapolis, like MyNetWire.

 

Other than keyword-optimized content, business owners should also put high regard on their website’s design. Though search engines like Google wouldn’t interpret a webpage the same way as your audience, structuring its design for both Google and your audience will have a huge impact on your rankings. While there are numerous factors to consider, building your website’s design boils down to these vital elements listed down by SEO companies.

 

 

 

Java applets, Flash files, and a lot of other non-text content will often be ignored, even devalued, by Google’s crawlers. All the important content in your website should be in HTML text format, to ensure that these words and phrases will be visible both to search engines and to your visitors.

 

This does not mean, however, you can ignore other forms of content, including photos and videos. Remember to add alt text for all your images, and assign those in gif, jpg, or png format with alt attributes to give search engines an accurate text description of the image. For video and audio content, add a transcript, especially if you meant for the words and phrases to be indexed by the search engine crawlers.

 

 

Search engine crawlers will also look for links to find the content they are supposed to index in the first place. This is when a crawlable link structure becomes vital, as it enables these crawlers to browse the pathways of your website and aid them in finding all the pages in your site. Most websites, on the other hand, make the mistake of structuring their websites in a way that hinders access for search engines, thus reducing their chances of a higher ranking.

 

 

This holds true for websites that have already existed for a while and are being redesigned. Old pages on your website shouldn’t be deleted or lost, especially if this ranked well for a particular keyword, but should be redirected into the new one. Once search engine crawlers see that your old page no longer exists, they will ultimately remove it from search results, losing all the referral and organic search traffic you gained.

 

 

With a growing number of people accessing the internet on their mobile phones, the importance of having a responsive web design cannot be understated. In a nutshell, responsive design caters the same experience to different visitors using different devices. You can have a responsive web design, along with the aforementioned elements, with help from an SEO company in Indianapolis, like MyNetWire.