The 7 Fundamentals of Being Found and Generating Leads Online

Transcription

1 The 7 Fundamentals of Being Found and Generating Leads Online By Kevin Carney of Inbound Marketing University Page 1 of 10

2 InboundMarketingUniversity.biz InboundMarketingUniversity Published by Inbound Marketing University No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in any database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Inbound Marketing University. If you need permission, please ask. We just might say yes. We re nice people. The information in this document is accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of writing. As a reader you need to accept full responsibility for your action and should consult with a professional about your own circumstances before following anything in this white paper. Results can not be guaranteed, in Inbound Marketing as in life. However, as in life, we do tend to reap what we sow. Further, the author and publisher have used their best efforts to proof and confirm the content of this document, but you should proof and confirm information such as dates, measurements, and any other content for yourself. The author and publisher make no warranties of any kind, express or implied, with regard to that content or its accuracy. For more information, please write to: Inbound Marketing University PO Box 1680 Buda, TX Phone: (yes that s a California area code) kevin@inboundmarketinguniversity.biz Website: InboundMarketingUniversity.biz Published in the United States of American (unless you re one of those people who believe Texas never legally joined the Union, in which case it s published in Texas). Anyone caught breaking the above rules will be liable for copyright infringement and additionally will be required to (at your expense of course) come to Texas during the heat of the summer and work mending fences. Page 2 of 10

3 Being Found Online is Both Easy and Hard It s so easy anyone can do it. It s so hard very few succeed. Why? Because its work. Of all the people to make the point that we reap what we sow, Thomas Edison says it in a way that really works for me. Most people do not recognize opportunity when they see it, because it looks like work. The system you follow to attract your desired audience to your website and then convert website visitors into prospects and customers is really simple. But you have to do it, diligently, consistently, and keep doing in day in and day out. The rewards of persistence are enormous. I ve seen this system transform businesses, and take them from famine to feast. The number #1 factor that determines whether a business succeeds or fails is do you have a steady enough stream of quality leads. Inbound Marketing does that for you. Not overnight, not in a week, and not in a month. I ve seen it work in as little as 3 months and I ve seen it take as long as 14. But when you re diligent and faithful to the system and do not give up, it works. Anyone can do it. Are you game? I hope you find this paper interesting and useful. Kevin Carney P.S. While this paper has been proofread many times, people still find errors. If you do, please let me know. Page 3 of 10

4 Overview Once upon a time, a business could simply hire an SEO specialist who focused could improve your website ranking by focusing on two primary areas: 1. Find low hanging fruit keyword phrases to use in your content. 2. Ensure every page was formatted well for SEO. And that was that. When you found keyword phrases that had commercial value to you that also had a low level of competition AND you optimized the pages on your website well for those keyword phrases, you got found. This is no longer the case. The Internet is more crowded that it was even 5 years ago, and Google has updated their algorithm to pursue their goal of returning the highest quality content to people using their search engine. Search signals Over time, Google has updated their search algorithm to include more search signals. In the very beginning there was only one and today there are rumored to be in excess of 220. Different search signals have different values or weights and the aggregate of all of them determines where your website ranks. Personalized SERPs SERP stands for Search Engine Result Page. It s the result page you see after you query Google s search engine. It s also important to know that the concept of your search ranking is now personalized. What this means is two people can submit the exact same search query, and be presented with two different search results. Today, It s Almost All About Publishing Being found online today is a matter of turning your website into a publication, and publishing contents (articles, stories, videos, etc) that your desired audience will find relevant, interesting, and most importantly USEFUL (so says Google). Page 4 of 10

5 The 7 Fundamentals The 7 fundamentals relate to publishing (which attracts your audience), conversion, networking (not link building per se), and commitment. Commitment may seem a strange one to be on this list, but the system or recipe described in this document simply works, when you do what s necessary to make it work. It s the age old story of reaping what you sow. 1) Quantity Simply put, how many webpages there are on your website affect your search rankings. All things being equal, sites with more pages rank higher. 2) Quality This one is huge and has two aspects or meanings. Quality to a Search Robot This refers to how well the post (or page) is formatted well for SEO. Just like in the old days, it matters greatly that your website and your individual webapges be well formatted for SEO. This is very objective and there is no guesswork involved in what needs to be done. Quality to a Person This on the other hand is somewhat subjective, but not as much as you might think. Google hires human raters to help them quantify the subjective quality of a webpage, and they seem to be doing a pretty good job at it. According to Google, the #1 criterion for a webpage to be considered as high value, is that it is very useful. Not long, not pretty, not well formatted with headers, etc, but useful. That being said, these human raters are human and how a webpage looks does influence their perception of how useful it is. 3) Consistency Websites that are updated more often rank higher. What s important here is to publish fresh content to your website at regular intervals. You want your website to rank higher? Update it more often. Page 5 of 10

