Are you producing long-form content for your recruitment firm’s website? While the prospect of turning a blank page into one that offers substantial value and information for your target audience can seem pretty daunting, it is something that offers many benefits.
In this blog post, I will explain:
- What long-form content is and why recruitment marketers should be creating it
- Why it is necessary
- The benefits of long-form content
What is long-form content?
With so many different definitions online of what constitutes long-form content it can be hard to define. However, here at BlueSky PR we define long-form content ‘as a blog or article that is a minimum of 800-1,000 words long’.
Rather than the short and snappy 300-500 blogs of yesteryear, the purpose of long-form content is to provide valuable information to the reader. If you produce long-form blogs, for example, which are written with your personas of candidates and clients in mind you can increase the time that they spend on your site as they will find that the content is informative and addresses their needs.
Why has it become necessary?
Since blogging for business became popular in the early 2010s, search engines became full of articles that were trying to game their algorithms by using keyword stuffing. This is where webpages and their associated images and metadata are loaded with the same keyword over and over again in an attempt to manipulate their search ranking. This led to too much noise and too little value being displayed in Google’s search results and resulted in the platform making a number of changes designed to ensure that quality content rose to the top of its rankings.
Today, Google no longer just looks at how many times a keyword appears, but it also looks at other more relevant factors such as semantically linked keywords, the site’s overall authority, how long visitors spend on a page and, of course, the length of the content.
When you type in a search query or question on Google, it presents what its algorithm has deemed to be the highest quality piece of content based both on these factors and ensuring that the content is SEO optimised.
The benefits of long-form content for recruitment firms
Increased time on site
Well-written content that presents a comprehensive overview of a topic, or offers real value and insights to your readers, means that users are far more likely to spend a longer period of time on your website – which as mentioned above is an influential factor in your search engine ranking position.
This is backed up by analysis from Backlinko which found that websites with a high time on site are more likely to rank highly on search engine results pages. This is because it suggests to Google that visitors found that content informative enough to stay on the page rather than bounce off of it.
Positions your recruitment brand as an authority
Not only is increased time on site an influential ranking factor, but this is also very likely to increase your trust in the eyes of your target audience. After all, if you are a prospective candidate searching for interview advice which would piece of content would be more valuable? A short 300 word blog which touches upon the basics from Firm A? Or a 1,000 word blog which goes into depth on the key things you need to get right from Firm B? And how would your perception of Firm A differ to Firm B after reading each blog?
Long-form content is viewed as more trustworthy because of the detailed approach it takes which increases the authority of the brand behind it. This is especially vital in the age of Covid-19 where candidates are far more likely to communicate with recruitment consultants digitally or by the phone rather than face to face.
Increases social media sharing
Long-form content that contains external links to articles from other brands and publishers online can often enhance its social media shares. This is because companies that have been mentioned with a link will want to share it to increase their link building efforts,
Long-form content that contains detailed advice, insights or analysis is also proven to persuade people to share it. This is because the more useful the content is to them the more likely they will share it to their own online networks. Research from Moz looked at more than one million articles online and found that ‘long form content of over 1,000 words consistently receives more shares and links than shorter form content’.
You should consider adding a social sharing button to your blogs to help facilitate this and simplify the process needed to share content to social media.
Long-form content can be evergreen
Because of the in-depth overview of a topic that long-form content takes, it is likely that the content will be evergreen.
Evergreen content is content that is relevant now and long after it is published. This means that when written correctly it can continue to hold a strong search engine ranking position and generate traffic months, if not years after its creation. However, it is worth setting reminders to regularly check that any information contained within evergreen content is still correct.
As a recruitment firm, you should think about producing long-form evergreen content on topics such as ‘how to write an effective CV’ or ‘how to be confident at an interview’ for candidates and ‘the best questions to ask a candidate at a job interview or ‘how do you write a great job spec?’ for clients.
It can generate leads and increase conversions
Because of its length, long-form content can also be used to strategically generate leads. Think about breaking up the space of content which is 1,500+ words with calls-to-actions that relate to the topic at hand. This could be ebook downloads or links to for candidates to submit their CV. Here is an example of one of our pages that utilises this approach.
Are you looking to produce long-form content for your recruitment firm?
Or find out more about our content and copywriting services.
