Long Tail in Marketing: Apply That Ish to Content Strategy Somewhat like the vastness of interstellar space, it’s hard for me to fathom just how much stuff there is for sale in the world — it’s staggering. Yet even with so many sellers already providing the most popular products, one strategy that still breaks through is to take advantage of the “long tail” in marketing, monetizing the realm of the deeply niche. Similarly, there is a ton of value beyond popular content keywords, and savvy marketers know that the best optimization brings in the right customers — qualified leads primed for conversion. Thoughtfully chosen long-tail keywords deliver choosy shoppers like me past the flashy and popular front-page products because we’re looking for something more precise. I know I’ll be excited to buy it immediately — when I find it.Let’s dive into this strategy, look at some long tail marketing examples, and then explore how this idea applies beautifully to content marketing. The term “long tail” was coined by Chris Anderson to describe the graph below. It illustrates the difference between selling a high volume of popular items (the head portion in the graph, in red) versus a low volume of many more items that aren’t as popular (the longer, mustard-colored tail of the graph.) According to Anderson’s long tail blog, this theory more specifically focuses on the tail portion of the graph over time, hence the tagline of his book: Why the Future of Business is...

How to Revive an Old Blog Article for SEO Blogging is not a major piece of artwork like the Sistine Chapel, but there is an art to making your blog a masterpiece. Blogs are a combination of timely and evergreen content. Timely content focuses on trends, news articles, and pop culture events, while evergreen content stays relevant and provides value for a long time. It is rare to update timely content simply because it’s old news; however, there is value in updating and reviving old evergreen content. Leveraging old blog posts and their established place on the web can extend the life of your best content. It is especially beneficial when your content has reached a traffic plateau — a period where your growth rate is stagnant. John Bonini, the Director of Marketing at Databox, says, “Your best opportunity for increasing organic traffic short-term is in updating the content you’ve already published, not (exclusively) publishing new stuff.” Updating this content can boost your ranking on search engine page results (SERPs) and drive more traffic to your post. Traffic to your post also comes from backlinks. It takes time to acquire backlinks to new content. Alternatively, old content is less likely to receive new backlinks because the information is outdated. Updating old blog posts can help you keep the backlinks your page has already received and acquire new backlinks by reinforcing the value and authority of your content with current information. Imagine a years-old blog post listing “Minority-Owned Restaurants...

Blog SEO: How to Search Engine Optimize Your Blog Content Search engine optimization, or SEO, is incredibly important for marketers. When you optimize your web pages — including your blog posts — you're making your website more visible to people who are using search engines (like Google) to find your product or service.But does your blog content really help your business organically rank on search engines? In this article, you’ll find the answer to this question and more. Get ready for an in-depth exploration into the world of blog SEO, the factors that affect it, and tips to start optimizing your blog site for the search engines. Although it's clear blog content does contribute to your SEO, Google's many algorithm updates can make publishing the right kind of blog content tricky if you don’t know where to start. Some blog ranking factors have stood the test of time while others are considered "old-school." Here are a few of the top-ranking factors that can, directly and indirectly, affect blog SEO. Pro tip: As a rule of thumb, take time to understand what each of these factors does, but don’t try to implement them all at once. They each serve a specific purpose and should be used to meet a specific SEO goal for your blog. Listen to HubSpot's Matt Barby and Victor Pan take on this topic in this podcast episode. Factors That Affect Blog SEO 1. Dwell Time Although dwell time is an indirect...

How We Octupled Image Search Traffic to the HubSpot Blog in 1 Year This post is a part of Made @ HubSpot, an internal thought leadership series through which we extract lessons from experiments conducted by our very own HubSpotters. Cliché: A picture is worth a thousand words. Fact: HubSpot's pictures are worth 120 thousand clicks. Last year, my colleague Karla Cook gave our readers a 3,000-word peek behind the curtain into a new SEO strategy we implemented at the beginning of 2018. That strategy, which was designed to fix a traffic plateau across the blog, increased our organic traffic by 25% year over year -- to eight million organic pageviews per month. This is about three million new organic views we didn't have at the beginning of 2018. Where that traffic is coming from is equally exciting. As I said, our new SEO strategy launched our organic blog traffic to heights it had never been to before. But that strategy had another, somewhat unintended consequence for us. While we increased our total organic traffic by 25% from last year, we increased our image search traffic by … wait for it … 779%. This refers to traffic that comes from people who conduct a search in Google, or a similar search engine, and click on an image result that leads to the HubSpot Blog. "Pics or it didn't happen, Braden.” As you wish: Source: Google Search Console Take a look at the royal blue tile in...

Writing for SEO: How to Write Blogs That Rank on Page 1 of Google If you've ever written a blog post before, you know how much time they can take. From topic selection, to gathering research, to writing the post and pressing "Publish," the process often demands hours. That's why, if your post doesn't earn the traffic you expected, it can be a major letdown. All that work that goes into a post for less-than-stellar engagement is, no doubt, one of the most frustrating experiences. Fortunately, there's a way to combat low traffic and bring eyes to your writing: search engine optimization. SEO is a language that speaks specifically to search engines like Google to tell it your post deserves to be at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). As marketers, we're always aiming to write content that'll rank highly on Google, and SEO is the bridge that'll help you get there. Of course, that begs the question: How do you write in SEO's language? For that, don't worry — we've got you covered. In this post, we're going to dive into 13 ways you can master writing for that high ranking your content deserves. Ready to get started? 1. Use headings to your benefit. Headers tell Google what different sections of your blog article will be about. In this post, for example, the header, "How To Write Blog Posts for SEO," tells the search engine what this section is about. Users who type search queries like,...

10 Sites You Can Use for Free Blog Promotion As a marketer, promoting and driving traffic to your blog isn't easy. It can feel like you're talking into a void sometimes. We've all been there. However, there are almost 4.5 billion active internet users. Getting blog readers is all about promoting your content to the right people at the right place and the right time. So, how can you do that? To start, you'll need to diversify your blog promotion strategy so you can get traffic from several sources. You can get generate traffic through content aggregators, social media posts, social bookmarking, or reciprocal sharing sites. Below, let's review the top blog promotion sites you can use to generate traffic and conversions. 1. Medium Medium is an online publishing platform where you can post your blogs. It's one of the most popular blog platforms because the site has nearly 100 million visitors per month. Typically, Medium is used for thought leadership content. Additionally, many freelance writers post their blogs on this site. If you want to post your blogs, you can cross-publish your blogs on this site without hurting your SEO. Your blog will need to meet Medium's standards, but if it does, it can be curated and recommended through the Medium home page. When you publish a blog on Medium, make sure you pay attention to the tags on your posts. Since users can choose to follow tags, this will help your post get discovered. Content can...