Content Marketing

Long Text Sucks?

Published 2021-04-28

Do people still read long articles? Sabri Suby's split-test experience and Backlinko's study of 912 million blog posts say yes, as long as your layout, headlines and subheadings do the work.

Contents

Sales Copy: Does Long Copy Beat Short Copy Every Time?
SEO and Social Shares: What 912 Million Posts Reveal
The Keys to Long-Form Success: Layout, Headlines and Subheadings

In an age of fast-food culture, people often say nobody reads long articles anymore. The data says otherwise: as long as the content is entertaining and compelling, long-form copy tends to beat short content on sales, backlinks and social shares.

Sales Copy: Does Long Copy Beat Short Copy Every Time?

In his book Sell Like Crazy: How to Get As Many Clients, Customers and Sales As You Can Possibly Handle, Sabri Suby draws on more than $30 million spent generating traffic and thousands of scientific split tests. His conclusion: long-form copy beats short-form copy every single time. The big caveat, of course, is that your content has to be genuinely entertaining and engaging.

Even in SEO, your website traffic can benefit from long-form content. SEO expert Brian Dean's Backlinko, working with BuzzSumo, analyzed 912,000,000 blog posts and in 2019 published some fascinating findings (the study covered English-language content, so lengths are word counts).

Long-form content earns more backlinks

Long-form content earns an average of 77.2% more backlinks than short posts.

The chart shows that the longer the article, the more referring domains it attracts on average: posts of 0–1,000 words get the fewest, and posts of 3,000–10,000 words get the most.

Bar chart: referring domains rise with word count, from about 2.3 for 0–1,000-word posts to about 4.1 for 3,000–10,000-word posts — Long-form content earns more backlinks than short posts (source: Backlinko)

Longer headlines get more shares

Longer headlines are correlated with more social shares: headlines of 14–17 words get 76.7% more shares than headlines of 1–5 words.

Bar chart of headline length versus average shares: about 120 for 1–5 words, 145 for 6–9 words, 170 for 10–13 words and 205 for 14–17 words — Posts with longer headlines get more social shares (source: Backlinko)

Want the most shares? Aim for 1,000–2,000 words

Want to maximize shares? The ideal content length is between 1,000 and 2,000 words.

Shares peak at 1,000–2,000 words; longer posts get slightly fewer shares but still more than posts under 1,000 words.

Bar chart: 1,000–2,000-word posts get the most average shares, about 230; 2,000–3,000 and 3,000–10,000 words decline in turn; 0–1,000 words is lowest, about 150 — 1,000–2,000-word posts get the most social shares (source: Backlinko)

The Keys to Long-Form Success: Layout, Headlines and Subheadings

We believe a genuinely valuable article can't be too short; it needs enough length to give readers the knowledge they came for. In content marketing, shorter isn't always better. Your article's layout, headline and subheadings are what make long-form content work.

Once you've written a strong long-form piece, you can send it to your list on a regular schedule through an email newsletter (EDM) so the content keeps bringing people back. To start building that list, see why a customer list is the best starting point for remarketing. For help writing headlines that pull readers in, read how a compelling headline can lift conversions.

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