A Guide To Short-Form Content: What Defines It? (Part 1)

Are you sick of scrolling through long content that seems to be endless? Are you craving bite-sized information that is simple to understand yet impactful? You are in the right place. Today, we want to introduce to you the world of short-form content, where brevity is not just the soul of wit but the key to engaging your audience in today’s fast-paced society.

This guide will explore the definition of short-form content and how you can achieve quality content despite its length. So, without further ado, get ready to discover the power of keeping things short and sweet!

What defines short-form content?

Short-form content refers to any form of content that your consumers can quickly and easily digest. In other words, such content covers a particular aspect of a topic rather than being too general or technical. There are two forms of short-form content:

• Written: Emails, social content, infographics, news highlights, or short blog posts
• Visual: Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, or TikTok

Long-form content, on the other hand, provides a more in-depth and technical understanding of a topic. Some examples of long-form content include whitepapers, research papers, academic journals, feature-length films, documentaries, tutorial videos, etc.

Ultimately, generating short-form content aims to get your message across effectively, quickly, and as simply as possible. They are not too heavy and do not require much time to digest. They are also relatively easy and quick to craft.

Does content length matter in SEO?

The importance of content length in SEO has always been the source of debate for content and digital marketers. The answer to this debate is yes, content length matters. However, that should not be interpreted that the longer your content, the better it is for SEO.

It is about the intent and aim you are trying to achieve with the content that helps you determine if you should create short-form or long-form content. Ultimately, you need to create quality content that best provides user search queries the answer they are looking for and does not always refer to long-form content.

How to create quality SEO short-form content?

A well-crafted content conveys a relatable and valuable story to the audience, whether written or visual. However, it is about more than just creating user-centric content.

Creating quality content for SEO purposes also help you rank better on SERPs, increasing your brand’s visibility among users. As such, before publishing any content, you must ensure it is reliable, engaging, original, authentic, and informative. Considering these elements can help to maximise your content’s SEO value.

Here are a couple of steps to create SEO-optimised short-form content.

1. Research on quality keywords and topic

Remember, your consumers want a quick and concise solution to their search queries when it comes to short-form content. Hence, follow these tips when choosing topics and keywords:

• Prioritise long-tail keywords
• Avoid highly competitive and negative keywords
• Your topic and keyword should match one another

2. Create an outline

Short-form content aims to provide your user with essential information in the shortest and easiest time possible. Hence, you must plan your content correctly. Remember, users may potentially exit the page if the content is not easy to digest.

Instead of having a couple of long paragraphs, you can keep each paragraph to, at most, three sentences or 50 words. Proper content planning goes a long way in helping you achieve your goal.

3. Focus on the targeted keywords

When crafting your short-form content, stick to the topic and targeted keywords. The critical aspect of short-form content is being concise and straight to the point. Hence, avoid going off-topic or trying to cover everything about the topic – make every word count so your audience’s attention is focused on the intended subject.

4. Incorporate backlinks in your article

Providing links to relatable, beneficial, and authoritative pages can help search engines determine your article’s credibility, enabling Google to push your page to more users. Also, incorporating backlinks allows consumers to understand more in-depth and related topics without deviating.

Conclusion

In today’s fast-paced society, people’s attention spans are inevitably increasingly shorter, resulting in the need for SEO services to also evolve together.

As such, we have seen the increasing demand for short-form content as it has become a vital tool for delivering information and engaging individuals in an impactful and concise manner. This guide has explored what defines short-form content and several tips to create short-form yet quality SEO content.

However, this is just the beginning. In part two of this guide, we will dive deeper into why keeping our content concise is beneficial and necessary. Stay tuned, as we are only just getting started in the world of short-form content.