The Benefits of Blogs, SEO and Inbound Marketing

Reaping the Benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 

SEO — you’ve heard about it before, you probably understand the concept, but realizing its potential is where the true value lies. SEO is essential to inbound marketing because it not only lives on forever, but it’s an organic inbound source of traffic, meaning it doesn’t cost anything to promote. 

When you conduct a Google search on a term, phrase or answer to a question, the initial results at the top are actually ads for paid searches. Google has done a clever job giving these results the appearance of an organic search, only displaying a small “Ad” text next to the search engine result page (SERP) headline. This can lead to paid inbound traffic, which should be included in your digital marketing strategy, but can become costly if not properly optimized. 

The top organic search results taking advantage of effective SEO appear after the first few ads (one, two, or three ads depending on the topic). When someone searches for a topic and finds a page on your website, it often is their first exposure to your brand. This is what we like to refer to as a digital pathway to discovery and is the most important benefit of SEO. 

Outbound Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing

It’s important to understand the different types of digital marketing and how they should work in tandem for profitable demand generation. When it comes to outbound and inbound marketing, their definitions are exactly as the name suggests. 

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is the activity of outreach directly to a prospect. This includes cold calling, direct email, display advertising, LinkedIn messages and use of other platforms to reach out to prospects directly. Much of outbound marketing includes business and sales development, where sales reps reach out to prospects with the goal of booking a demo for software companies or perhaps speaking to an account executive.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is the activity that brings prospects and leads in based on their own actions. This could be via Google search results for landing pages and blog posts, videos found on social media and other content discovered on the web by a prospect. The majority (but not all) of thought leadership content and SEO is used to drive inbound traffic to your website.  

Deciding on a holistic marketing strategy is entirely dependent on your industry resources, product or service and ideal customer’s needs. That said, it’s typically best to outsource inbound marketing to consultants, agencies and freelancers, while some outbound actions could be satisfied by internal resources, though sales outreach and call centers can also be of use. Regardless of which marketing strategy you decide to prioritize, it’s imperative to have a detailed plan for both, as one is not nearly as effective without the other. 

SEO Doesn’t Have to Be Elusive

SEO is the ultimate leaderboard for digital content marketers. Companies that rank at the top, sit on the podium and benefit from inbound traffic coming directly to its website. Interestingly enough, the top 5 Google Search results account for over 70% of clicks. So while “if you’re not first your last” might not apply to SEO, being one of the top 5 results sure does.

The beauty of SEO is you don’t need an endless supply of content to see results, but you do need to be consistent and targeted. Your website content like blog posts, landing pages and white papers should be laser-focused on the needs of your audience while bringing legitimacy to you and your brand as thought leaders. When you do this, you create the digital pathway to discovery necessary to build your brand and generate demand for your product or service.

As your domain authority increases and your backlinks become more valuable, your ability to rank higher on Google Searches exponentially increases.That said, creating content doesn’t equate to SEO results without the necessary know-how's and best practices of SEO. This is why so many content marketing strategies fall short.

A handful of blog posts and a revamped homepage focused on guiding your visitors are must-have starting points, but the true impact of SEO is only found from tried and true tactics.That’s why so many turn to digital marketing consultants and agencies to implement their proven strategies with a much higher success rate to convert.

Your content marketing strategies should always be data-driven. If your audience is engaging with a given piece of content more regularly than others, you must analyze the results and determine if it’s the type of content (blog, infographic, video) or the substance of the content that is in demand. From there you’ll have a great starting point to expand your campaigns and optimize for results that ultimately convert. 

Feeling inspired? We hope so! Take a moment to jot down some ideas for blog posts and ways you can inform your ideal customer. If it seems like a daunting task to create and optimize content, and you’re looking to drive inbound traffic through content that converts and SEO that ranks your content ahead of the competition, get in touch with us, we’d love to discuss ways we can help.‍

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