Effective Inbound Marketing Tips

Despite recent changes in the industry, business blogging continues to be one of the single most important SEO activities you can engage in. Your SEO blog will be the hub of your online marketing efforts, with most of your other strategies aimed at bringing people to your website -and your blog- to help convert them into customers.

There's a lot to search engine optimization and blogging that one could talk about, so we've compiled a list of our top ten tips for having effective SEO blogs as we start nearing the end of 2012. You need to ensure your blogging strategies are keeping up with the industry if you want to continue to enjoy search engine success.

Ten Important Tips For Your SEO Blogs

1. Content matters more than ever: Google is continuing to push towards not just organizing the web, but influencing its content by placing high-quality sites above low-quality ones. Truly interesting, unique content and a good user experience are must-haves for good search engine optimization today.

2. Cover a variety of topics: To get out a lot of content, try to cover as many topics as you can within the scope of your business or industry. Don't be afraid to get creative, like talking about how a movie you saw lately got you thinking about business strategies, or such.

3. Vary your keywords: SEO blogs can't just repeat the same keywords endlessly and get the same effect any more. Including natural variations on your keywords in your content will make your blog less "spammy" and increase its content value.

4. Use alternate blogging formats: Blogs don't have to always be written out. Try utilizing slideshow presentations or perhaps video blogs to keep things fresh. Varied content is almost always better content.

5. Try to keep your tone constant: Try to have a set style guide governing how your blog's writing should look and what tone is should take. Blogs with a consistent tone and style look more professional.

6. Don't be too inaccessible: Blogs should be relatively informal and should generally remain accessible to interested laymen. Don't drown them in industry terminology or highly technical discussions unless you are honestly only interested in speaking to specialists.

7. Get into guest blogging: Guest blogging is a terrific way to boost two companies' SEO blogs at once. Whether you're the guest or the host, a well-written guest blog will allow cross-pollination between two market segments and expand awareness of both companies involved.

8. Start related discussions on Facebook and LinkedIn: Talking about the ideas in your blog through social media - beyond just "hey, go read our blog!" style updates - are a good way of attracting traffic. In general, Facebook is better for making B2C connections and LinkedIn is better for B2B. Remember, the point of social media is to get your name out there and start discussions rather than preaching to people.

9. Outsourcing content works: If you find you just don't have the time to do your SEO blogging or the quality is starting to wane, there's no shame when you hire a blog writier. You'll get good-quality content, at surprisingly cheap rates. It's a fine way to expand your content on offer while bringing new blood and new ideas into your blog.

10. Write, write, and write some more: One thing hasn't changed about blogging and your SEO strategies. Time, patience, and dedication are still the top predictors of success. The more good blogs you write or host, the more leads and sales you're going to inspire. Be prepared to invest months, at least, before seeing a payoff.

No matter how you're handling your SEO, your blog is almost certainly going to be at the center of it. What other must-follow advice have you been following on your blog? Let us know in the comments!   

To blog or not to blog. Unsure of what business blogging can do for your business? Have you ever wondered why even big businesses maintain their own blog sites. As major players with unlimited resources, why don’t Coca-Cola or P&G, for example, just bombard the airwaves and print media with advertisements, sit back and wait for the profits?

Big or small, businesses need blogging in order to thrive in an online landscape. A blog is an informal and interactive platform that the average reader can relate to. It is a good source of relevant information and not just mere promotion. Can your business really benefit from it?

A good way to position yourself as a thought leader

It’s nice to have good leaders but thought leaders are looked up to by their peers because of the innovative and insightful ideas they bring with them. They are often associated with terms like first, best, most, top and other superlatives you can think of. Well-thought out blogs can make well-thought-of leaders who inspire, not demand, a following. When you know what you’re blogging about, you build credibility and reputation for your organization, making it a trusted resource in your niche.

A good feed for the human mind

What has this got to do with your business? The human mind works with ideas and is constantly searching for new ones. Customers are humans with minds continually looking for good products. If you provide informative blogs that help customers make informed decisions on the products they buy, you stand to win their trust and grow your clientele.

A good bait for search engines.

SEO is the lifeblood of online businesses. Business blogging is one of the most effective baits for search engines because blogs are interactive and constantly updated. Be careful though with the quality of your content. New search engine algorithms are now equipped to detect what’s good or bad bait for them. Bringing your blogs to the social web where there is an overwhelming crowd could give you an added bonus. Stellar content is shareable content that can easily go viral, providing a feast for search engines. This then drives traffic to your site, generating leads, conversions and improved ROI for your business.

