Maximizing your blog's ROI isn't quite as simple as writing a blog post about the first topic that comes to your mind each day. It's not even as simple as hiring a professional writer to craft compelling, well-argued content that elevates your brand's appeal and puts your company head and shoulders above the competition.
To create a truly great blog, you need to follow blog optimization tips that have been proven to work in the past. If you're wondering how to optimize blog posts for better lead generation, start with these five simple blog writing tips.
1. Select a Buyer Persona to Target Each Post
Instead of casting a wide net with your blog, do your best to tighten up and focus each post on a specific buyer persona. Your company likely has several buyer personas or "ideal buyers." Each persona has specific demographic, professional and motivational attributes.
The best way to hold each persona's attention is to speak directly to its members. Hit their main pain points. Communicate how your company solves their problems. Demonstrate that you're a better value than the competition. It's okay to mix up these narrow posts with more general content from time to time, but it's definitely important to keep the focus on your core personas.
2. Optimize Each Post around One Long-Tail Keyword
Call it the "one and one" rule: Each successful blog post should speak to one specific buyer persona and be optimized around one specific long-tail keyword.
What's a long-tail keyword, you ask? Long-tail keywords are longer versions of the short, snappy keywords that most people imagine when they think of SEO. If your business specializes in water sports equipment, one of its target short-tail keywords might be "water sports equipment."
To maximize your inbound marketing ROI, you'd likely pair that short-tail keyword with one or more related long-tail keywords: "where to find discounted water sports equipment," "water sports equipment in Orlando Florida" and so forth. You need to use keyword research and analytic tools to find the most popular and effective long-tail keywords.
Once you've compiled a list of your most effective long-tail keywords, limit yourself to one keyword per post. This basically ensures that your post is optimized to the fullest and reduces the likelihood that you'll fail to rise above your competitors in organic search results for those terms.
3. Include Hyperlinks to Internal Website Pages
In the absence of any external forces, your position in the organic search results is likely to rise in direct proportion to the number of quality links - and the quality of each individual link - pointing to your domain.
To ensure that your website has a steady stream of inbound links and retains its SEO momentum, pepper each blog post with at least two hyperlinks to internal website pages. These links' anchor text should dovetail with the short- and long-tail keywords you've targeted for those pages. For instance, links to a page about jet skis should use "jet skis," "discount jet skis" or some variation thereof as their anchor text.
4. Include Social Sharing Buttons
Make sure all of your blog posts have sharing buttons for the social media platforms on which your prospects live, work and play. This simple step can dramatically increase the rates at which your articles are shared and boost your visibility without any investment on your part.
5. Insert a Compelling Call to Action
Basically, your call to action makes the case for why readers should voluntarily enter your sales pipeline. You should offer them something of value that can really help their business and makes it hard to say "no."
It’s a simple, straightforward step that can dramatically increase reader engagement, lead generation, conversions and sales. Get in the habit of ending each post with an offer such as a white paper, eBook, case study, etc. that can help boost their business.
Learn How to Optimize Blog Posts from the Pros
Even if you've got a knack for crafting compelling blog posts you might not be a blog optimization natural. That's fine. Whether you're looking to fine tune your existing blog content or get started on a new lead generation campaign, we're happy to bring years of experience and plenty of hard-won content marketing victories to help you. Before you post another article to your blog, give us a call or contact us online!
To learn more about the impact blog optimization has on generating more traffic and leads to your website, download the free case study “Digital Marketing That Converts: See How A New Digital Marketing Plan Drove A 210% Conversion Lift.”
