Bay Area Inbound Marketing Blog

Before you devote staff resources to inbound marketing, you want to be sure this effort will yield a healthy return on investment. After all, blogging on a regular basis, creating landing pages, expanding your website pages and sharing your content on social media takes precious time.

You can drive more traffic to your site once you figure out what has already worked. Studying inbound marketing analytics will help you determine where your site traffic is coming from and which of your pages people look at most often. Once you know this, you can make adjustments and drive even more traffic.

Analytics can help you answer these questions:

• Which of my blog posts are most popular?
• Which of my site pages are visited most?
• How long do visitors stay on each page on average?
• What keywords are driving traffic?
• Which social media sites are driving the most traffic to my site?
• How are my competitors doing?

Now that I have written a 5,000 word guide about my area of business expertise, what are the best practices to promote my ebook?

Your favorite inbound marketing consultants have suggested you write an ebook to market your products or services. Now what?

When you are stuck and can’t think of new blog content ideas, here are some ways to get unstuck. The key lies in looking at your basic keywords and most popular past blog content then creating new content from a fresh angle. Here are several suggestions.

Rewrite your most popular blog posts – Building on the basic points of your blog posts that have the most views or comments, rewrite them from a new perspective.

Here are the top ten ways to sabotage your hard work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

1. Cram keywords – Stuff so many keywords into your text that the writing seems stiff and awkward.
2. Don’t use keywords in your headers, image caption and text.
3. Target the wrong keywords – Use keywords that are not descriptive of your business niche.
4. Pay for inbound links – Buy links from sites whose only purpose is to link back to a main site.
5. Trade links with irrelevant sites – Build hundreds of links with spammy third-party sites that are unrelated to your core business.
6. Copy content – Replicate content within your site and copy content from other sites.
7. Post irrelevant ads – Post ads that are in no way related to your site’s theme or content.
8. Create page content that does not fit your site theme.
9. Forget to create 301 redirects – When you redesign your website don’t create 301 redirects for old pages that will direct search engine spiders to your new pages.
10. List your site with spammy online directories - Submit articles to hundreds of online article directories and list your site with thousands of online site directories.

Search engines will discount your site and rank you lower in search returns if you sabotage your site in these ways. A better strategy would be to create fresh, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the internet community.

To develop valuable content, think about the kinds of questions your potential customers might have about your products or services. If your company manufactures and sells smartphones and tablets, you could blog about how the proliferation of mobile devices is changing marketing. A green building architect would want to blog about the newest net zero energy buildings. An organic foods company that makes kale chips could blog about the latest health benefits of eating more green vegetables.

Once you have some great content to share, list your site with a few key online directories such as:
•    Yahoo Business Directory
•    Business.com
•    DMOZ Directory
•    The Best of the Web Directory

The foundation of a strong inbound marketing strategy involves quality content written around well-chosen keywords, posted on a regular basis and introduced through social media. This will help you earn, not buy, those valuable inbound links that help yield the best search engine returns.

Marketing has evolved as people spend more time on the internet. Consumers now look to internet search engines, the blogosphere and social networking sites when they want authoritative information on products and services. Have you developed a strategic marketing approach that makes it easy for people to find you in this new virtual world?

The average person receives 2,000 outbound marketing messages per day. As the number of marketing messages have increased, so has the sophistication of technologies to block these messages. Caller ID, spam filters and Tivo are just a few examples.

How do I get more leads? More website visitors results in more leads which means more sales. At each stage in the sales funnel (converting visitors to leads and leads to customers) you want to offer value to your potential clients. When they receive value, they are more engaged and are more likely to buy.

Inbound marketing is the process of making it easier for people who are looking for products and services like yours to find you and move down your sales funnel.

• How do I get more site visitors? – Google has an algorithm that determines how high your business website will show up on a Google search. Blogging often and using the right keywords is a key part of the formula. Another important factor involves how many links to your website you have. Creating an active social media presence that directs people to your site from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other sites is also important.
• How do I get more leads? – Once people click to your site, give them a reason to stay. Think about what your target audience would find useful. Ask for their name and email address in exchange for a free e-book, a discount, a sample or a free evaluation.
• How can I increase sales? – After you engage your site visitors and convert them into warm leads, then you can talk to them about your products and services. How can your offering solve their problem in a cost-effective way? 

When thinking about “how do I increase revenue for my business?” look to your existing customer base. It costs five times more to gain a new customer than to retain a current customer. What can you do keep your customers coming back for more?