I was reading one of those; how to get millions of unique blog visitors articles yesterday, when I saw something that made me smile. At the end of a long list of very obvious blog marketing ideas, was a sentence that told readers NONE of this will work, unless you are producing remarkable content.
In other words, unless you are a creative, gifted content provider, capable of producing amazing material that people will want to share, you can forget everything you just read, because these “tricks” won’t work!
Why was that important disclaimer at the bottom of the post?
Because if it was at the top of the post, very few people would have read beyond it!
The marketplace is full of people, who are actively searching for that one elusive trick that will magically generate a ton of traffic to their site. That’s who those posts are targeted at. They are the blogging equivalent of those infomercials, that promise you a flatter stomach in just 4 weeks, with just 60 seconds use a day; with that tiny disclaimer at the end that says it only works if you massively reduce your calorie intake and take regular exercise!
Business blogging: You don’t need tricks!
The reality is that you don’t need tricks if you want to attract regular sales or enquiries through your site. You do, however, need 2 things.
- Great content.
- An effective Internet marketing strategy.
How many people produce great content? Very few.
How many people work to an effective Internet marketing strategy? Very few.
There’s the challenge!
Think of it like this: Imagine my friend Bob the Blogger manages to get his business blog ranking highly for a certain search engine term that’s relevant to his business. You search for that term on Google and see Bob’s link, so you click it. However, when you arrive at Bob’s blog, you can tell very quickly that the content offers nothing new or interesting.
What do you do?
You leave! Then, you then go back to Google and keep searching until you find something worth reading.
In that example, Bob made it to page 1 of Google for a relevant search engine term, you visited his site, saw that his content was crap, so he lost you almost immediately. He did well with Google, but his content let him and his business down.
Now, imagine that Bob’s content is great, but his Internet marketing strategy is poor. He fails to use the most effective, basic SEO techniques and isn’t leveraging social media either. As a result, very few people ever discover his site and he becomes one of those best kept secrets in business; where the business owner usually works very hard and offers great value, but goes broke through lack of sales / new clients.
The balance that’s required, is great content, backed up by an equally good Internet marketing strategy.
Depending on your industry, there are potentially hundreds of thousands of sites out there, in your particular niche. For example, I did a search on Google recently for the term “marketing blogs” and saw 145 million results. That’s a BIG niche! In order for my blog to rank on page 1 of Google for that term, which it does at time of writing, I need to out-perform a LOT of marketing blogs.
Business Blogging: Where people get it wrong.
In my experience, the area where most people get it wrong is not their SEO. It’s their copy writing. They write content that’s very similar to others in their niche and they fail to inspire their readers to take action. This means that even when one of their posts or pages attracts a lot of traffic from search engines, there’s little there to inspire these search engine visitors to do anything.
People will only click a link, share a post, subscribe to your RSS feed or call you via your site, if there’s a compelling reason for them to do so. All the SEO plugins and “killer techniques” in the world will not make up for generic / pedestrian copy.
Have something worth saying and learn how to write it as effectively as you possibly can. Use the best SEO techniques you can find and weave them into your overall Internet marketing strategy. If you want help, let me know. It’s what I do!
The small business owners I work with enjoy far more sales, attract better clients and grow amazing businesses.
If you want the same, here’s exactly how it happens.