It is difficult to say what the most important thing is to inbound marketing and improving your web sites performance in search engines. I.E., Google. As Matt Cutts, the head of the Google Spam Department often reminds people, there is not one magical step to get your site indexed, it will always be a combination of steps that Google takes into consideration.
We put together a list of what we feel are the most important steps increasing your revenue via organic leads.
10 Important Steps to Inbound Marketing
1.) Create a Key-word Strategy
1. Create a list of 5-10 keywords
2. Select Keywords that are ‘specific’ and ‘relevant.’
3. Look for “long-taled keywords”
4. Look for missed opportuities
5. Design and optimize your website around your keywords.
2.) On-page SEO
1. HTML for On-Page Factors
2. Meta Tags
3. Header Tags
4. Bold and Italic Tags
5. Image Tags
6. Title tags
7. MOZ Ranking
8. URL structure
9. Domain Info
10. Proper use of CSS
3.) Lead Generation
on-page SEO accounts for 25% of your overall search engine ranking, inbound linkes make up the remaining 75%
4.) Content Development (Blog)
Content + Links = SEO
1. Attention-Grabbing Article Title
2. Well-Written & Formatted Text
3. Use of Images/Videos
4. Inbound & Outbound links
5. Call-to-Action
* While blogging is a great place to start, it isn’t the only kind of content you can create. Consider producing longer-form content like ebooks, white papers, or research reports that can be offered to visitors in return for completing a lead generation form. Also, consider non-text offers such as ‘how-to’ videos, webinars, slideshows, and similar types of content.
5.) Promoting Content & Participating in Social Media
Promote Content from Blog Via Social Media. Marketers who can leverage social media to distribute content and grow a community of advocates stand to yield significant growth. Social media allows customers to communicate directly with your business, and supports the rapid spread of content online.
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Google+
4. Instagram
5. LinkedIN
Monitor Social Marketing Via:
You need to keep an eye on the online discussions related to your industry, and you need to know how, when necessary, to respond.
1. Google Alerts
2. Twitter
3. Google Reader and RSS Feeds:
4. Facebook Insights:
7.) Conversion Testing
Focus on conversion of your website visitors into sales leads. To do this, decide on a compelling offer for your customers, create a call-to-action to promote your offer, and launch a landing page with a form for visitors to submit their information to obtain the offer. Finally, test, measure, and iterate the whole process.
1. Decide on Offers
2. Create Call-to-Action
3. Create Landing Pages
4. Test, Measure & Iterate
8.) Email Marketing
Nurture Leads with Email marketing. Lead nurturing is the process of developing that relationship with your potential customer by sending targeted, relevant, and valuable messages to them in a timely manner.
1. List Building
2. Send Emails
3. Convert Clicks
4. Measure Results
9.) Mobile Marketing
What should you worry about when optimizing for mobile?
1. Emails & Calls-to-Action
2. Downloads
3. Video
10.) Analyzing & Refining Strategies
1. Implement an Analytics Program
2. Identify Opportunities
3. Set a Metric for Success
4. Refine
5. Evaluate
While you should try to reach long-term goals, there are shorterterm steps you can take to get there. The following are a few elements of your website you can refine in order to reach your broader goals:
Keywords: Try new keywords or variations of keywords to see if they better help your business in getting found. Since each page on your site can incorporate different keywords, there are multiple ways of doing this.
On-Page SEO: See if changing a simple on-page factor can help boost visits. Examples of on-page factors are page titles, meta description, and headings. As a simple test, try changing the page title of one of your web pages to see if you generate more traffic. Conversions: Try new things with your conversion forms or landing pages. For example, try locating the conversion form more prominently on your web page.
Content Strategy: Determine which content is generating the most traffic. This could mean increasing your focus on that type of content, or refining your delivery of other content.
Social Media Promotions: Evaluate which social media channels are generating the most site visitors and leads. Again, you can focus on your successful social media platforms, and/or try improving your performance in less successful platforms.
Lead Nurturing: Maybe you’re sending emails too frequently— or perhaps not frequently enough. Maybe the calls-to-action in your email are not appropriate for your audience. Always keep experimenting and testing.