Google just rolled out a new feature, one that favors long-form original content. If you Google a broad topic, you may see–at the bottom of the page, a block of results labelled “In-Depth Articles.”

According to the Google post introducing the feature:

“To understand a broad topic, sometimes you need more than a quick answer. Our researchindicates perhaps 10% of people’s daily information needs fit this category — topics like stem cell research, happiness, and love, to name just a few.”

The first question that comes up for website owners who are already publishing quality content is “how do I get my articles featured this way?”

The answer goes back to a topic we introduced in a previous post, schema. There is a schema for long-form content, and Google uses this, along with all the normal ranking factors, to pick out content appropriate for this section.

The official Google Webmaster Blog offers this advice:

You can help our algorithms understand your pages better by following these recommendations:

• use schema.org “article” markup,
• provide authorship markup,
• rel=next and rel=prev for paginated articles (also watch out for common rel=canonical mistakes),
• provide information about your organization’s logo,
• and of course, create compelling in-depth content.

Keep in mind that all the other ranking factors still need to be addressed in order to appear highly placed for the often competitive search terms that will trigger this feature.