Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

Having a search box on your website is helpful for several reasons:

• Your visitors can easily find the information they are seeking
• You can analyze the search queries for insights into why people are visiting your site
• For sites with a lot of content (And all Hubspot sites should have a lot of content), your visitors can find information that they wouldn't naturally discover using your navigation

How to create a Google search engine for your Hubspot website

1. To create a Custom Search Engine with Google, go to: http://www.google.com/cse/
2. If you haven't already created a Custom Search Engine, click the big Blue button -- the one labeled "Create a Custom Search Engine.
   
   After you've set one up, you can click the manage your existing search engines link.
   
   
3. Google will ask you to sign in. You'll have to use a "Google Account." This can be any email address that is registered with Google -- It does not have to be a gmail address.
   
   
4. Google will show you a form like the one below. The name and description is only for your internal use.
   
   Make sure you put in the name of your site without the www. This way, Google will search all your sub-domains. Don't worry, this can all be changed later.
   
   Most Hubspot users will want to buy the Site Search that starts at $100 per year. There is a free version, but Google will usually show your competitors in the search results -- not what you want!
   
   If you have a larger site with a lot of searches, you may need to buy one of their more expensive versions.
   
   
   
   
5. Click Next. Google will show you a Preview screen with a search box you can test out.
   
   When you are finished testing, click Next again.
   
   
6. Google will ask for your contact information. Fill out the form, and click Next.
   
   
7. Complete your purchase through Google Checkout.

That's it, you're finished! If you run into any trouble, please leave a comment or call us for help (800.609.9669).

On the last Google Checkout screen, there are links to:

• Edit this search engine
• Go to this search engine's homepage
• View all of your search engines

If you've got HTML and CSS skills, Google will give you sample code that you can integrate with your Hubspot site.

If you need help setting this up with Hubspot, Contact us.

Keywords for High SEO Rankings

If you’re familiar with SEO, you’re familiar with the concept of keywords. But, do you know which keywords are most likely to generate the best results for your website? What works for your competitor’s site may not necessarily work for yours…

The best keywords are not always obvious.

When you go about identifying keywords, it’s natural to think of the obvious choices – for instance, if you’re in the business of selling vehicles, you might assume cars, trucks, and SUVs are good, solid keyword choices. Well, they may be great choices IF you have a massive budget to corner the market on those highly competitive words. The reality is there are thousands of competing sites that already have decent rankings for those keywords. If you focus on words like cars, trucks, and SUVs, you’re going to be spinning your wheels near page 378 in Google search results.   

Long tailed keywords are the way to go.

If you’re in the auto sales industry, you’ll naturally include words like cars, trucks, and SUVs on your site pages because, after all, that’s what you’re in the business of selling! However, that doesn’t mean you should focus on these specific words for SEO purposes. Instead, focus on long tailed keywords that have moderate to low competition AND receive reasonably high monthly searches. How do you pick strong long-tailed keywords? Here’s how:

Finding competitive keywords.

Go to Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool. Enter, let’s say… affordable trucks in the “Word or phrase” box. Be sure to checkmark the box that says, “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms.” Choose the proper settings for your Location and Language too.

Over on the left hand side is a column labeled, “Match Types.” Checkmark the box labeled, [Exact]. If you’re looking for how many people search on your specific keyword, use this option. An exact match word is always enclosed in brackets.   

Under Search Terms, the phrase, [affordable cars], has 1,900 local monthly searches and the competition meter shows that it has high competition.

It would be pretty hard to rank highly for this particular keyword in Google search results, so let’s take a look at some better options. On the right hand side, click on the “Local Monthly Searches” header to sort the column in the order of largest to smallest. 

The results that show the highest monthly search count all happen to have medium competition levels. If you happen to be in the business of selling used cars and sports cars, [affordable used cars] and [affordable sports cars] might be good keywords to consider. Also, [best affordable cars] and [most affordable cars] would be ones to consider.

Takeaways
Effective SEO relies heavily on keywords, so be sure to choose your words wisely. If certain keywords don’t seem to produce good enough results, experiment by switching them out for other keywords. Cut your competition by focusing on long tailed keywords. Own the keywords you select and aim at ranking highly for them.  

