Google Fred Update and What It Means to You

10 SEO Questions You Should Answer before Posting Your Blog

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" may be a philosophical question about reality and our powers of observation, but it also illustrates an insightful point about blog content and the importance of SEO. If your blog is posted without proper optimization, it becomes like a virtual tree that falls in the massive internet forest when no one is around to hear it.

Bottom line: Without proper optimization, the messages you’ve crafted for your blogosphere will be missed by the dream customers you’re trying to reach.

As a part of any content marketing strategy, blogging is a critical cornerstone for success. Assuming you’re working a well-defined integrated marketing strategy, the first thing you’ll do is define what you’re writing about, i.e., the topic of your blog article. To assure it is search engine optimized from the start, you should identify target keyword(s) and, more importantly, a long-tail keyword that your topic will address. (More on the importance of long-tail keywords in a future blog.)

To attracted the desired attention from your buyer personas as they comb the search engines for the answers to their pain points, there are four elements of your blog that you should optimize: title, body, image and meta. This is SEO 101 stuff, but it is often forgotten in the rush to get things done.

Title Optimization

1. Is there at least one keyword in your title?
   This has significant impact on search engine results. Even better, try to incorporate a long-tail keyword in your title. 
    
2. Is your title length 70-characters or less? 
   The title length should fall in the 70-character sweet spot. If your title is too long, it’s possible that the most important part of the title related to your topic keywords gets truncated in the search engine results.
   
   Body Optimization
    
3. Are relevant keywords used in the body? 
   Common sense. Nuff said. 
    
4. Are there a few links to relevant pages of your website? 
   Including one or more links to other relevant blogs and/or pages of your website will help improve overall SEO. They can be linked within the narrative or added as a ‘Learn More’ or ‘See Also’ list at the end.
    
5. Is there at least one call-to-action (CTA)? 
   When you select your blog topics, do so with CTAs in mind. What action do you want the reader to take? Download an e-book? View a video? Register for a webinar? Make sure you add a CTA that invites them to take that action.
    
6. Have any keywords been repeated too many times?
   If you’ve used a keyword over five times, this can be considered spammy by the search engines. Use keywords naturally, but don’t overdo it.
   
   Image Optimization
    
7. Does your blog include at least one image? 
   The data shows us time and time again that we are visually-driven. A relevant photo, illustration or infographic says 1000 words (and sometime more!). Having the right image can draw the right kind of attention to your blog topic. It can be humorous, fun, witty, impactful -- but be sure to make it relevant to the topic. TIP: Also be sure the image name and the image description are optimized as well.
   
   Meta Optimization
    
8. Is your meta description short enough? 
   Search engines only display the first 150-characters of your meta description. Keep it within that limit for the best SEO impact.
    
9. Are there keywords in your URL? 
   Do your best to include at least one. This will make your blog very easy to find in the search engines.
    
10. Are there keywords in your meta description?
    This has a similar SEO impact as including keywords in your URL, while also establishing the fact for your readers that the topic in which they have an interest is covered in your blog article.

These simple rules for SEO are easily implemented in any blogging tool you use. An added benefit of using HubSpot is the SEO View within the blog tool. It helps integrate these rules into your writing processes and red flags any missing blog optimization, providing you with an SEO sanity check.

With a bit of extra effort, you can guarantee every blog post you release upon the world is in top form for being found by the search engines, and more importantly, will be ‘virtually heard as it falls’ by those dream customers you’re trying to reach.

In the summer between high school and college I got a job doing social work in the inner city. The one bright spot in that devastated neighborhood was a corner restaurant that served delicious chili. I ate there often after work, sweaty and spattered with paint, and in keeping with the impoverished surroundings, I left lousy tips.  The waitress there was my age, but I assumed that she and I had nothing in common. After all, I was college bound.

Many are talking and blogging about Penguin and Hummingbird and every change to Google’s
algorithm with a sky-is-falling tone.  And it’s true that the changes Google is making are dramatically changing how SEO companies operate.  But they don’t change how marketing agencies operate, nor do they change the results we can show when we focus on content.  That’s what Google has always wanted us to do, anyway.