A good repository of resources

Good blogs contain useful information for readers and good bloggers know how to provide them. Comprehensive company knowledge, industry expertise, subject matter understanding and familiarity and, of course, a great writing ability are what draw wows from audiences. Your information nest egg must be consistently updated in keeping with the changing needs of searchers. Discontinuity and long intervals are potential recipes of disaster that can ruin your reputation, something that is not easy to rebuild. Once you’re an established trusted resource, make sure to maintain a good supply of blogs because people will keep coming back for more.

A good crowd drawer

A crowd is what you need to grow your business. Business blogging helps you fulfill this need. People are by nature social and they often want to be in a crowd where they can connect, interact and build meaningful relationships. Blogs with shareable content can spread like wildfire. Talk about controversial industry issues, for instance, and your’re sure to precipitate a deluge of opinions, ideas and discussions. This means traffic and more traffic to your site.

Now you’d complain that your small or mid-sized business would be a dwarf to the giant Coca-cola or P&G. According to Wikipedia, even Coca-Cola started small in the 1800’s with Asa G. Candler, a Coca-cola cofounder, acquiring full ownership of the business for $2,300. Look at where it is now. There was no business blogging to speak of in those days but this just shows that one small step after another can bring a business to the big leap. Business blog writing could be that small step to that big leap.

Not convinced yet? Tell us why.

The majority of people spend at least a couple hours online everyday often looking for help with a problem or simply wanting to be entertained. A small business blog can fulfill one or both of these requisites while helping you to develop a closer relationship with business clients. Statistics show that websites that also have a blog receive on average 55 percent more visitors resulting in 126 percent higher lead growth. Follow the six simple steps below to achieve the same success for your small business.

• Choose an Appropriate Blogging Platform

Everyone has different preferences as to what makes the best article writing provider. While most are quite similar, you should take into consideration your need for customization, whether the templates on offer are suitable, and other factors. Your choice may also depend on your prior programming capabilities and experience; if you know only very little, you should select a platform that will guide you through the creation process.

• Develop Content

The content on your small business blog should consist of information the reader did not know before. This can be anything relevant to your field of business as long as it is useful and entertaining; for example, food companies may choose to post recipes while home maintenance businesses could opt to publish tips helping readers avoid common problems or offer DIY projects. While there should be no mention of your company's services or products, you can end posts with a link sending readers to your main business site.

• Focus on Layout

The aesthetics of your small business blog are central to grabbing the attention of the visitor. You should include subheadings, important phrases in bold, text broken up with images, bullet point lists and anything else you can to make the page more interesting. You must also include a page title, meta description and internal page links to make your content writing SEO rich. Of this, the title is the most important, as it will most likely be the URL, and should include some keywords. The optimal length of a blog post is 400 to 600 words in order to keep readers interested.

• Offer a Number of Subscription Options

Your readers are far more likely to return to your blog if they are subscribed either through email or RSS. Offering both options will increase the number of your subscribers as many people have a preference of one over the other. You should also make it easy for readers to share content on social media sites such as Reddit, Digg and LinkedIn as well as the possibility to follow you on Twitter and Facebook. Ensure that a bar with these options is incorporated into your small business blog and is clearly visible.

• Track Your Statistics

In order to best develop content in the future, you need to know what posts are receiving the most views and comments, and what content is being shared. Some blogging platforms automatically provide you with these statistics while others require you to manually add a Javascript code to your small business blog.

• Avoid Advertising

Advertising can ruin the appearance of your small business blog and is in fact only useful when you are receiving a very high amount of traffic. Similarly, pop up screens annoy readers and may even deter them from revisiting your page. Pop up screens should be kept to a minimum such as one time when the reader first enters the blog.

What methods have been central the success of your small business blog?    

When you're managing a blog with multiple writers, or working with external web content developers, one of the biggest challenges can be making sure that they're "on the same page" as your web content strategists. To capture your audience, branding and consistency throughout your content is vital. A cohesive site is a professional-looking site.

Website content templates are a great way to deal with this issue. Basically, these templates are something like an outline, except they don't just contain information on the content itself, but also instructions for how it's to be presented as well.

Who Needs Website Content Templates

These templates are a little bit of extra work, which everyone may not need to engage in. If your web content is being handled by just one or two people in-house, they probably aren't necessary. The people writing them are going to be familiar with their own strategies, or at least we'd hope so!

However, writing templates can come in useful when there's any sort of separation between your strategists and your writers. You need to remember that your writers only have as much information as you give them, so to adhere to your strategies, they need to know about them.