Internet Marketing Comprehensive Review

Inbound marketing is all about getting found by customers. Unlike dated and costly outbound tactics, inbound marketing relies on leveraging web content to bring customers to your cyber doorway. To ensure your web content is out in view of your target audience, optimize it and place it in locations where they’re most likely to run across it. Here’s an overview of the 3 key components of inbound marketing strategy. 

Image by: Giles Gonthier

1. Content
Content is the cornerstone of any successful inbound marketing campaign. It’s what generates interest in your business and draws people to your website. Content is strategically formulated – it’s optimized with keywords that are search engine-friendly, and conveys a valuable message to your target audience.  Publishing high quality content enables you to showcase yourself as an expert in your field. If you come across as a credible problem-solver, people are likely to hire you for jobs. Your content should also revolve around keyword topics applicable to your business. Blogs, videos, white papers, podcasts, webinars, and eBooks are some of the most effective ways to get your content out into the world.     

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The objective of SEO is to maximize your website’s visibility in organic (unpaid) search results. Prospects begin the buying process by entering keywords in popular search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search or Bing. Isolate which keywords they’re most likely to use when searching for your product or service. Incorporate these keywords into your content and aim for keywords that are most likely to get your website ranked highly in search results. Here are the main factors that influence SEO results:

• Title tags that are brief but descriptive, unique for each page, and accurately describe a page’s content.
• Descriptive meta tags that include keywords and summarize the subject of your page.
• Simplified site structure that organizes your content and makes it easy to find. Create a naturally flowing hierarchy that makes sense to viewers and search engines.
• Create 2 sitemaps – one for viewers, and one for search engines. 
• Anchor text that describes the page to which it’s linking.
• Use heading tags to emphasize important text.
• Optimize site images by giving them descriptive filenames and using the alt attribute.
• High quality content that is compelling and useful. Influential sites will earn recognition on their own.
• Write fresh content regularly and ensure your text is easy-to-read.
• Use the robots.txt file to tell search engines not to crawl parts of your site that are not useful to viewers.
• Focus on generating a large number of quality inbound links.

Google offers an excellent Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. For some valuable SEO tips, check it out!  

3. Social Media
Social media allows for the creation and exchange of user-generated content. It puts your supporters in control, making them more engaged and connected with your business. Social networking is extremely valuable for branding. As our society has grown more “casual,” consumers feel greater comfort buying from businesses that have a face and personality to their name. Social media channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube are ideal for engaging with prospects. Show them you’re personable and open to listening to their suggestions and concerns. Build a social media presence using multiple sites so your ability to connect expands.

Passion-Inspired Video and Other Creative Content (GF502)

The use of video to market powerful content has exploded in recent years! Whether it’s used in blogs or as a viral content strategy, video gets peoples’ attention! When searching popular keywords, Google now gives videos first-page rankings. Sites that would otherwise score unfavorably are now able to make the top of first-page search results by posting video content. So, what does this tell you? Video is an incredible opportunity to drive more traffic and leads to your website!    

Image by: laverrue

The video advantage

Since video is fairly new to online marketing, there’s less video content to compete with. This means, if you’re smart about optimizing your video content, there’s a pretty good chance it can show up at the top of Google search results. Many businesses are still preoccupied with optimizing keywords for only text-based mediums. They haven’t discovered that keywords can be optimized using video as well.

Where to post video

Hosting your videos on third-party sites like YouTube may be a good strategy if you’re only interested in getting your content out in public view, but if you’re serious about directing more visits to your site, focus on hosting content on your own site. YouTube generates lots of traffic, so posting your videos on YouTube will help you generate lots of views quickly, but won’t do much for your site rankings.

Optimize your video content

Use rich keywords and position them as far to the left of the title as possible. Video itself doesn’t contain content Google can decipher, so be sure to upload a transcript of your video. Transcripts should be time-coded and the video script broken down into segments. Here's a useful video that shows you how to upload a transcript to YouTube videos.

Create a video sitemap

Search engines must know how to index the pages on your site that contain video. Building a video sitemap will accomplish this. A video sitemap is able to identify and tag videos on your site. It should include the URL for the video file, a thumbnail URL, play page URL, and title and description information. Take a look at how to create a video sitemap using Google's Webmaster Tools.

