Effective Inbound Marketing Tips

Do you ever get the feeling that some business bloggers are more concerned about having a soapbox than actually using their blog as a business tool?

We know that the real purpose of blogging is to drive traffic to your website, and it does this in a number of different ways. However you get people to your blog, once they're there you'll see more leads generated and higher sales as well. The more people you attract, the more visitors you draw in. It's just that simple.

While it's fine (and fun!) to use your business blog as a soapbox every now and then, your blogging should be focused on bringing in more traffic if it's ever going to justify itself as a business investment. So, here are a few inbound marketing tips for getting the most traffic to your blog!

How To Drive New Blog Traffic 

• Limit your keyword use. Chances are, you have a keyword package for your SEO with dozens of different terms. Don't try to cram as many keywords as you can into your blogs. Instead, optimize each blog around a different set of one or two related keywords. This focuses your SEO strategies for each keyword, rather than diluting the effect by spreading them around your site.

• Be a thought leader. As we like to say, content is king in internet marketing. You should be trying to advance new or interesting thoughts in your blog. This both makes it more likely to be shared or linked to by outside people, as well as impressing your visitors with your level of expertise. If you can create the perception that your company is ahead of the curve, chances are, it will come true.

• Leverage social media. If you aren't pushing to have your blog shared through social media, you're handicapping yourself. Social media puts your material out there and brings you to the attention of entirely new audiences. Further, there is an extremely high correlation between Facebook “likes” and Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) rankings. Now, correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, but the correlation is strong enough to raise a lot of eyebrows.

• Use Google-specific features. Unsurprisingly, utilizing some of Google's own features will help you in your Google rankings. The Google Authorship system allows you to tie your results directly to your G+ profile, and gives you a big SERP boost. Similarly, Google's Rich Snippets metadata system will give you much better results than traditional metadata like HTML tags.

• Once you've got them at your site, keep them there. Whenever you put up a blog, make sure there are plenty of internal links to other areas of your site to encourage people to keep reading your material. The longer you keep them around, the more likely they are to convert. If you can pair this strategy with effective Calls to Action, you'll start really reaping the benefits of inbound marketing.

• Encourage commenting. Your blog absolutely should have a comment section for people to respond to your posts. Ask questions in your blogs, and raise interesting points. Any blog with a thriving community of people actively engaged and responding to posts is one that's in a great position to drive new sales.

• Show you're alive and on top of the game. Once you have a blog, keep blogging. Few things about a company's website can more clearly say “We aren't committed to our online presence” than having an abandoned blog with only a few posts. An active blog is a sign of a healthy online company.

We want every one of our readers to have the best and most successful business blogs possible. And, of course, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact us or leave your ideas below for the world to see!

The Atlanta Internet Marketing Agency 98toGo is proud to announce that they have become the latest Silver-Level HubSpot Certified Agency Partner!

98toGo is proud of our association with HubSpot, the best-in-class Internet marketing products, and always have been. We strongly believe that a combination of our marketing expertise and Hubspot's premiere tools produces the absolute best returns on our clients' investments, and all of our clients use HubSpot. In recognition of our success in utilizing their platform, we have been honored as a top Internet marketing agency by them.

Unlike many meaningless internal industry awards that only exist to add “bling” to a company's landing page, we believe that Hubspot's award truly means something. HubSpot became the leader among Internet Content Management Systems by practicing what they preach. They didn't use any shortcuts or buy their way into first place – they got there through superior inbound marketing practices. They know good inbound marketing, and they back it up by providing some of the best inbound marketing tools around.

For example, they provide a free tool that allows anyone to instantly compare their website to those of competitors. Besides being a great example of content marketing, it takes just seconds to produce a surprisingly detailed report showing how well you're doing with your inbound marketing practices. While of course they want you to end up purchasing their product, many of the problem areas include links to other free materials as well, such as whitepapers and videos. They're experts in inbound marketing, and they're happy to share their knowledge while letting customers come to them.

Achieving their Silver level isn't easy. To become a HubSpot partner at all, an Internet Marketing agency has to pass a detailed examination demonstrating their grasp of inbound marketing practices. However, that's just the start. To get to the Silver tier, a company has to demonstrate that their clients are achieving a Monthly Recurring Revenue of at least $2,500 a month. Additionally, their average customer age must be at least 300 days and achieve a high ranking within Hubspot's own Customer Happiness Index, which measures the likelihood of a lead converting into a sale.

This hard work, however, is paying off for us and our clients. Along with our Silver certification, we'll be able to produce our own co-branded lead generation materials, and have a case study produced about us. We'll also get to create our own posts within Hubspot's blog, giving us great exposure among Hubspot's many followers and readers.

And what does this mean for you, constant readers and (we hope) potential clients? It means that you can know that when we say this Atlanta Internet marketing agency is an expert in the field of inbound marketing, we truly are. The badge that we'll be soon displaying on our front page means that when you choose 98toGo, you're actually choosing two of the leaders in Internet marketing.

Between our years of experience and dedication to giving you the best in inbound marketing, and Hubspot's excellent CMS system that all our clients use, you can be sure that you'll get the highest possible ROI on your marketing expenditures.