B2C companies that blog get 88% more leads/month than those that don’t.
B2B companies that blog get 67% more leads/month than those that don’t.
Above are some pretty powerful blog related facts. In my opinion as a consultant, a blog (with a regular blogger attached to it) is one of the strongest marketing assets your website has for attracting high-quality traffic which will probably convert into new leads.
Businesses that blog (as we can see above) get more leads, simple. But why? Well, it’s because they have way more Google indexable content than other websites. So, when someone starts searching for an industry related keyword/service, there’s more content from website X for Google to place on the SERPs, than others. Simple.
Just having a blog isn’t key though, the key is to regularly blog.
Frequency
Businesses that blog 16 to 20 times per month get over two times more traffic than those that blog fewer than four times per month.
Wow, what an amazing figure! The only way to see if this really works is to test it. So why not try blogging once a day for a month and see if your site shoots up on Google (it should do!). It makes sense that your traffic would increase.
Now you’re blogging regularly, the key to making your juicy posts work for you is to optimise them.
Optimisation
Most people aren’t blog post writing machines right? Which is why you need to make the most of the posts you are writing, to make sure Google is checking them out properly and giving them the attention they require.
This is why were optimisation of our blog posts comes in. Make sure you do the basics of post optimisation like including your posts keywords into the posts title. Try using terms that people would actually search for, these are “long tail” keywords.
This was just a quick post touching on why blogging is an essential part of SEO, it’s also part of the much wider sphere of more general online marketing, but I shall talk about that later.
The stats and research within this post comes from Hubspot (experts in online marketing).
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…sorry about the long title but it’s essential really.
These days, like it or not, when it comes to getting traffic for your website Google is where it’s at. As recently as last month, Google accounted for 93% of all search queries in the United States and 89% of all search queries in Europe.
Here’s another statistic to keep in mind: 98% of all users searching for something in Google won’t make it past the first page of results. And lastly, roughly 75% of users won’t even make it past the top 3 listing before finding a relevant website making a top three ranking in Google very desirable.
Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to reach the top three in Google for most terms. That’s where the often confusing, daunting and misused phrase “search engine optimization” (SEO) comes into play.
SEO is loosely divided up into two segments (or tactical areas), on-page and off-page:
On-page: On-page SEO is making sure that your website is relevant, easy to navigate, and very clear on exactly what you’re about. Having a proper title, header, navigational bar, and well thought through key words is crucial. Just as crucial these days is making sure that your website has a steady stream of original relevant content. – Top Tip – Ever heard of the phrase, “Content Is King?” this couldn’t be truer here, Google really, really favours websites that constantly produce unique and on topic material.
Off-page: Off-page SEO is the promotion of your website to get it to rise higher in the SERPs. When it comes to determining your websites position, Google uses other websites linking to your content as a measuring stick of relevancy. Whenever a website links to your website, Google counts this as a “vote” in favour of your site. Get enough votes and you move higher and higher up in the SERPs.
SEO is so crucial to a company’s success that most company’s contract out their SEO needs to SEO companies that specialise in getting your website ranked and keeping it there. – For ranking your website is one thing, keeping it there in the frenzy of competition is a constant process that requires monitoring and proactive solutions.
So, think of your companies “key words” that best describe what you do, pop them in Google and see where you are. If the results aren’t too good, consider hiring an search engine optimisation company or consultant to help optimise your website and teach you how to continue it’s promotion elsewhere on the web.
Just think of the amount of clients you might be losing thanks to not being at least on page 1 of Google?!
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This is just a quick post, but before anyone says it – no, SERP’s are not some kind of Slush Puppie ice drink (well, that’s what the word reminds me of anyway – ‘slurps’?).
SERP stands for: Search Engine Results Page
Search engine results pages or SERPs are the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword/phrase query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short (META) description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page.
SERP’s pages often have two different sections – the “organic listings” and “paid for listings” found in the sponsored areas at the top and to the right.
Your site needs to be well optimised using SEO techniques to appear high in these natural listings for competitive keywords.
SERP results page breakdown
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And why does my business need them?
What are keywords and why do I need them?
Keywords, keywords, keywords.
Okay, let’s imagine you’re looking for a local florist, you open up a browser, head to Google and type “florists in Hastings”. Google then goes off to find some results and presents them in front of you.
Google would have probably looked in the following places for those words “florists in Hastings”:
- Pages that contain the exact phrase you entered
- Pages that might not have the exact phrase but might have the separate ones scattered around
- Websites with the phrase in it’s domain name
- Pages that have links pointing to them, in which the link text contains the phrase entered
…etc etc, it goes something like this anyway.