What Website Content Templates Look Like

These don't have to be pretty. Here's what one might look like, for a fictional Acme Internet Marketing company:

Blog Title: A Friendly Guide To Search Engine Optimization

Overall Purpose: Explain the basics of SEO to laymen or new small business owners

Secondary Purpose: Make Acme Internet Marketing appear fun and laid-back.

Narrative: Second-Person

Tone: Casual, Humorous

Length: 500-600 Words

Keywords: SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Keyword Strategies

Keyword Rate: 1%, plus natural-language variations

Outline:

• Introduction: Cover failure of old Internet marketing with the old Gossage "what in the hell are billboards doing?" quote and extend to banner ads and popups. Without SEO, you might be running your business off a cliff.

• First Point: Establish primacy of online searching for information-gathering, explain relationship between keywords and web results.

• Second Point: Talk about keyword strategies, link to our Acme Keyword Generator.

• Third Point: Demonstrate proper usage of keywords in a blog with a humorous hypothetical example, such as hobby rocketry.

• Fourth Point: Hammer on the need to write blogs with good content that gets shared, otherwise you're just running into a stone wall.

• Conclusion: SEO is the best way to market online, etc etc. Include a question that inspires the reader to comment.

Customizing Your Website Content Template

Obviously, that's just an example. It took me maybe ten minutes to write out, so it doesn't have to take much time if you (or your content strategist) knows what your content writing should look like.

Your own content templates can be as detailed or stripped-down as you want. If you don't trust your writer to flesh out points for themselves, you could include a more detailed outline. On the other hand, if you have good rapport with your writer, you might only need to include the basic information like length and keywords and an overall direction for the content.

Templates Tie Your Content Together

As we said above, you'll capture the interest of more of your visitors if you can present a site that's consistent in its tone and messaging. These sorts of content templates provide a simple and reliable way for your content strategists to communicate their wishes to your writers, and ensure everyone is working towards the same overall goals.

Has your business experimented with website content templates? Did it help you keep your writers in the loop and on-message?  

If you haven't heard, the days that it impressed people to have a big, flashy website full of gadgets, animations, and bandwidth-heavy flash apps are pretty much over.

There are a couple reasons for this. While broadband is common enough in households, in the past couple years there has been a huge explosion in mobile browsing. Also, there has been a general trend towards simplicity in consumer product and website design.

Each of these presents its own issues, but the short version is, the business content of your website needs to follow the good old KISS principle: Keep It Simple.

Simplifying the Business Content of Your Website

1. Design With Mobile In Mind

While mobile browsing does still only account for a fairly small percent of web activity today, it is growing rapidly. Already, 85% of new mobile phone sales worldwide are web-capable, and that number is rapidly approaching 100%. Mobile sales are on the rise as well. Last December, 87% of tablet owners did at least some of their holiday shopping online through their tablet.

So, while you may not be losing too much if you're overlooking mobile right at the moment, the winds are rapidly shifting. It would be effective planning to begin working on optimizing your site now, before you fall further behind.

When optimizing the business content of your website for mobile browsers:

• Compress images and other elements as much as is reasonably possible, since many mobile users are on slow connections or limited data plans.

• Keep your site layout simple (more on that below) without an excess of top- and side-bars. Generally only one permeant sidebar should ever be needed.

• Verify your site renders properly on several of the most popular mobile browsers, especially Safari for iOS, Chrome for Android, and Opera Mobile. If it cannot and retrofitting it will be too difficult, consider spinning off a separate mobile site.

• Don't use of any third-party plugins like Flash, Unity, or Chrome extensions. Mobile compatibility for these is spotty at best, and often completely missing. Flash does not work with iOS, for example.

It's also worth considering that slow load times can contribute significantly to bounce rates. A leaner, meaner site means better visitor retention across all connection types. Even if you don't care about mobile users, having optimized business content is still a good idea.

2. On Simpler Website Design

It's typical to think of new technology first being embraced by the young, especially Generation Y / Millennials. However, in fact, one of the fastest-growing markets for technology is people in their middle age: older Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers.

These groups, who did not grow up using online services, want simplicity in their electronics and website design. They're likely to be confused or simply put off by overly-confusing websites, and go somewhere that's easier to use.

On top of that, being straightforward and unpretentious is a valued trait among younger demographics, so complex websites just don't appeal to many groups right now.

The more you can streamline your interface, the better:

• As we said above, keep the overall design as clean as possible, with a minimum of important button bars.

