Writing a lengthy article would not guarantee that it would engage people to read the whole article and earn shares in social media. While it’s best practice to put as much words into articles for better SEO, you still need to optimize the page in a way that it would attract a user’s attention, making it attractive at first glance. Studies show that out of 500 people, 16% read the entire article and more than 30% only scan the article.
lengthy articles
How to satisfy readers
Storytelling, by far, is the most effective way to keep readers interested to continue reading a lengthy article; however, this will not satisfy every user that lands on your article. As much as possible you’d want to attract people who are used to skimming articles as well. The strategy is to provide a good headline or the primary subject about your article followed by supporting information in 1 or 2 paragraphs. After the supporting paragraph, you can now provide deeper information for those visitors that want to know more about the topic.
Essential tips on optimizing your article:
- Give a straight answer on the first paragraph
- Provide catchy headlines for easy scanning
- Build trust by providing references and citations
Using Hypotext WordPress plugin
Hypotext is a cool plugin that can expand a link to a text black so users can have an option to dig deeper on a particular section of an article. A 5,000 word article can be minimizing to a 400 word article with an option for users to view more information with just a click of a mouse. Test shows that bounce rate was reduced and there was an increase in user engagement using the plugin.