Confessions from an Inbound Marketing Agency

OK, I’m willing to admit it… Melissa here, and I’d like to introduce myself! 🙂 After years of marketing in the real (physical) world, I’ve recently expanded my horizons to the global world of digital age marketing. And, as it is, I’m feeling willing to come out of the closet… So, yes! I admit it alright… I’m a virtual newbie!!!Now, working for a National Inbound Marketing agency, my basic blogging practices are still being tweaked. There are so many pieces to this puzzle and still so much to learn…  But even though I’m new at this and initially thought this would take a long time to see results, check this out… I’ve got a little bit of bragging to do!

After 4 months of blogging, my posts are consistently found on page 1 or 2 of Google!

After less than 4 months of blogging for Alaniz Marketing, I can say that my blog posts are now consistently found on page 1 or 2 of Google for the intended long tail keywords! Yes, it does help to be learning from one of the best, but that’s a pretty impressive result considering there are those that blog for years and don’t get these results. Want to know how I did it?

Start by Implementing the Basic and
Best Blogging Practices of Inbound Marketing

After a very deep dive into the best practices of inbound marketing, and with little time to come up for air, I was left to my new found devices to see if I could swim. And, well, no one wants to sink, right? So, despite feeling inexperienced and out of place, I began by simply writing and implementing some of the most basic blogging practices I could remember. And believe it or not, just implementing these these most basic principals is what’s been the key. I want to share them with you here, and if you consistently use these strategies, I’m convinced you’ll see results, just like me!

The first order of the day is to embody the fact that businesses who blog experience 55% increase in traffic over those who don’t. Period! Take away? I’m gonna be writing, a lot… 🙂 Writing or hiring someone to put fresh content out is the name of the game and this is what drives massive results. Beyond this comes the rules…

Decide what I’m going to write about, determine what  keywords and long-tail keyword phrases I’ll need to use in my titles and somewhere within the post first and then get to writing. OK…

Next, I learned the very important need for effective titles that include the keywords you wish to be found for. It’s Implementing these keywords into your title as well as other strategic places within your blog (as I’ll talk about more), that I’ve found is the single most magic formula that sets this whole thing in motion… I get that…

Then, I began to grasp the need for meta keywords and a concise meta description using, specifically again, the keywords I pre-determined that were relevant for my post. That’s easy…

Then, name your images… or (Alt tags). If you’re blogging about, let’s say, “the benefits of hiring an inbound marketing agency” (and you’ve pre-determined this is one of your main keyword phrases for your post) and you include an image of a group of eager and competent professionals, what would you name this picture? “Competent professionals”? Uh, no…, you name it, “the benefits of hiring an inbound marketing agency” because the search engines don’t see your images, they see your text.  Wow! That’s simple too! 

Moving on… If you decide to use bolded text and H1, H2, H3, etc. headings within your post (and you should), I found out that you should tailor the headings around your keywords because your bolded text and headings carry a little more weight with the search engines too. H1 headings are meant for your title only, but after that, go for it if it fits… Just don’t be so redundant that it doesn’t read naturally… yep, got it.

Now we get a little more technical, or so it seemed to me at first. Your website’s URL for your post is normally set by default resulting from your page title. Depending on your CMS (Content Management System) you might be able to separate the two, but to error on the side of safety, make sure your title has at least one of your keywords or long tail keywords in it. OK, got that now too…

Lastly, for this post at least, I learned that when you add internal links to your website, or backlinking as it’s called, this gives those pages you linked to some added weight (and the reverse, then, works as well). So, decide which pages need some push and if the page has relevance to what your talking about, then by all means, link to it. Also, make sure the anchor text uses some of the keywords for that page or at least something descriptive. NOT “click here.” Just use my backlinks from this page as an example. 🙂

Inbound Marketing Really Works!

Yes, inbound marketing and implementing these most basic blogging principals will yield results and I’m proof. Even though I’m still learning this as I go, I can attest that by writing consistent, relevant posts that are simply yet strategically designed, you WILL make your way to page 1 of the Google search results.

It’s also important that once you’ve determined a long tail keyword strategy from which you’d like to place emphasis on, that you develop a campaign, so-to-speak around that phrase. Write a series of posts with the same focus (and keywords) from different angles and that will give the search engines more to choose from…

Ok, I admit. There’s more to this Inbound Marketing thing…

Now, if you’re new to this, don’t misunderstand that if you were only to do this you’d have a massive increase in traffic. This is a great spring board to get you going, but because there’s a lot to the science of inbound marketing, you’ll need to educate yourself further (or hire an agency like us to do it for you) if you want to drive massive results.

And lastly, just in case you want proof…  When you type into your Google search engine, “Getting Found Online,” you’ll see my post(s). And try, “Reaching Boomers and Beyond” or “Using keywords effectively.” There’s quite a few more search phrases too for which we’ll show up on  Google page 1 or 2… However, my point is, that when you learn and play by the rules of Inbound marketing, and take the path that’s been laid out, your results really are (virtually) guaranteed.

P.S. I’m done bragging. 🙂 Nice to meet you!