Measure your content

Like blog posts, keep your videos short and concise. People watch videos because they’re trying to absorb meaningful information in a short amount of time. Ten minutes should be the maximum length for your video. If it runs longer than that, consider cutting it into a series of shorter videos. Make sure your content is relevant and informative to your audience. Videos have the potential of attracting lots of inbound links IF they contain content people find useful.

Promote your video

Spread the word by posting links to your videos on your LinkedIn and Facebook pages. Send out tweets to your Twitter followers so they can check out your new content postings. Generate more activity around your videos by encouraging others to leave comments about them. Video is a popular medium for viral marketing. If you have something valuable to share, your content could spread like wildfire!

Online video is a dynamic tool to use in your inbound marketing strategy. If your site's having difficulty getting higher search rankings, consider tapping into the SEO potential video can offer. Video can be an effective way to sell your brand, educate your audience, and generate more traffic for you site.

Advanced Marketing Analytics (AZ501)

Interpreting your customers’ online buying behavior is not always obvious. Good sales results require an in depth understanding of their most pressing needs and wants. Some businesses focus so much on gorgeous website design, they overlook what’s most important – the data. A pretty page may be pleasing to the eyes, but if it lacks data that helps solve peoples’ problems, who cares? At the end of the day, building a website around the needs of your customers is what expands your customer base. What’s the key to knowing their needs? Knowing their intent. Web analytics tools will help you with this.

In his blog article about understanding consumer behavior with web analytics, Google’s analytics guru, Avinash Kaushik discusses how to identify customer intent. He poses 4 key questions you should answer about your website:

1. How did your visitors arrive?

Some visitors stumble upon your website by entering keywords in a search engine. Others enter via referral links. Web analytics provide you with a list of URLs that referred traffic to your site. Correlating conversions with specific referring URLs helps to identify which sites are sending you traffic with high conversion rates. Knowing which sites your customers are being referred from also helps you understand more about their interests and motivations.    

2. What are your visitors looking for?

Search engines now guard keyword data much more than in the past. Still, with a little detective work, you can get a good idea.

If you don't have Google Webmaster tools setup, go do it right now. It's the only way you can reliably get clues about what your visitors want. 

First, identify your high traffic pages. Then, look them up in webmaster tools and see which keywords are sending traffie to each page. You may be surprised and get ideas on how to tune your pages and your copy.

3. Where are visitors landing, bouncing, and viewing?

Visitors enter your website through many different entry points, not just your homepage. Analytics alert you to which landing pages visitors frequent most. If certain pages are popular with visitors, you may want to consider developing them further for even greater results. Similarly, isolating your most unpopular pages alerts you to the ones that require more optimization.  

Analytics also tell you which pages have the highest bounce rates – pages where visitors landed, looked around then left quickly. This is a clear sign that your page is not meeting customer expectations. Optimize it so it caters to their interests!

4. What are your website’s trends over time?     

Identifying performance trends is another valuable feature of analytics tools. They enable you to segment your data over timelines – you can pinpoint which days of the week or time intervals from which products sold best.

PR for Inbound Marketing (GF402)

In HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing University video, PR for Inbound Marketing, Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications eloquently sums up public relations for inbound marketing as “frequently distributing relevant content via the right channels, to boost credibility and findability.” What running a successful inbound marketing PR campaign comes down to is adding value to your buyer community. If you target the right prospects in the right places, and prove your content to be valuable for them, you’re running an effective inbound marketing PR campaign.  

Image by: Fritz Park

We’ve undergone a revolution in mass media distribution. A social media explosion of blogs, podcasts, and RSS feeds now enables the common person to communicate directly with the world via social networking tools. The objective of PR for inbound marketing is to generate prospects who will convert into qualified leads. If you can draw prospects to your website where they opt-in and eventually create purchase orders, you’ve successfully completed your mission. Where do you begin? I’ll show you how:

