Index:
- SEO and Your Inbound Marketing Strategy – Part 1
- SEO and Your Inbound Marketing Strategy – Part 2
- SEO and Your Inbound Marketing Strategy – Part 3
The Landing Page
A well-crafted landing page will do many things for a user.
It will Take them from the idea of an offer to actually receiving it. It should contain a well-placed, concisely worded and strong CTA button – make sure it stands out.
A landing page will stimulate a user mentally and visually.
There should be just one offer or purpose. Don’t confuse your visitor with multiple offers and ideas, or links to different offers. Laser in on the offer, the language and the purpose.
Include other items like customer testimonials, awards and recognitions and sometimes even social media links that build trust and confidence.
Contain a form where the visitor will give some of their information to get something of value.
Have the same visuals and verbiage that got the visitor there in the first place – don’t confuse your potential customer with brand new information and graphic
Be topped by an engaging headline followed by a small amount of content that compels a reader to action immediately – like, within seconds – they NEED what you’ve got.
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Here are some great ideas from our friends at Kissmetrics on creating the perfect landing page.
Image Source: Kissmetrics.com
Each of these landing page components is going to be filled with your keyword SEO and strong action language. As with offers, your website should have several landing pages geared to different offers, different buyer personas and different stages of the lead nurturing process.
The Call-To-Action
When a reader gets to your landing page, if they even read the headline you are ahead of the game. If they read your content the odds are that they are going to click on your CTA – it’d better be good. The visitor needs to know what to do next, like now, ASAP!
The words you use on your call-to-action should be short, and inspire the visitor to move through the process, because they NEED what it is you have to offer them.
This is the part of the sales process where you get them from window browsing to actually buying something.
A good call-to-action has several parts:
- Value
- Sense of Urgency
- Ease of Delivery
- A sense of connection between your company and the user
Ask questions, use numbers or statistics, be bold, use testimonials or just be yourself. Your buyer persona and your product will each determine what your call-to-action looks and feels like.
Your website will cultivate many different CTA’s for various offers, landing pages and blogs. Be clever about the CTA and your lead base will increase.
The Thank You Page
Every user who actually clicks on one of your offers and gives you any of their information needs to end their experience with a heartfelt Thank You.
There are many components to a thank you page, however from an SEO standpoint, the object here is purely to delight your visitor. Yes, use your keywords. Yes, try to upsell on another offer. Yes, give your company information if that is applicable.
However a big fat thank you with one or two keywords sprinkled in will do just fine here.
The Email
Sending emails as part of your inbound efforts has come back into marketing vogue. In fact, it still remains the number one way to reach potential buyers.
The information that you collect through your landing pages, offers and call to action pages will all be critical in how you plan to set up and send emails.
Once again, lead nurturing takes center stage with email content and who you send them to. To accomplish this, your email list should be segmented and blasts sent out according to how each segment is being cultivated.
Here are a few ideas about how to divide your email list:
- Identify existing clients
- Know when to convert visitors to prospects to qualified leads to clients
- Design a system for encouraging site visitors to sign-up for your emails
- Make sure that each name in the system has a “begin date” in their record
- As a prospect moves through the marketing funnel and gives you more information, consider adding birth dates and other important dates that give you an excuse to send them an email
- If you can, segment by location, income, marital status, etc.
Having your email list segmented will make it much easier to target the right prospects with the right information at the right stage in the buying process.
Your email list segmentation works a lot like your offers do. The people on your list who qualify as prospects will be sent top of the funnel information.
Middle of the funnel prospects who are actually reading your emails will need to receive more personalized emails that provide explanations and options for contact with your company. If a person has made it this far in your list, and you create awesome emails with links back to your page for new offers, you are probably going to close your sale.
Put each segment on some type of rotation – called drip marketing – which requires a follow up email, or even a phone call, depending on the type of lead.
There are several excellent email marketing companies out there who offer free or low cost alternatives to help automate your email process.
The Blog
The blog has become the central force in attracting potential clients to your website. By writing about industry related topics and including your SEO targeted keywords, your company can use a blog as the jumping point for every other inbound method you employ.
Distribute your blogs across social media networks using a link to your blog page and slowly but surely, your lead base will begin to grow.
These days, no one really knows how long a blog post should be; anywhere from 800 to 1500 words seems to suit Google just fine – as long as the content is original, researched well, has proper links and uses your keyword strategy.
The use of visuals in blogging is also a great way to get noticed. Make sure you name every picture or graphic you add to a blog post using at least one of your keywords – Google ranks using photo descriptions as well.
What should you write about? Go to your competitor’s blogs and see what they are writing about. Review your buyer personas and write content based on the questions they are asking.
Create content that varies:
- Posts about your industry
- Posts that are visually heavy
- Posts that are funny
- Posts about your company
- Posts directly related to your products and services
You will find that will good keyword research and buyer personas, finding something to write about isn’t going to be hard.
The Headline
Google loves a good headline. It entices a reader to read your content. If it does that – your headline is working!
- It tells the reader what your content is about. Make sure it’s short, specific and not misleading
- It is optimized for search engines, but only after you have considered your target audience
- It triggers an emotion or a need in the reader
With a little research, you can find some great examples of how to write good headlines, and even headline words that have gone viral.
SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
When you start planning your inbound marketing strategy, instead of running out and signing up for every social media site out there, take a close look at each one and how it relates to your buyer persona and your business.
Cooper Smith of BusinessInsider.com wrote an interesting article on the major social networks called The Demographics Of Social Media Audiences, And The Unique Opportunities Offered By Each Network. In it he sites the big differences in the major platforms available to your company. Take a look at your buyer persona and figure out which social media audience is going to be the best for you.
COMMUNITY BUILDING
An often overlooked part of the SEO domain is putting yourself out there as a part of your business. Building relationships both online and throughout your community is a great way to peak interest and curiosity about you and your brand.
Become a part of a select few groups on your chosen social media platforms and engage well with them. Quality is better over quantity here folks.
THE USER EXPERIENCE
Don’t forget that creating a good buyer persona at the beginning of the SEO process translates to a potential client later on. Optimize your website for search engines, but make sure your visitor likes it first. If your website is so optimized for engines that a user gets very little stimulation, then the entire process it pointless.
You are in business to sell to people, not search engines. Making search that your website and content is engaging for visitors should be your first goal, with search engines coming in second.
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