The phrase “florists in Hastings” is an example of a keyword (or phrase). If you were running a local florist you would probably use very similar words as your keywords.
The thing to remember with keywords is this; they are the words that most describe what your business does, sells or is coupled with the terms your customers actually use to describe your kind of product.
Why does your business need them?
If Google can’t relate your website to the words that someone searches for, it has no reason to return your site as part of the search results when someone does do a search. – That’s why your business needs them!
Picking the right keywords is critical for any business to be successful online.
How to pick the best and most relevant keywords?
As far as useful keywords are concerned, you need to think the way potential customers are likely to think (as said up top). For example, suppose you have developed an amazing new car wax – ShinyXoom. You could use that as a keyword for one of your web pages, making it clear that the page is about ShinyXoom.
But that’s not what potential customers will be searching for – in fact, they may not even know it exists. They’ll be looking for ‘cheap car wax’ or ‘classic car wax’, so those are the sort of keywords you should be thinking of using.
Here are some tips on choosing keywords that will give you great leads, which can easily be converted into sales.
- Check out your competitors. Research your competition to see which keywords they are using for their on page SEO. This is a great way to quickly list down the most commonly used keywords for your type of business.
- Make your own list. Once you have the competitor keywords list, add to it any keywords you feel are important. Include your company name and town as well. Also add plurals and variations of the keywords and sometimes even common spelling errors!
- Evaluate your keywords using keyword tools. Once you have a list, the process of choosing keywords is ready to move into the next stage of evaluation. Since you cannot possibly optimize your website for all of those keywords you have listed, it is best to narrow that list down. Google Adwords: Keywords Tools is also a great (and free) tool to use when choosing keywords. Retain the most popular or frequently searched terms and discard those that are rarely searched.
- - I just made a small error.I said to discard the ones that are rarely searched for. If you’re in a hyper competitive market, it might be worth trying to target your website towards these lesser used terms.Why? Because you’re not Ebay or Amazon for example. You probably can’t compete with them so why try? It’s a waste of resources, instead drive your energy into those lesser used keywords. Because, at the end of the day what would you prefer – 20% of 1,000 visitors pcm or 0.00000000000002% of 1,000,000 views?
- Be specific. Say more, for example “classic car wax for Jaguars” instead of just “car wax”. While the former may be a more popular search term and could possibly garner more views, the latter is likely to lead to targeted, quality visitors = sales.
I hope you now know what keywords are and how to go about choosing your own. If you happen to need any help placing them on your site or putting together an online marketing strategy around them, feel free to get in touch.
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Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short is the following, according to Wikipedia:
The process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search,[1] news search and industry-specific vertical search engines. – Wiki
What is search engine optimisation?
That couldn’t be any more accurate in my opinion. It’s all about the quality and quantity of the traffic you receive. Achieving high amounts of traffic is great, but the traffic has to be quality traffic. What do I mean by quality? Well, by quality I mean highly targeted to the services and/or products your site has to offer. If your traffic is not of high quality then your website will not get the leads, enquiries, and sales it needs.
Getting this “quality” traffic
Quality traffic is all about finding the keywords that best suit your business, your products and services. Quality keywords lead to quality traffic (and lots of it!) which in turn is highly targeted for what your site is offering.
An expert online marketing consultant will always carry out extensive research, both on keywords, the market, and the competitors. A thorough investigation of the current site and the site of the competitors is key to an effective SEO campaign. At the beginning of an SEO project, consultants will look at competitor’s domain age, link popularity and genuine efforts to rank highly for certain keywords. This allows the SEO to compile an effective list of keywords that are both possible to rank for, and that are high in search volume and quality.
The umbrella name of “SEO” covers:
- On Page Optimisation - On page optimisation involves the on site optimisation of such things as code and site content, so that the pages have a higher relevance to the keywords that are being targeted. Any old web designer should be able to do these bits.
- Off page Optimisation - Off page optimisation contains the optimisation of keyword text in inbound links, content marketing (through blog posts etc) as well as social media etc. All with an eye to generating better quality backlinks, without which you’re site will not rank well.
Focus on getting the basics of SEO sorted on your website, and make it appealing enough for visitors to actually stay on. Once you’ve got your house in order so to speak you can then concentrate on the wider aspects of off page SEO and more general online marketing.
I hope you found this useful, let me know if I can help out in anyway.
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