Stop hibernating: You’re missing out on company blog benefits

Stop hibernating: You’re missing out on company blog benefits

The benefits of a B2B blog are too important to overlook. Plus: Three companies that excel at content creation.

If your company blog has gone the way of the bears in winter, there is good reason to bring it back to life. That stale page on your website is more important than may realize. When months and even years go by without a single update, you’re missing out on company blog benefits.

Let’s cut straight to the stats:
  • 70% of respondents in a Databox survey said SEO is better than pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for generating sales. (Can you guess what a leading driver of website SEO is?)
  • Blogs are among the top 3 tools used in content strategies (HubSpot 2020).
  • 51% of companies say updating old content has proven to be the most efficient tactic implemented (SEMrush, 2019). (See our post on reworking content for SEO here.)
  • 67% of companies use organic traffic to measure content success (SEMrush, 2019). (You guessed it: A blog is a key tool in boosting organic search traffic.)
  • 72% of online marketers say content creation is their most effective SEO tactic.
  • Companies with blogs generate 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages than those without.

In other words, a company blog brings benefits beyond just being a source of information, a tool to communicate with prospects, and to build brand. Despite new technologies, text will — as HubSpot points out in its 2020 State of Marketing Report — always be the foundation of search. And no place allows you to add descriptive text for improved search rankings as much as a company blog.

Not seeing company blog benefits? Here are 4 common pitfalls.

But as the significant number of hibernating company blogs shows, the pitfalls tend to come in spades. If your B2B blog is currently on snooze, let us guess the reason falls into one of the following categories:

  1. Unforeseen events: The most recent example is, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic. Faced with massive upheaval, supply chain companies, in particular, had to reshuffle resources. Although a crisis could be the time to step up communication and position the company as a leader, some blogs went dark after releasing a statement on the pandemic and its impact on the business.
  2. Unrealistic expectations: More than a few B2B blogs have run out of steam when immediate results fail to materialize. The disappointment tends to stem from unrealistic expectations. As much as everyone wants that first blog post to bring in a bucketload of leads, content marketing takes time to build momentum; but, done right, it is designed to turn into a tidal wave of improved search authority. Let patience rule and you will be rewarded.
  3. Lack of resources: To stand out in a crowd of tough competitors is not accomplished in an afternoon. Managing a successful company blog takes time. Other than outsourcing, there really is no way around it. If the blog is run on the fly or is low on the list of priorities, the results will suffer along with the motivation to keep going.
  4. Lack of strategy: Publishing for the sake of publishing will get you nowhere. Who are you writing for? What keywords are they using? How do you evaluate performance? Even well-written content can miss the target if it is not tailored around the audience you want to reach.
  5. Lackluster content: Although we always stress the need for consistency and keyword optimization when it comes to blog content, there is yet another aspect that is just as important — quality. A company blog that does not benefit your target audience will not benefit you. The most successful B2B blogs combine SEO best practices with useful, high-quality content.

B2B blogging done right: 3 examples of great blogs

For inspiration, it always helps to look at the organizations that get it right. And there are many to choose from. Take a look at three that have realized company blog benefits with engaging and purposeful content. Although conceptually different, the visions of these blogs align with the goals of each company, whether it’s generating leads with persuasive analytics or carving out a niche in social responsibility.

1. Cerasis: Market insights

B2B blogging benefits

The transportation management company was one of the early adopters of B2B blogging — and the results have been impressive. And Cerasis is not letting up. The company has published 15 blog posts in July alone, a pace few can — or don’t necessarily need to — match.

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2. General Electric: Global vision

company blogging

A multibillion-dollar corporation has the benefit of ample resources — and GE is putting them to good use. General Electric Reports intelligently humanizes the company with a stream of stories on the impact of GE products on global progress and employee spotlights that tie into current events.

3. Comscore: Analytics first

example of great b2b blog

A look at Comscore’s blog leaves no doubt about its specialty: the collection and analysis of internet data. Comscore draws upon its vast resources to create content that is found nowhere else. The ability to showcase such detailed expertise is sure to sway a target audience looking to leverage customer behavior online.

Time to crawl out

The impact of an effective B2B blog can be huge. It requires research and vision to get started, persistence to keep it up, and analysis to evaluate the performance. In the end, the benefits of a company blog contribute to the health of your entire organization.

How about waking that bear up again?

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When short on time, updating old blog posts for SEO makes a lot of sense

When short on time, updating old blog posts for SEO makes a lot of sense

Your company blog can be a goldmine for search enginesThese strategies will give your old blog posts an SEO boost — without days of work. 

When time and resources are in short supply, use them well. That leads us to your company blog. One of the quickest ways to get search engines to pay renewed attention to your website is to update old blog posts for SEO.

Why? 

Google and other search engines reward new contentWhen your site is stagnant, Google takes note and will not crawl the site as often in search of updates. The result is a lower freshness score and lower rankings. But writing brand-new posts is time-consuming and may not be at the top of your priority lists when urgent matters demand attention. You need a quicker solution where the bulk of the work is already done.  

The fact is your library of old blog posts is a goldmine for SEO. Content drives traffic and leads long after it was published. A look at our own most-viewed posts in July shows a post from 2018 has suddenly sailed to the top our lists as well as Google’s search engine results pages (SERP), driven by searches for “benefits of corporate social responsibility”.  

examples of good blog posts

But resting on old laurels is really not an optionOld posts that relay dated information can actually hurt your content marketing strategyTo get the most out of the hard work we pour into content creation here at Fronetics, we need to regularly extract the best of past blog posts and let them shine in a new light. Cue optimizing old blog posts for SEO. 

Updating old blog posts for SEO comes with a range of benefits: 

  1. It’s a win not only for the updated post but for the entire site since Google prioritizes frequent activity.  
  2. It lets you rework keywords for improved organic search traffic.  
  3. It helps you stay relevant in the eyes of your target audience (dated product launch posts do you no favors).  
  4. It saves time as you don’t have to start from scratch every time you need to publish. 

But how do you know which blog posts are worth repurposing? 

Setting out to randomly update old blog posts for SEO makes little sense. Some, from years ago, may event warrant deleting, especially if they contain keywords that compete for attention with newer pieces.  Rather, there are certain characteristics that make some posts more worthwhile to update than others. The point is not to spend hours rewriting the post or entirely changing its premise, but to give it good once-over that makes it useful again — and, by extension, drive improved SEO. 

Here are a few themes to look for: 

The number of inbound links: Posts with a lot of high-quality inbound links have something those without lack: authority. That feature gives these posts a better shot at ranking when you do a page refresh. 

High conversion rates/low traffic: These posts have served you well in the past but something is amiss about their reach. If you can improve traffic with more relevant keywords, you have created a top lead generator.  

High traffic: Some posts consistently draw lots of visitors, but are you putting your best foot forward? You can squeeze more value out of high-performing posts and extend their life span by giving your audience the most up-to-date information available. If conversion rates are low, you may find revising the Calls-to-Action (CTA) could have a big impact.  

Ranking opportunities: Does the post rank on, let’s say, page 5 of search results? It can make it a good candidate for updating. Free tools like Moz Keyword Explorer or Ubersuggest can help you identify alternative keywords that could help lift the post to a better position 

Trending topicsIf your business keeps getting questions about a certain topic that you covered but that now sits buried on the blog, a refresh means a chance to capture those search queries. It is also a better option than creating a new, duplicate post that could hurt search rankings.  

Next question: What exactly should you do to SEO optimize old blog posts?

1. Evaluate keywords 

Adding content to target new keywords is the No. 1 priority of marketers who update old blog posts for SEO, according to a Databox surveyAgain, free SEO tools can help you take proactive steps to improve the keyword focus of your piece. Use Google Search Consolefor instance, to identify keywords that the post is already ranking for and that potentially outperform the original keyword. Even a small tweak could give the post a boost.  

2. Rewrite headlines, subheads, meta description, and intro 

Once you have nailed down one or two long-tail keywords that match the intent of your target reader, incorporate them into the headline (H1)subheads (H2), and meta descriptionTo underscore the freshness of the piece, rework the first paragraph and include the keyword. If you are sticking with the original keyword since it ialready ranking well, make targeted alterations to potentially draw even more traffic and check back in to see how it performs a few weeks later.  

3. Find new internal links 

What has happened on your site recently? Internal links to old product pages and resources need to go. Improve the user experience and boost SEO at the same time by linking to your newest and most relevant work. Internal links give search engines a road map that benefits both the post that you’re working on and the pages that you’re linking to. And, while you’re at it, make sure there are no broken links. Do it manually or let Check My Links do the work.  

4. Update stats and link to new research 

Few things will make me leave a page as fast as old stats. Multiply that tendency by X number of readers, and your post will gradually lose its authority and keyword ranking. A quick search should identify more up-to-date information from outside industry sourcesIn a fast-moving industry like the supply chain, new reports are usually not hard to come by. Add an expert quote or two, link to new research, and you’re on the way to re-establishing the page as a trusted, quality source in the eyes of crawling search engines.

The supply chain stuff is really tricky. — Elon Musk

5. Add images and video

Time on page matters to SEO. And the more that draws visitors to stick around on the page, the better. Again, if time is limited, there are quick ways to update old posts for SEO. Consider adding quick infographic, more engaging imagery, pull quotes, and anything else that is readily available, like a video produced for another part of your page. High-quality visuals also send a strong message of professionalism and trustworthiness that raise the profile of your blog in general. Remember to add alt texts that include the keyword.  

optimizing blog content for SEO

6. Combine posts to turn the focus on high performers 

Do you have posts with similar themes, concepts, and keywordsThey may be competing with each other, eroding traffic and ranking for all. Here is your chance to pull segments of the weaker posts and add them to the higher performer (redirect the old posts to the new updated post). The benefits are twofoldthe elimination of duplicate content and content-rich new post which search engines favor. 

7. Set a new publication date but don’t change the URL 

Your work is almost done. Changing the URL, however, is generally not recommended. It requires a 301 redirect and means the loss of the authority the post has built up on your website. Instead, change the publication date, set it live, and share on social channels.  

The bottom line 

Optimizing old blog posts for SEO takes the pressure off producing new content when other tasks are calling. Even during less busy times, it is an integral feature of any content marketing strategyThe benefits are simply too good to pass up.  

 

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Video: SEO Basics – Everything Your Brand Needs to Know

Video: SEO Basics – Everything Your Brand Needs to Know

SEO helps your website rank higher in search engine results pages. Here are the SEO basics to get your website performing better and in front of your target audience.


Highlights:

  • SEO stands for search engine optimization — that much has stayed the same. It refers to techniques that help your website rank higher in search engine results pages.
  • SEO works by optimizing a website’s pages, conducting keyword research, and earning inbound links.
  • To rank well in the long term, build your SEO marketing strategy around topics, not keywords.

Video transcript:

I’m Jennifer Yim and I’m the Director of Strategy here at Fronetics. Today’s topic is SEO. SEO seems pretty straightforward. You pick a few keywords and your page is magically optimized for SEO, right? Not quite.

People understand the basic principles of SEO, but a lot has changed in the last decade. Let’s take a look at the basics to get your site ranking higher.

SEO stands for search engine optimization — that much has stayed the same. It refers to techniques that help your website rank higher in search engine results pages. This makes your website more visible to people who are looking for solutions that your brand, product, or service can provide by search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

What hasn’t stayed the same are the techniques we use to improve our rankings. This has everything to do with the search algorithms that these companies constantly change.

SEO works by optimizing a website’s pages, conducting keyword research, and earning inbound links. You can generally see results of SEO efforts once the webpage has been crawled and indexed by a search engine.

There are a ton of ways to improve the SEO of your site pages. Search engines look for elements including title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure, and inbound links.