Even with all the Google search algorithm changes, driving more high-quality organic traffic to your website remains a core priority for every marketer. 

What can you do that I can’t do better for myself?

A salesperson for one of our clients came back from a sales call with that question ringing in her head.  She had a good answer, fortunately, but it’s a shocking question to hear from a customer.  It certainly applies to marketing agencies as well, of course, particularly today where everything changes so rapidly.  And we ask ourselves that every day to make sure we’re relevant, that we’re not old-school.

So what’s the role of an agency today?  Why hire an agency instead of building your own staff internally?  Good question.  Here’s some good answers:

1. More efficient use of resources.  That may surprise some of you, since agencies aren’t known as being inexpensive. But we are.  When you hire a new marketing executive today, each hire had better bring to the table eleven specific skills to the job:
   • Writing capability
   • PR/media skills
   • Social media
   • Email
   • Paid Search
   • SEO
   • Graphic design
   • Web development
   • Trade shows
   • Video
   • Marketing strategy

   Hired anyone like that lately?  Of course not, and neither have I.  It’s impossible to find one person who brings all of those capabilities, so the agency model of bringing all that to the table with a team of “hyperspecialists” is particularly efficient.  As a corporation, you can duplicate that team by hiring 11 people, perhaps at $50K in salary, with a 12^th as supervisor, and you’ve staffed a full service department for $600,000, conservatively.  Now, of course those people are available for you full time, while you’re only getting part of an agency’s time.  And that’s the point.  You only use what you need.  And the right agency brings you hyperspecialist capabilities that are hard to maintain on your staff.

2. Focus and Accountability.  We’re hired to do one thing, or one area of tasks.  We’re not pulled by the president into a new project, or diverted over to help launch a new division or product.  Take PR:  I’m a PR guy from way back, and I’ve never seen a PR manager who has the time to work with media to generate as much coverage as an agency can.  The internal PR executive is pulled in too many different directions, and those story pitches can always be done tomorrow -- but tomorrow never comes.  Agencies don’t have that luxury.  We’d better have something to show in this current monthly report.  And we know that. 
   
   
3. Best Practices.  Agencies work with a few dozen companies just like you.  They see inside so many organizations, and are in a prime position to bring you the ideas that work best (and keep you away from the ideas that fail).  You can't really do that with your own, in-house, marketing team (unless you spend all your free time networking with colleagues, time you can’t afford.)  The best agencies embrace best practices, harvest those ideas, and bring them to your door faster than if you had to travel to conferences and discover them yourself. 
   
   
4. A View of What’s Next.  In our shop, we’ve realized that every 2 years our jobs will be different.  Marketing changes today that fast, so we’re constantly using and applying new technologies from last year’s Twitter initiative to today’s marketing automation to tomorrow’s WeChat (see Asia!) platforms that are starting to replace email.  Think you have it figured out?  Don’t get cocky -- next year, when Google Glass comes out, it will all change again.
   
   
5. Freedom To Be Creative and Take a Risk. Risk-taking and creativity usually are sucked out of most corporate environments.  That’s not a fault, that’s just how they’re built and how executives are compensated.  And that’s why they need agencies, where we’re encouraged to bring creative ideas that just can’t grow in 99% of corporations. 
   
   
6. Accelerated Learning Curves for Implementing New Ideas.  There’s no shortage of new ideas and programs to put in place.  And most agencies have done them a few times already.  You’ve done them once – or never.  Why learn on the fly when your agency can tell you the eight mistakes to avoid, or get you up and running with faster results in less time.  That new sales portal?  Hubspot Marketing Automation?  Remarketing banners?  Don’t waste time reinventing the wheel or learning from scratch.  You don’t have time.
   
   
7. Objectivity.  A good agency tells you when you’re wrong.  And embraces that role.  There’s enough yes people in life.  An agency isn’t one of them.

The analyst-research company with the best finger on the pulse of B-to-B marketing is clearly Marketing Sherpa.  They routinely publish the most relevant and accurate data about trends and directions for our industry that help B-to-B marketers make the right calls in where to invest time and dollars for improving ROI.