Search Engine Optimization

Hindsight is 20-20. Knowing what I know now after blogging on this domain for 5 years (to the day, actually!) if I could go back and do it over I would have incorporated this blog as part of my company website and not as its own domain. Here’s why:

Blogs on separate domains can’t piggyback on the trust of your website.
When I launched this blog the search engines treated it as a brand new website, meaning it had a trust factor of zero. After five years and a massive, ongoing link building campaign the search engines have learned to trust this domain so new posts get indexed fairly quickly. When it was a new blog I didn’t have that luxury. If you are considering launching a business blog, incorporating it into your website as mywebsite.com/blog as opposed to a separate domain means that your blog posts get to piggyback on the domain authority of your company website. They are more likely to get indexed and ranking for related keywords faster because the search engines just see it as another page of content on your trusted site, not as a page on a new site.

Blogs on separate domains need their own SEO and link building strategies.
If you are going to launch your business blog on a separate domain you have to treat it like a regular website. This means writing Meta descriptions, unique title tags, optimizing the blog posts and all the other components of successful onsite SEO. You want your blog to be as “SEO friendly” as possible so that it can rank in the SERP for your most important keywords, increasing your overall online presence. This also means that you have to build a separate link building strategy for your business blog, in addition to the link building you are doing for your company website. While cross linking between your company website and business blog is vital, your blog is going to need a solid link portfolio of its own in order to do well in the search engines.

Blogs on separate domains keep readers one step away from your website.
The overriding goal of SEO is to drive more targeted visitors to your website. In my opinion, a business blog is one of the most valuable SEO tools a website has. Each blog post can rank in the search engines, increasing your overall brand presence and creating another touch point to connect with your target audience. They also help build your authority as an industry expert and fuel your social media marketing efforts. But blogs on a separate domain keep readers an extra click away from your website. When you build your blog into your site readers can easily navigate from the blog post to any internal page of your site, especially when you keep the blog design the same as your website (just look at the Brick Marketing Blog). When your blog is on a separate domain, even if it is well branded and has lots of internal linking with your website, you are asking readers to make the extra step from blog to website. You could potentially miss out on a lot of traffic.

The days of Mad Men marketing are long over. Whether you are ready to admit it or not, very few consumers want to listen to your marketing messages when you are ready to sell. These days, active consumers have taken the buying process into their hands, using search engines, peer review sites, blogs and social networking sites to create their own buying experience based on what they need when they want it. When you want to sell doesn’t really matter, it only matters when they are ready to buy. That is why it is so important to maintain a consistent online brand presence; you never know when someone might be looking for your company/products.

Inbound Marketing in consumer centric.

Consumers are looking for a more personalized buying process. Think about it—let’s say someone fills out a lead form on your site because they want to download a white paper. What kind of follow-up email are you sending them? Are you thanking them for downloading the white paper and suggesting additional resources they might be interested in? Or is your email focused on setting up a meeting with a sales rep? If you had downloaded a white paper would you be interested in talking with a sales guy? Probably not. If you wanted the demo meeting you would have set that up instead of downloading the paper.

Inbound marketing focuses on the needs/wants of the consumer, not your business. You want your marketing messages to reach individuals at the right point in the buying cycle, urging them along to the next step. The five stages of the buying process are awareness, consideration, preference, purchase and (hopefully) repurchase. Inbound marketing focuses on making your website appealing during each stage of this process. The whitepaper is perfect for awareness, while a product demo is better for a consumer in the consideration stage. If you try to get someone to buy when they are just beginning to research their options you’re likely to turn them off from your brand. Being too pushy too soon isn’t going to get you new business.

When someone arrives on your site, that doesn’t automatically mean they are ready to convert. Based on what source brought them to your site and how they act while on your site, try to determine what their end goal is. Are they just looking for general information? Do they need a specific product? Are they ready to buy? If they fill out a lead form for more information what does that tell you about them? If they connect with your company on Facebook or Twitter how can you gain a better insight into their buying process?

Inbound marketing is all about making your brand/company appealing to an audience as they need it, not about forcing your brand into their daily lives. While it is by no means a “build it and they will come” marketing campaign, it has shown to be much more effective for many websites that trying to fight the ever increasing clutter of online marketing.

Inbound marketing is comprised of three main online marketing tactics—SEO, content marketing and social media marketing. While each of these three campaigns can be very successful on its own, when the three are properly integrated the results for your website and brand can be remarkable. Internet marketing is not a one-or-the-other kind of battle. The most successful websites understand how to leverage all their online assets to their benefit, including social media marketing.

By now, most businesses realize the importance of having some level of a social presence. Social media have even bled into traditional advertising, with television commercials ending by asking viewers to like them on Facebook or find them on Twitter. From Fortune 100 global brands to the mom-and-pop pizza joint around the corner, most business owners know they should be involved in social networking. Where it gets tricky is what they are actually supposed to be doing with those social profiles. Having them is one thing, but really using them is what makes them so valuable for your inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing works to position your website in front of a target audience that is already looking for you, your products or your services. Instead of trying to capture the attention of a passive audience, inbound marketing helps your website attract a visitor that is already interested. Think of it this way; if you owned a hardware store would you try to sell snowmobiles in July? Probably not, seeing winter is a long way away and your customers are more concerned about pool maintenance supplies or lawnmowers. In July, you focus your marketing efforts to position your store as the go-to source for lawn care equipment, air conditioners and other summertime hardware. Inbound marketing follows a similar pattern, just in the online space.

Studies have shown that social media profiles are great for engaging and connecting with current customers because are more likely to be interested in what you have to say and share. How many brands do you follow on Twitter or Like on Facebook that you haven’t already had some level of interaction with? Why should your target audience behave any differently? Your social profiles let current and past customers interact directly with your brand, which helps establish a strong trust factor. People want to do business with other people and social profiles let you create a personality for your brand that you website might not have.

When someone searches for your brand directly, your social profiles are likely to rank just under your actual website. This is a good thing for multiple reasons. First off, it helps you dominate a larger percentage of the search results. A branded search could also return sites that you’ve written guest blogs on or 3rd party reviews. You want the SERP to be as filled as possible with your own sites and profiles. Secondly, social profiles make your company that much more transparent. It lets your customers feel like they have a direct line of communication with your company and you are willing to have a conversation with them should the need arise.

When it comes to inbound marketing, you have to think of your social profiles like the spokes in a bicycle wheel—they should all point back to your main website. Getting people to Like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter is great, but wouldn’t you rather have them convert on your site? All your inbound marketing tactics, including social media, should work to push visitors along to your website, no matter which touch point (blog post, article, social profile update, etc) they first arrive at.

Yes, I realize the irony of an SEO firm telling you that ranking first in Google and Bing isn’t going to make a difference for your business. Shouldn’t I be shouting the value of rank from the rooftops? Here’s the thing though, while ranking well is important (there are plenty of reports detailing the percentage of clicks the top ten sites get), it isn’t the only thing you should be worrying about. Today’s Internet user is smart; they know that just because a site is ranked first that doesn’t automatically mean it’s the best site for them. 1st ranked sites may get the lion’s share of clicks, but clicks do not automatically equate to conversions.

When it comes to inbound marketing, SEO is only a piece of the puzzle.

In the long run, inbound marketing is really about building trust. Just because you have a website, that doesn’t mean your target audience is going to trust you with their business. Any 15 year old with a computer and a credit card can launch a site on its own domain, write a couple pages of content, incorporate some photos and call themselves a business owner. Does that mean I want to hand my money over to them?

Ranking well in the search engines means you have done a good job with your SEO, but make sure that you aren’t doing anything that could jeopardize your trust factor with your target audience. Black hat SEO tactics will help your site jump in rankings, but those methods don’t usually take the end user into account. A spammy looking website stuffed with keywords might look good to the search engines for a while, but it’ll take any visitor to your site about half a second to realize they don’t want to do business with you.

While your website is a critical component of your online presence, it is only one touch point you have to leverage when building your brand’s trust factor. A business blog, social media profiles, local search profiles, industry association memberships and more are all external touch points that you can use as a way to interact with your target audience. Each of these touch points gives potential customers one more reason to trust you and your brand with their business.

Think of all the times you’ve been a consumer (either in your personal or professional life). How many times did you make a purchase just because someone told you to (and only told you once)? Even if you’re just looking for a new place to eat lunch, you probably heard about it from a coworker or friend, checked out their menu online and read a couple reviews before you decided to give it a try, right? The buying process isn’t influenced by one thing (like rank), but rather all of your collective inbound marketing activities. You need everything working together (SEO, social media and content marketing) at full throttle to help your online business grow.

I’m going to throw an idea out there that goes against everything I know as a social SEO professional. It may be a cardinal sin of social media, but what if you just closed the comments section on your business blog entirely? I know I’ve written about getting more value from your blog by using it to connect with your target audience, but what if your blog isn’t connecting with them in the comments section?

Now, every blogger loves to feel like their blog is loved. Comments are usually a good sign that you’re producing the “right” content, meaning it is something your audience is interested in. Comments mean you’re content is resonating with your readers and they want to engage in a conversation with you.

However, you can’t judge the success of your blog solely by how many comments you are getting. For every 20 people that read your blog post, maybe only one person bothers to leave a comment (not counting the spam comments your blog automatically filters). That’s why you have to take every comment with a grain of salt. Sometimes the only people who bother to comment are the ones who vehemently disagree with your post. Don’t assume this means that your entire audience feels this way.

It may be because I run an SEO blog, but I’ve found that a lot of the comments going live on my Brick Marketing blog in the last few months have been from other SEO and Internet marketing firms and not potential clients that I was trying to engage. Obviously an SEO firm knows the link building value of getting a link from a trusted industry blog, so it makes sense that they would find my blog and leave comments. But here is the thing; I don’t want to connect with my competitors! I don’t write blogs and articles for the benefit of other SEO companies, I do it for the benefit of my potential clients: marketing professionals, business and website owners, web developers and so forth.

Now, if I were trying to sell ad space on my blog (like most professional bloggers) I wouldn’t really care who was leaving the comments. I just want to be able to show how popular my blog is with a specific audience so I can charge more for banner ads. But I’m not blogging to sell ads; I’m blogging to build my business. I want to grow my online presence, establish my reputation as a trusted white hat SEO professional and educate potential clients on all things SEO.

I decided to run an experiment on the Brick Marketing blog. After each post, instead of having the comments section, I gave readers my lead form to fill out if they were interested in learning more about Brick Marketing and SEO. Guess what happened? My conversion rate nearly tripled! My lead form conversion rate went from 8% to 22%, a staggering jump. I was getting no comments, but more leads—which is exactly what I blog for.

Am I recommending that site owners go out and close their own comments section right now? No. But if you’re blog isn’t getting the comment love from the people you want, maybe you should consider limiting the comments that go live. You have to decide what you end game is and why you blog. Do you want to grow your business? Get new clients? Encourage someone to download your latest whitepaper? Will leaving the comments section open help or hinder those goals?