Steps to Complete Your Inbound Marketing PR Mission

1. Pinpoint your targets. Who are your prospects and where do they go to acquire their information? The more you know about your prospects (what they do and where), the more accurate your targeting strategy will be.
2. Blog your targets regularly. Craft relevant blog articles your prospects are likely to find valuable and post them frequently (at least 3 times per week). Distribute your content through channels that are most likely to reach your targets. Analyze your website traffic often and tweak your SEO accordingly.
3. Check for explosive content. Measure the relevancy of your content. Is it explosive enough? If your content is not being actively shared through the social networks or your conversion rate is dwindling, it may not be relevant enough to your target market. Reassess your target audience and figure out what they find relevant for solving their unique problems.
4. Unleash your content arsenal. Use every social media tool at your disposal to direct your valuable content at your target audience. In addition to blog posts, leverage videos, podcasts, articles, tweets, and eBooks to promote your message. 
5. Assess mission effectiveness. Determine which of your blogs is generating the most traffic by using Google Analytics, HubSpot’s Blog Analytics, or Technorati. When you tweet, are you using TweetReach to track just how far your words are spreading? If you’re deploying video content, use TubeMogul to spread your content across several sites.
6. Get promoted to a higher rank. How are you ranking? Are you building enough credibility for your community to view you as an authority in your field? Prospects are unwilling to convert to qualified leads until they’re convinced that you have what it takes to solve their problems.
7. Strategize outbound tactics. Give bloggers in your industry a reason to write about you. Bloggers not only help your search engine rankings by creating inbound links to your website, but they help promote your brand by getting its name out there in front of others.  
8. Remove your camouflage. Get yourself found by making SEO at the forefront of everything you do. Optimize your social media content as you would your website to make it as easy as possible for your prospects to find you. The more interest you can draw, the more apt prospects will be to find you.        

Takeaways

• Add value to your community of buyers by helping them solve their unique problems.
• Create compelling content that prospects find interesting.
• Leverage social media outlets to reach your audience.
• Analyze your campaign’s effectiveness on an ongoing basis using analytics tools. 
• Build credibility with your online community and enable your business to be found.    

Advanced SEO Tactics: On Beyond Keyword Research (GF401)

When it comes to SEO optimization, links are king! Everyone knows creating remarkable content is vitally important to SEO – but, the best written content in the world will only get you so far if no one links to it. There are some extremely important factors that help your content rank highly with the major search engines. Here are the top five most important page-specific ranking factors.

Image by: mando2003us

Factor 1: Anchor text

This one ranks at the top of the list! Create keyword-rich anchor text links and get others to post them on their sites. The strategy is to create anchor text using the keywords you’re targeting. As more and more people add your anchor text link to their sites, you’ll rank higher and higher for your desired keywords. Also, it’s important that your anchor text describe the content of the target page it links with – it must be relevant to the target page. In the blogs you write, get in the habit of including anchor text for targeted keywords and you’ll begin to see your rankings improve.

Factor 2: Link popularity

Externals links are important for indexing and crawling. The more people who add links to your website from their own pages, the greater your rankings will be with the key search engines. Having a large quantity of links is important but having quality links is even more important. Long established sites that are reputable and rank highly with search engines hold a lot of water. Earning external links with the pros means a lot in the SEO world. When link building, target sites that have the potential to boost your rankings.      

Factor 3: Link diversity

Search engines prefer sites with high link diversity. Build links with as many different domains as you can. Establish a healthy link profile for your site by leaving behind link trails from diverse sources.  Be active – post fresh content and comment on others’ content that pertains to a wide range of related topics. The idea is to establish content from diverse sources, but maintain links that are relevant to your site. When using anchor text to optimize your keywords, don’t use anchor text for the same one or two keywords repeatedly. Instead, use anchor text that targets multiple keywords. This will enable you to diversify your link profile.      

Factor 4: Ranking with trusted sites

Search engines look suspiciously at links to untrustworthy sites. Trusted sites are not in the business of using deceitful marketing gimmicks or underhanded tactics that trick search engines into giving them good rankings. Trustworthy sites actively produce new and genuinely useful content for the benefit of the user community. Be choosy with the sites you link with. Establishing a host of backlinks with unscrupulous sites will do nothing positive for your search engine rankings. When determining your site rankings, Google will evaluate its trustworthiness, so don’t allow bad sites to drag it down.    

Factor 5: Ranking with PageRank

PageRank is Google’s link analysis algorithm – it measures how Google views a page’s level of importance. Pages perceived as important receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to receive favorable search result rankings. When a trustworthy site links to your page, a vote for its importance is cast on your behalf. The more votes that are cast for your page, the greater your page ranks in level of importance. The only way to rank highly with PageRank is to establish as many good external links as possible.