• Use a simple and straightforward color design, with preferably no more than three major colors involved.

• Graphic buttons like your Calls-To-Action should be fairly small. They should be eye-catching, but not at risk of being mistaken for anything but an advertisement.

If you want more tips for making a Boomer-friendly website, here's an excellent list of design elements to consider.

Simple Business Content is Better Business Content

Hopefully, the takeaway today is obvious: The more simple, functional, and easy-to-use your website is, the better. Keep your designs clean and uncluttered, and keep an eye out for mobile compatibility.

What other tricks have you used to make your website more accessible and inviting?   

It's an old saying, but it's true: sometimes you have to spend money to make money.

Running a smaller business is a series of never-ending decisions and tradeoffs, all aimed at trying to grow your enterprise rather than bankrupting it.  It's quite understandable that businesses might balk at the idea of paying an article writing service to do something that they "should" be able to do in-house, but how realistic is that?

Honestly, creating content for your website is practically a full-time job by itself.  You need to have at least one blog a day for your blog to be truly effective, and that's not to mention other guides and whitepapers you might want for your Calls to Action.  Chances are, you're going to start thinking about turning to an article writing service to lighten that load.

Here are a few signs that it may be time to go ahead and hire article writers, rather than continuing to do it yourself:

Signs It's Time To Hire An Article Writing Service

1:  You just don't have the time.

This is probably the most common reason companies turn towards hiring writers to create their content.  A decent blog takes at least an hour to write and research, and can often take much longer.  You can cheat by writing about easy topics at least some of the time, but to get attention, you need better content.

Trying to blog when you don't have time for it will just get you poor blogs.

2:  It's taking away valuable resources.

No matter what industry you're in, your top priorities are going to be managing your business and putting out a great product that your customers appreciate.  Anything that takes away from these core tenets is going to do more harm to your business than good.

If you have even a hint that the quality of your business work is slipping because of the time you or others are having to spend updating your website, it's definitely time to hire an article writing service.

3:  Your blog numbers and conversions have plateaued.

If you do any sort of SEO or content marketing, you should be tracking the results to gauge your performance.  However, when blogging by yourself, it's not uncommon to see these results plateau and refuse to move.  This is another sign that your blog is underperforming and could do better.

Hiring article writers shake things up, and inject a new level of quality into your blog.  It's exactly the sort of thing that gives it the shot in the arm it needs to perform up to your standards.

4:  You want to expand your Call To Action offerings.

Calls to action (CTAs) are extremely effective in making your website work for you.  By putting special articles or videos behind a gate and making your visitors trade their contact information for access, you can quickly build a great lead database for your sales team to work on.

However, the content behind a CTA has to be several steps better than the material on your blog for this to work.  After all, why would your visitors "pay" in any form for content that's no better than the truly free material?   This is a fine time to bring in article writers who can create those eBooks and white papers you want while having the resources to write them well.

Article Writing Services Are Here To Help

No matter your reasons for hiring writers, just remember: the goal is to give yourself the best and most effective blog possible.  If your blog isn't bringing you leads and sales, it's  not doing you much good.  Hiring an article writing service improves your content and makes your site more attractive to visitors.

Sure, it costs a little more than doing it yourself, but as we said, it takes money to make money.

Which article writing services do you prefer?  

It's good to step back and review the basics every now and then. We've been writing about inbound marketing for quite awhile now, and it's easy to forget that everyone still has to start somewhere. So, rather than discuss more high-level SEO strategies, let's sit back and talk in general about how small business blog marketing works and why you should get into it.

Obviously, if you're an experienced SEO pro, you may not see anything new here, but we'd still love to see you pitch in your own ideas in our message forum!

How Small Business Blog Marketing Works

If you were on the Internet ten years ago, you probably remember how lousy the marketing was - nothing but annoying pop-up advertisements and distracting banner ads that, half the time, tried to put malware on your computer to boot. (And let's not even talk about email spam.)

It didn't work, and the Internet at large responded by coming up with a variety of tricks to block these advertisements from appearing.

What marketeers figured out is that people on the Internet wanted marketing that was relevant to them. People don't mind advertisements so much when they involve products they're interested in. So, inbound marketing was born.

Inbound Marketing Basics

Even today, the majority of web searches are for information. So, the theory went, if you put information that people want on your website, they'll be grateful to you and stick around to see what your sales pitch is. This is where small business blog marketing comes in.

By maintaining a blog on your website that addresses issues that are relevant to your customers, you're putting information out there that people want to see. It's a little like giving away toasters to new customers at a bank, except you're giving away content rather than gizmos.

That's the basic theory, but it still leaves a challenge to be resolved: how to bring people to your website in the first place. That's where SEO comes in.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Because of the nature of the Internet, the search engines - especially Google - are effectively the gatekeepers to the Internet. Since less than 2% of visitors actually click past the first page of search results, you have to make your site rank highly in searches to put it in front of potential customers.

Strategies aimed at boosting your results on search engines are called, appropriately enough, Search Engine Optimization.

Most of SEO revolves around the use of keywords. These are words and phrases that relate directly to your business, which people use to search for information relevant to you. If you ran a pet food company, terms like "dog food" and "healthy coat for cats" might be among the keywords you'd want to target, for example.

So, having found some keywords, you just have to sprinkle them around your blogs where relevant. Generally, this should only be around 1%-2% of your total word count. You should also look at including variations on your keywords as well, like using "food for dogs" and "dog kibble" alongside "dog food."

Lastly, you want people sharing your content and linking to it. Shares and links boost your website's rankings further, so you want to make sure it's easy to share.

Bringing It All Together

So, this is what a basic small business blog marketing plan looks like:

• Research your market and discover their interests.

• Pick keywords relevant to your business that your market will search for.

• Write blogs with good, informative content that includes these keywords.

• As you attract people who visit, enjoy your content, and share it, you'll see better search rankings and attract more people.

• The more people who visit, the more become leads or sales.

Blogging for business is easy, inexpensive, and it brings in leads. If you're unsure of how you want to market yourself on the Internet, it's the best place to start.  

Some people think that "writing is writing," and the same skills and approaches apply to web content writing as to penning magazine or news articles. This is not the case; readers approach websites very differently than print media, placing a different set of demands on online content writing. Your writing style must adapt to take advantage of those differences, or readers will ignore your content writing.

People Don't Actually Read

If you put a lot of work into packing your website with paragraphs of valuable information, then surely your audience will pore over every word, right? Wrong. Whether because computer screens tend to cause eye strain, or due to the sheer quantity of internet content, people don't really read websites. 79 percent of internet users skim online articles and websites, rather than reading word-by-word. Their eyes wander the page, scanning for important words and phrases. Long paragraphs blur into "walls of text" that most people just skip.

So how do you get people to read your content? Change the format. Break down your ideas into easily digestible chunks, using short paragraphs and sentences. Organize important information in a visually-accessible manner, using informative headings, bulleted lists, colored or bold text for important keywords, and hypertext links. Links serve two purposes: they make your content seem more authoritative, and they highlight keywords.

Trim the Excess

Most users spend a surprisingly short time on any given web page. While interesting and useful content might hold a reader's interest for a few more seconds, people's attention spans on the internet are fairly brief. If you want to deliver the maximum amount of information in the short span of time a visitor spends on your page, your content writing style needs to reflect that brevity.

Expect to use half the number of words you'd use in writing for print. Unless you're writing to a very specialized audience, keep your word choices simple and accessible. That opens your content up to a wider audience, with varying levels of English fluency. Short sentences might feel choppy, but they're easier to parse. Go back and edit! Read through your content again, asking yourself, "Is there a simpler way to say this?" Focus on making your content easy and quick to read.

Don't Exaggerate

Most Web users find sales language and hyperbolic claims annoying. Instead of being enticed by assertions of "the world's greatest" this, or "the absolute best" that, people just roll their eyes and hit the Back button. Moreover, hyperbolic sales phrases actually make text take longer to read, because the reader's brain takes time to analyze and reject the exaggerated claim before moving on. When you only have a few seconds to grab the reader's attention, you don't want them to waste time on processing superlatives that just make you look less credible.

Your content writing should focus on objective descriptions and factual assertions whenever possible. Even if you're trying to make a persuasive point or sell a product, outlandish claims are a disadvantage. Keep your headings and subtitles meaningful and straight-forward, rather than cute or clever. Hyperlinks support your credibility by showing you can "back up" your claims.

Writing Around Keywords

Your audience will never set eyes on your content unless their search engine leads them to it. Search engines zero in on keywords queried by users, so if you want your content to show up, those terms need to appear a few times in the body of your content. Work them in as naturally as possible; your keywords should make sense contextually, and not stick out like a sore thumb. Focus on content first, though; if your content writing is awkward and repetitive, your readers will just navigate away. And remember that your writing must be unique; search engines disregard copied text.

Have you noticed these habits in your own Web surfing? What other traits appeal to you, or turn you off, in website content?