Organic traffic that sticks to your site means you’re doing something right. Leads are finding you on their own and liking what they find when your organic metrics are high. As leads now do more than 50 percent of their own research, on average, before ever coming into contact with your sales department, that’s critical. Content marketing is essential to lead gen, yet many B2B organizations overlook one of the most important elements of their content marketing strategy: their blog.
Here’s how to grow organic traffic and make your blog matter more to your audience.
Enrich Your Blog
A cardinal mistake many companies make is in ignoring links to outside sources. “We want our traffic to stay on our page,” some site owners think, “so why would we fill blog posts with outside links?” Here’s why: When you link to authoritative sites, you benefit from the halo effect of that authority, increasing your own search engine ranking and becoming more visible to leads. About 80 percent of people using search engines never go past the first page of results, so anything that amplifies your signal is going to net you a larger audience. Authoritative links also benefit the leads who read your content, which brings them back for more.
Fuel Email Lead Gen with Blogging
Email marketing is a cornerstone of lead generation, but without compelling content, you don’t get the open rates you should. Blog posts are an outstanding conversation starter for leads who haven’t shown many outward signs of interest or who have been slow in their progress along your sales funnel. Turning blog posts into email newsletter teasers lets your content do double duty. When readers click through to the longer blog post, you get a strong signal of interest you can then pursue with nurture streams.
Segment and Categorize
You know how vital well-designed segmentation is to your email marketing program, but are you linking your blog posts to the same segments with keywords and categories? By promoting your blog posts based on segmented nurture streams and interests, you’re able to create customized environments around each lead. They get surrounded with content that’s of specific interest to them on your blog, in email, and everywhere they go. This parallel structure between your email segmentation and your blog categories ensures high relevant.
Go Multimedia
Your blog is also a great place to feature other lead gen activities, such as a link to your latest webinar or a clickable image of your book that takes them to a landing page or Amazon order form. Search engine optimization doesn’t just refer to text; images and video are also highly searchable, and optimizing these multimedia components of your blog can generate additional organic traffic as leads perform image searches. Slideshows and infographics are powerful interest builders, too. Feature them on your blog and include a link to more information, and you’ll capture highly engaged leads.
With an intelligently deployed blog adding dimension to your lead gen program, you get the benefit of pulling in leads who actively seek you out.
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