I've been reminding clients that trying to use tricks in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is at best a waste of time. Here's one reason why! Google just announced a crackdown on content farms that have a lot of poor or duplicated content.

Image By: warrantedarrest

Sites with meaty, original content are not affected by the changes in Google's algorithm. But, people who have been trying to use SEO tricks to manipulate the search results just lost out!

Google has an army of highly intelligent PhD's who spend all day, every day working to deliver the most relevant information to their customers -- People who are searching the web looking for information or answers to their problems.

I know some SEO companies claim to have secret methods for making a page rank highly on Google. These tricks may work for a little while, but ultimately just waste your time and money.

Simply, there's a better way. It's not as sexy as the tricks are, but will deliver a good ROI over the long term. The answer?  Consistently create relevant content that addresses the needs of your target persona.

Business blogging is a perfect way to regularly create the needed content. Over time, you'll build up a library of relevant, valuable articles that your target customers can find via Google.

Sure, you want to optimize your posts and build links, too. Just do it in the right way -- By adding value for your audience!

If you want to know more, there's plenty of information on the details of Google's change to eliminate low-quality content.

Have you been burned by trying to use SEO tricks? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Lately, I've answered several questions about how to select a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vendor like this one from Ernest on LinkedIn. That's always a good cue to write about the topic.

SEO is a very broad topic, and many companies are better at one aspect than another. Here are the steps I recommend:

1. Define your business goals. I know you want traffic, but why and what kind of traffic? If this isn't clear, you can end up with pages ranked high on Google, but little new revenues. Your SEO suppliers did ask these questions -- Right?
   
   Search Engine Optimization results come over time, and you want to create a long-term relationship with a trusted advisor.
2. Go to WebsiteGrader and run a report on your website and some of your key competitors. It's free and it will make recommendations on where your problems are.
   
   Here's a trick. Run a Website Grader on your SEO vendor candidates to see if they have room for improvement!
3. Do you mostly need to expand your keywords, create more content, optimize existing content, or build inbound links? Are these the strengths of your SEO suppliers?
4. Pick a good framework for your website. This is often missed and it can put a drag on your efforts.
   
   Personally, I use Hubspot because it save me time and helps me get quick results.

And, avoid the tricky SEO guys -- You know the ones who focus on gimmicks and other ways to make pages rank highly. Effective SEO isn't complex, but it takes real work! There are a lot of details to get right.

SEO Crash Course: Get Found to Generate Leads & Sales (GF102)

SEO is the most important marketing strategy to generate leads and conversions. By making your site more search engine friendly, it will rank higher in search results – meaning, better visibility and better results.

Get found through the words you use

Keywords are the words that exist in the minds of your target audience. Which words are they most likely to use when searching for your product or service? Coming up with solid keywords requires getting to know the needs of your audience well. In order to rank high in search results, you need keywords that are relevant – words that best describe what you have to offer. Optimize your content for the keywords you target. Remember, keywords matter…a lot!     

Search engine friendly sites are easy to find

You can’t make it easy for customers to find your products unless your content can be found easily by search engines. Web crawlers index text, so you must use results-driven keywords in your content. Add fresh content regularly to reinforce your keyword vocabulary. Site architecture is also important. Search engines can find you more easily if your site structure is logical and easy to navigate. To drive traffic to your site, you need to demonstrate to search engines that your site receives good search results.   

Links, links, and more links!  

To boost your search engine rankings, you need lots of strong inbound links. A strong link is one that ranks high in search results. One of the most effective ways to attract links is to create remarkable content and promote it on social networks. If people find your content useful, they will link to you. Schmoozing with the big boys pays off – affiliation with reputable links will do wonders for your rankings!       

How does your site perform?

Optimize your site by monitoring its performance over time using analytics. It’s useful to pay attention to several key performance indicators. Some important ones include number of indexed pages, rankings, quality and quantity of inbound links, social media traffic, and conversions. You want to maintain a positive user experience on your site – if visitors run into crawling errors, they’re likely to become frustrated and move on to another site.       

Professor: Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing