The Most Successful Best Practices to Get Conversions Out of Your Blog

You just spent three hours writing a post for your business blog. You published it and waited for the leads to flood your inbox. Unfortunately, this blog post did not convert, just like the ones prior. Was it the wrong topic? The wrong audience? Or, were you simply failing to employ successful best practices for driving conversions out of your blog?

We believe in the power of blog content to drive quality leads to your business.

B2B marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads than those that don't - Inside View. 

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Plus studies show that businesses that blog get 126% more lead growth than businesses that don't blog. (HubSpot)

We also believe in the power of that same content to convert those same leads to clients. However, a purposeful approach is key. Here are a few of the successful best practices we employ for our clients that may help you see an even greater return on the investment of time and effort into your business's blog.

Improve Your Business Blog's Conversion Rate  

1. Know Your Client

Do you know your client, or the ideal client that your business aims to serve? If so, you should be able to answer the following questions:

• What is my client's biggest challenge in doing business?
• What is my client's chief goal in doing business?
• What are my client's blind spots in doing business?

By creating content that addresses your client's biggest needs and goals, you occupy the "buyer persona" in blogging. You are asking the questions your client may be asking, and offering the answers they're seeking.

A mistake some businesses make is generating content that simply bolsters its website's SEO. This may help drive hits to your website, but without meaningful content, it will likely fail to convert them into a lead or client.

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2. Strategic Formatting

Bloggers can take simple steps to ensure that their quality content is as rich "behind the curtain" as it is on the webpage.

Keywords - Successful best practices for blog conversion can be as simple as repeating keywords (not more than 4-5 times) throughout the blog post. As a business blogger, you are wise to do a bit of research as to which keywords are trending and which will most capture your business's offerings. That research can even begin with your previous blog posts! By analyzing which posts generated the most traffic, and which keywords drove visitors to your blog in the first place, you can begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together. 

Alternative Text -  otherwise known as "alt text" or "alt tags," is another simple formatting tip to enrich your blog content. Any images used in your post should be accurately described in their file names. Alt Text takes naming an image a step further by optimizing them for keyword search. Being mindful of how the images may lend to your keyword strength can particularly help your SEO. Bloggers will want to avoid "keyword stuffing" but should utilize their keyword with at least one image if it makes sense. (Moz)

Depending on which content management system you are using, there are likely fields that will allow for you to easily identify your images with alt text.

3. Blog in Pieces

Blog is short for "weblog." When we examine the origins of the word "blog," we know that blogging is probably best done in pieces, as with a log of progress or ideas. Our business's blog can follow suit.

We know that when B2B companies blog more than 4 times a week, they are bound to see the biggest increase in traffic and leads (PWB Marketing Communications). Rather than doing a content-dump in one big post, we can parse it into a topical series of blogs. Similarly, rather than sharing all of our expertise in a blog, we can highlight some of the ways our business can uniquely position clients for success. Finally, we can also link to prior blog posts that used similar keywords to capitalize on existing content.

Become More Efficient at Reaching Customers

Based on the time you are spending on your business blog, are you seeing the ROI you desire? These are proven successful best practices for driving conversion through your blog, all of which are also easily accessed in the HubSpot Marketing platform.