Search engines also look at site structure and design, visitor behavior, and other external, off-site factors to determine how highly ranked your site should be in their results pages.

To rank well in the long term, build your SEO marketing strategy around topics, not keywords. If you do that, you’ll find you can naturally optimize for important keywords, anyway. Understanding your target audience and what interests them is key to attracting relevant visitors to your website through search engines.

For more tips on improving SEO and building your digital marketing strategy, visit us at Fronetics.com.

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Search Marketing Can Increase Web Traffic

Search Marketing Can Increase Web Traffic

search marketing

Using search marketing as part of your content strategy can increase web traffic and, thus, visibility for your business.

Search marketing, formerly “search engine marketing,” uses both paid (SEM) and unpaid strategies (SEO) to increase traffic to your business’ website. These two efforts work together to improve the likelihood that potential customers searching the internet will find your content.

Let me explain. When an individual searches for something on a search engine like Bing, Google, or Yahoo, the query brings him/her to a Search Engine Results Page, or “SERP.” Since we read from top to bottom, the person first sees the results that fall at the top of the SERP. Studies overwhelmingly show that the further down on the page that a link falls, the less likely someone will click it. What’s more, people rarely click on results beyond the first page. Thus, it is critical to rank as highly as possible on SERPs to entice potential customers to click through to your site.

So, how do you rise to the top? This is where search marketing fits into your content strategy.

SEO (Unpaid)

SEO (search engine optimization) is optimizing your content to improve how it ranks in search engine listings. This requires gaining a basic understanding of how and why search engines classify webpages and then catering to those factors where possible.

The search engine’s goal is to bring the most relevant results to someone who enters a search query. They use complex algorithms to determine how relevant a website is based on the query. So, if you type “best restaurant in Boston,” the search engine will scan the entirety of the internet to bring you a list of websites, in order, that are most likely give you an idea of the best Boston restaurants.

Each engine’s algorithm is slightly different, highly sensitive, and a closely held secret to keep websites from maliciously optimizing their content. Google, for instance, uses about 200 factors in its search algorithm, some of which are public knowledge, and most of which are not. This makes SEO somewhat of an art.

The best bet for optimizing your content is to consider those known factors while remaining true to your content. You want the people who are looking for you to find you. Here are some tips.

1) Use keywords throughout your content.

Algorithms crawl the internet to scan text of all kinds (websites, PDFs, documents, etc.) to find content that matches search queries. Identify several keywords that someone who is looking for products or services like yours might use in a search query, and use them throughout your content. It is likely even more effective when you use keywords in URL titles, headings and subheads, and paragraphs near the beginning of the page.

2) Use keywords in meta tags.

Webpages contain data, called meta tags, that search engines read to understand the main idea of the page. These are invisible to the average reader (unless you know where to look). Most important for SEO are the title tag and the meta description.

3) Distribute content through social media.

Social media is increasingly important to search algorithms because these platforms help determine what content people are using and engaging with organically. Post on your social media channels with links back to your website to improve your social media referral traffic metric and, thus, your SEO.

4) Encourage inbound links.

To understand how trustworthy and authoritative a particular website is on a certain subject, algorithms consider inbound links, or other sites linking to the website. HubSpot has some excellent advice on how to grow inbound links.

5) Make your site mobile-friendly.

As web traffic increasingly derives from mobile devices, search engines are rewarding websites that are mobile-friendly. If your website is not responsive or, at least, optimized for mobile, your search ranking will suffer.

6) Create frequent, quality content.

When you regularly publish content that is valuable to your target audience, search engines will “learn” that you are a trustworthy publisher with up-to-date information. Also, the more your content resonates with your target audience, the more they will post and share it, which means more referral traffic and inbound links, which likewise increase SEO.

SEM (Paid)

Search marketing through paid methods like pay-per-click (PPC) or paid advertising helps get your content in front of your target audience, regardless of how it would rank organically. Google AdWords is the most popular paid search platform used by marketers, followed by Bing Ads.

Google AdWords will show your advertisement to people who search with predetermined keywords. You pay per click, meaning you pay a fee for every person who clicks on your advertisement, regardless of how many people Google shows your ad to.

You can imagine that a number of advertisers vie for the same keywords. Google actually auctions off ad space with each search, ranking ads by bid (how much you are willing to pay per click) and quality score (does your content answer the searcher’s need?). To increase the success of your PPC you should:

  • Identify relevant keywords that potential customers might use when searching for your products or services.
  • Conduct comprehensive research of keywords with tools like Keyword Planner.
  • Speak your audience’s language with dynamic keyword insertion.
  • Determine which words you wish to bid on, and create groupings of these words to pair with ads.
  • Identify and eliminate irrelevant words unlikely to appear in keyword searches.

Remember, search engines cater to the searcher. So, the more relevant your content is to someone who is searching for you, the more likely they will find you and want to do business with you.

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10 Ideas for Blog Posts

10 Ideas for Blog Posts

 blank-screen

Overcome writer’s block with these ideas for blog posts.

It’s time to write that new blog post, and your computer screen is a vast, white page of emptiness. Maybe it feels as if you have covered all of obvious topics of interest and you have nothing left to write about. You need direction. You need motivation (or coffee). You need fresh ideas, a new angle or approach, or a modern-day muse!

You are not alone. Topic development is a skill, and some days it is a challenge — especially because you want your content to be unlike any other post out there. And there is a lot of content to compete with: Reportedly, 88% of B2B marketers use content marketing as part of their programs.

So, your post needs to stand out above the crowd, engage readers quickly, and offer them something valuable (e.g., information or entertainment) to keep them coming back to you for more. With that in mind, here are 10 prompts to get you going on your next blog post.

10 writing prompts for blog posts

1) Identify customer pain points.

Think about your target audience. Who is that potential customer? What are some of their everyday pains or challenges? Provide them with insight or information, offer advice, or provide solutions for overcoming those problems.

2) Use your industry experience.

Create a comprehensive list of industry-related statistics or facts. Then, focus on one that you can speak to. Such posts position you as a thought leader on industry challenges and trends. They also are great for getting inbound links (meaning other sites will link to your post, which improves your SEO).

3) Capitalize on popular trends.

What is hot in your business right now? What is important and trending in your potential customer’s corner of the world? Speak to others in your company for their ideas. Is this trend going to last? If it is on its way out, what is your prediction about what the next big trend may be?

4) Provide information.

Write a how-to guide. Help your readers make a decision or accomplish a task. Show your knowledge about the subject to establish yourself as a trusted source of information.

5) Offer a different opinion or new perspective.

Read other blogs in your industry for fresh ideas. This is simply a leaping-off point — plan to cover the topics in a different way.

6) Join in on top-level industry conversations.

Follow industry leaders on Twitter and LinkedIn. Join social media groups related to your business, and read what others in your specific industry are sharing. What are they posting about today? How can you expand on it or argue a different opinion or solution?

7) Localize a new story.

Read trade publications, magazines, and even the news for ideas. How can a hot topic relate to your business or customers? Look for hidden connections. In the newspaper business they call it “localizing” a story — essentially taking a story that, on the surface, is not related and finding a way to discuss it in terms of localized relevance.

8) Share your “musts.”

Write a top 10 list of industry must-knows, or perhaps must-dos, or even must-reads. Be a key source for even more information and knowledge.

9) Introduce your latest release.

Write about your latest project, product, or service and how it will solve specific challenges or address certain needs.

10) Answer customer questions.

Read and digest all of your readers’ responses, posts, or questions. Sometimes the customer generates great blog ideas through a conversation or a question. Write your post as a generalized response to others who may have the same concern, idea, or question.

Content marketing helps connect potential customers to your company by offering information they can use. But creating consistent, relevant content can be time-consuming and costly. If you frequently find yourself staring at a blank screen, consider outsourcing this important task to professionals. Many companies find it provides the optimum results, saving time and resources.

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