6 4) Longevity All things being equal, older websites rank higher than newer website. So although the best time to publishing at regular intervals is 10 years ago, the second best time to start is now. Publishing Summary Publishing, done properly, will bring your desired audience to your website via organic search. And for reasons I explain in the next section, these are the people you want. 5) Conversions Publishing as described above will bring visitors to your website via organic search. There are the visitors you want. The fact that they arrived at your website via organic search means they re looking for something that matches what s written on your website. You know this because they arrived by looking for something. The single most important aspect of conversion is having an audience who has an interest in what you re selling. Inbound marketing brings those people to your website, but just showing up is not enough. You want them to take some actions, and this is what conversion is all about. Page 6 of 10

7 How Your Buyers Decide to Buy from You When we buy things, we go through a decision process. It differs according to what we re buying. Our process for buying cars is much more involved that our process for buying groceries, but decision processes are in play in both (and every) purchase. Knowing the decision process your customers went through in the course of buying from you allows you to implement that process on your website. Your Sales Funnel And their buying decision process is your sales funnel. Effective Calls to Action Which you implement on your website by using well placed Calls to Action (CTAs). For example, let s pretend you re a motivational speaker and you ve determined your customers go through the following process: 1. They decide a good motivational speaker sets a productive tone for their annual events and conventions. 2. They then decide you ve got the right tone or perspective. If this their buying decision process, you would publish blog posts about the values and benefits of motivational speakers helping set the tone of events and conventions, then at the bottom of each blog post suggest they watch a demo video of you in action. At the bottom of the demo video you then suggest they fill out your Booking Info form to make contact with your office. 6) Networking You may have heard the term link building. It s the process of obtain links to your website from other websites. However.. looking at it from the perspective of link building is short sighted. What you re really doing is networking, through the Internet, and it is conceptually no different from networking with business owners in your community face to face. You re building relationships. Page 7 of 10

8 Being linked to Having said that, being linked to increases your search ranking, but some people don t know that there is such a thing as bad links that hurt your ranking. Consider that Google uses the term Webspam to describe spam tactics whose purpose is to artificially inflate your search ranking. To determine if a given link building tactic is likely to increase your ranking or decrease your ranking, ask yourself if a reasonable person would consider what you re doing to be reasonable. If you suspect it may be considered a spam tactic, it probably is. Being commented upon As stated earlier, Google likes websites that are updated more often. Comments on your blog posts are website updates. Building a community of people who consistently comment upon your blog posts GREATLY helps your search ranking. Being shared via social media (especially Google+) Social media shares don t drive a lot of traffic to websites (a recent study by BrightEdge revealed that 51% of traffic on websites comes from organic search while less than 5% comes from all social media networking sites combined. However, Google owns Google+ and is working to make it more relevant. I and many others have seen instances where a Google+ update about a post on your blog ranks higher than the post itself. 7) Commitment Also known as How badly do you want this? or Are you willing to make it happen?, and this is the big one. While attracting your audience to your website and converting some visitors into leads is conceptually simple (the recipe is in this white paper), it takes time and effort to make it happen. This works, plain and simple. How committed you are to this really depends on how well you believe that to be true. Page 8 of 10

9 What Are Your Options for Your Business? You basically have three to choose from. Hire an Agency or Consultant A quality agency who can create an effective online presence for you will change $2,500 a month on up. Do It Yourself with Expensive Tools Such as the HubSpot tool set, which while being a great set of tools costs $800 (on up) a month for small businesses. Do It Yourself WITHOUT Expensive Tools For more information on how to do this, visit our website. Inbound Marketing University Page 9 of 10

10 The Next Step 1) Did you find this paper to be useful? If you found even one little bit of useful information in this white paper, forward it to three of your friends. I m sure they will thank you for it. You can send it to them via or post it on your blog. 2) Have you joined our community yet? We teach small businesses and early stage startups how not to be left behind just because they can t afford an agency or expensive tools. When our students do what we teach, they get results. We also support each other by networking with each other through the Internet, providing our websites with valuable links, comments, and social shares. So join us.. Inbound Marketing University Page 10 of 10