How blogs are your secret weapon for lead generation
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is becoming an increasingly important factor of business. Think about your own browsing habits: for many, Google is considered to be the oracle – the first point of consultation for weather, car purchases, entertainment, life advice, and yes even to find Google, with “Google” ranking in the top 5 search results. However, with this much power comes a responsibility to “do no evil”. While Google’s motto might be a bit outdated considering the vast swathes of data they hold, it is up to the tech giant to ensure a level playing field for their search engine, promoting worthy content and relegating inferior or spam sites.
Throughout this blog, I will be detailing how you can use Google’s algorithm updates to deploy growth hacking for your business – and if you are reading this now, then it clearly worked.
The most efficient way to improve your website’s SEO is through a dedicated blog page.
Here are the top 10 ways that blogs can help your business.
1. Blogs are a great way to showcase your skills and Unique Selling Point (USP)
Blogs are a great way of showing users or potential clients that you know what you are doing, and how you do it. Blogs, unlike published articles, are not subject to editorial discretion. There are no external gatekeepers that would expect you to minimise promotional or marketing content meaning that you can showcase your skills however you want to! Share anecdotes from the front line, success stories and news clippings in blogs to highlight your current activities and keep readers engaged by positioning your brand as a thought leader on the topic.
2. Lead-Generation
Most importantly, blogs are one of the simplest forms of lead-generation and can greatly impact SEO. By utilising keyword search tools, you can find out what phrases your potential clients are searching for. By compiling these lists, you can fill your blog with appropriate keywords that will result in your website ranking higher on relevant search queries. By loading content on your website with specified key words, you can organically increase your Google search engine ranking on key topics, targeting more relevant individuals and ranking higher than your competition.
This means that if someone were to Google a specific phrase that was mentioned in your blog then they would not only see it much higher than it would appear organically, but it would also prove that you are experts in the topic. The more blogs you post, the more likely you are to appear in searches as more keywords are associated with your site. There is a way of formulating these blogs so that they are ‘ticking algorithmic boxes’ that allows for ‘growth hacking’, however this is a closely guarded industry secret.
3. A Collaborative Approach can Cement Partnerships
Writing blogs about star clients or partners can be an excellent way of showing you are committed to a joint future. When these are shared on social media by tagging specific users and companies then they receive much more traction than a standard post. By writing partner blogs with a hyperlink to their site you will not only increase their SEO, but yours too. Mutual hyperlinks, or ‘SEO handshakes’ can be mutually beneficial in terms of organic search placement. Why wait? Show your clients and partners how much they mean to you in a blog! It goes a long way and by sharing the stories of the challenges they faced, you may entice businesses who are suffering the same issues.
4. Tell your story
Blogs are your own words. They allow you to write about what you want to write about and can be a powerful way of storytelling, and therefore marketing.
First-hand stories in anecdotal blog form can cultivate a personal relationship with clients by acting as a lead-generation tool as well as showcasing your technical arsenal. Each blog simply solidifies your domain authority and gives you the option to imbue each word with your company ethos and culture. Share what makes you “you”, and how you got to where you are now.
5. Add depth to your website and improve bounce rate
A bounce rate is when a user clicks on your website and then immediately leaves. It is not enough to simply entice users to visit your website. You must get them to stay. Blogs, and perhaps more importantly, interesting blogs will provide additional content on the website that will keep people on the page for longer, and therefore increase the likelihood that they will reach out and establish a connection – pepper your blogs with statistics and images too which all help to keep people sticky.
6. Give your employees a voice
Another way of making the site more personal is to share employee opinions and experiences on the site showing that the business cares about their employees. This can also be a good way of showing your products and offerings in action from an employee perspective. When you amplify this on social media you imbue a sense of community and collaborative pride where every employee is heard. This can also create variety of content as each employee has a unique tone specific to them that ensures that each blog is not simply a cookie cutter piece of waffle.
7. Keep prospects and customers in the loop
Blogs are a powerful and engaging way of showing customers and prospects what is in the pipeline – any company news such as company appointments, upcoming events or webinars and new product releases are always good for blog content, and it allows customers and partners to keep up to date with your exciting news.
8. Help to manage traffic
When done correctly, blogs, and more importantly the hyperlinks within the blogs, can take users on a predetermined pathway, nudging them to the most important pages on your site. As blogs are entirely within your control this can be effectively done by mapping the targeted buyer persona and developing a series of blogs that will take your user on your desired route through the website.
9. Blogs Can Provide Leads and Gather Data
If blogs are behind a landing page or if they contain bespoke hyperlinks to landing pages, then it can help you expand your lead database. Blogs can also convert organic traffic into leads and potential customers as they may have clicked on your site to read a blog and the longer, we can keep them the better. By initiating a subscription wall on your site and enticing potential users to sign up to access exclusive content, your salespeople will have a wealth of contacts to reach out to.
Also, by running analysis on top performing blogs you can tailor your content to include this, thereby increasing future engagements and reducing bounce rate.
10. Allows you to expand your areas of expertise
As blogs are controlled internally it allows you to branch out into different areas, utilising these specific key words to increase your offerings. For example, you can write about anything from mental health awareness to ‘tales from the trenches’ and every blog will only add to your credibility as long as they are positive.
Blogs are entirely yours, and while writing them can seem like a daunting task, there are ways to make this easier for you.
How to utilise blogs
There are a few ways to develop a blog pattern and get into a real routine to take full advantage of all that a blog offers a website.
- Arrange a blog rota — Put willing staff on a rota to write a blog once a week. This will give you lots of different perspectives and a deep talent pool of potential writers — however this can be difficult to maintain and enforce and will be a few weeks until the blog has enough content to be beneficial.
- Get into a routine of writing about new events such as new partnership announcements, new products, industry events that your business will be attending or around specific calendar days (mental health awareness day, data privacy day, etc.) — This will lighten the load on employees but provide sparse content
- Don’t have the bandwidth? Then outsource to Eskenzi — We offer a bespoke blog writing service with complete ‘growth hacking’ and SEO-increasing experience to ensure that you have a full library of relevant and engaging content.
