Inbound Marketing Insights

The central focus of your inbound marketing strategy should be blogging and creating new and engaging content. It's also important to remember that your blogs are going to be one of the first pieces of content your prospects will likely find on your website. The reason is that your blog should be filled with helpful content to help your prospects get their questions answered. You also want to be sure your blogs can be found online, and that starts with developing a keyword strategy rooted in keyword research to define your blog strategy. Here are some tips to help you research keywords to help develop your blog content calendar:

• Understand What Your Prospects are Searching for Online:
  This first step in the process will help you define your search engine optimization strategy to get your website and content found online when people are searching for information related to your business. SEO is one of the most essential parts of your content and blogging strategy because organic traffic (i.e., people who find your website through a Google search) is one of the most valuable website traffic sources. Increased organic traffic means more website visitors, increased opportunities for visitors to convert into sales opportunities, and a higher ranking in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. And better yet, this type of traffic doesn’t cost any money in paid advertising and continues to drive website traffic for years to come.
• Analyze Your Website Data to Start Your Keyword Research Process:
  Your website analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, or an integrated marketing tool such as HubSpot, should outline the top organic keywords driving the most website traffic for your business. This exercise will help you determine the keywords you are currently ranking for and the keywords you are not ranking for online.
  
• Develop Your List of Target Keywords:
  Lastly, create a list of keywords that your target audience will likely use to search for similar products or services that you offer. Then you will research the monthly search volume of those terms. This will ensure there is high search volume so your content will be found by people using a targeted keyword online. However, you also want to be sure that the term isn’t so broad that you will not gain traction with that keyword.
  For example, if you target the keyword, “leadership,” you will be competing with thousands of websites also targeting that broad keyword. But if you use “leadership consultant,” then you will get a much more targeted audience. As a reference, the term “leadership” has 673,000 searches per month, while “leadership consultant” has 1,600 searches per month. There is a much higher likelihood to rank on “leadership consultant” because there is less competition, and it is also much more targeted to the audience you want to attract. Google’s Keyword Planner is a great resource to help generate a list of target keywords to identify the best keywords based on search volume and competition.

This keyword research part of your blogging strategy will help you determine the content topics that will be most interesting to your audience. This should be one of the primary guiding principles in your blogging and content strategy to help you define the blogs and content most helpful to your buyer personas.

Are you looking for ways to optimize your inbound strategy? The book "Mastering Inbound Marketing: Your Complete Guide to Building a Results-Driven Inbound Strategy," written by Elyse Flynn Meyer, Owner & Founder of Prism Global Marketing Solutions, covers every aspect of the inbound marketing methodology, including the revenue generation trifecta of marketing, sales, and the customer experience. Check out the book to see how to most efficiently and effectively develop, implement, and maintain your inbound marketing strategy.