Hey Reader,

Right now, there's a debate happening on LinkedIn about the long-form blog article. And of course, I've got myself wrapped up in it.

For the last decade or so, long-form content has been the gold standard when it comes to SEO.

There are countless studies out there to prove it. Articles over 2,000 words are the ones that make it on to the top of search results, and they're the ones that pull in the most traffic for my clients.

But all those years writing long-form content, something nefarious was happening behind the scenes.

Google and all the AI tools that are now everywhere were taking our long-form content, feeding it to the LLMs, and now are serving it to readers in neat and comprehensive summaries.

It is painful to see, as someone who's created dozens of these articles over the years.

The content I created to bring traffic to my clients has been regurgitated with the express purpose of reducing clicks to their sites and keeping people in Google or their AI tool of choice.

Am I pissed off about that? Hell yes. 🤬

But I'm also a realist, a realist that uses Claude every day and reads AI Overviews instead of clicking through. It is indeed a better search experience, and there's nothing we can do about it.

🤔 So does that mean you should stop creating long-form content as part of your strategy?

Nope.

Not if you still are planning to use SEO as a marketing channel.

Because even with the advent of AI, those long-form articles are the only ones that rank and pull in traffic.

They are the articles that make it to the top of Google search results and the articles that are more likely to be cited by AI Overviews and other AI tools.

What's changed, then? To be blunt: It's just harder to get there.

Competition for those top positions has been steadily increasing over the years, and now with AI Overviews gobbling up so much of the first page, it's not easy to get into those positions.

It's especially challenging for young websites without much authority or history, and if you aren't producing content and publishing it on a regular basis, you can pretty much forget about it.

For many businesses, these changes might mean that SEO simply isn't worth it anymore. If you don't think you can invest the time necessary to have a robust content production arm, then spending your time writing 3,000-word articles isn't a wise move.

However, if you are committed to SEO, or are already relying on it as a channel for your website, then those long-form articles should still be a central production of your content plan.

And whether or not you are relying on SEO, your content plan should be much more than a few long-form blog articles each month.

You should also be producing...

✅ Content that will be interesting to your audience, regardless of SEO

✅ Interviews, though leadership, and unique research that can't be found elsewhere

✅ Creative content that will get you attention from the right people

✅ High-quality content that is designed for other marketing channels (social media, Slack channels, etc.)

👆🏻 This is why my business is called Inkwell Content Services, not Inkwell SEO Services.

SEO is and always has been just one part of the content equation. There is a lot more to content marketing than that, which is why it's so important to have a content strategy, whether or not you're focused on search.

Speaking of which, if you missed it earlier this month, I held a session on how to create a content strategy for 2025. The replay is right here if you want to try it out.

So the next time someone says that long-form content is dead, you can tell them Liam says otherwise. 😈

And while you're at it, why not forward this email to someone who might be wondering about all this? I'd really appreciate it.

Until next time!

- Liam