Blogging is an important part of Inbound Marketing

Forget the standard web template approach that most businesses employ, if your organisation wants to generate meaningful, engaged visitors then you should incorporate a blog into your website. Its a significant element of our Inbound Marketing philosophy.

Most corporate websites look fairly similar. There’s been a group-think mentality that your site should all be contained in the one screen, with content not falling “below the fold”. You see the same logo position, same navigation and the same bland corporate information.

What you don’t often see is regularly updated information that is both helpful and relevant to your target audience.

That’s where a blog can become extremely valuable to your organisation. Here are 6 reasons why one should be incorporated into your web presence.

1. A blog keeps your visitors interested. The more regularly you update your website with quality information, the more likely visitors are to return. Otherwise they can just visit once and then move on, quickly forgetting about you.

2. Visitors can actually show loyalty to a website by subscribing to your RSS feed or updates by email. The more interesting and helpful your information is, the more likely it is you will grow a base of subscribers. These regularly engaged visitors can be an extremely valuable asset and are obviously more likely to become customers over time.

3. A blog post is more likely to be shared or passed onto others than a normal web page. If you are generating useful content and have included social media sharing devices such as a Facebook “Share” button, a Twitter “ReTweet” button or a Digg prompt, there is a good chance visitors will share your information with others. This immediately broadens your audience and can boost your traffic. your audience can become your distribution network. Even if your organisation is not heavily engaged in Social Media it can benefit from those who are.

4. Search engines love blogs. Every blog post is another piece of content for Google, Bing and Yahoo etc to index, and its another potential slot in the search results that can deliver more traffic to your website. In fact, Google’s latest algorithm changes seem to be favouring fresh, relevant content so if your website is sitting there unchanged month after month you are likely to be overtaken by your competitors who are posting regularly. Even if you don’t have a sophisticated SEO strategy, simply posting regular content will go a long way to building your online success.

5. Most websites are limited by the design and pages in the websites they launch. Once the initial content has been uploaded the site is left to age. New content means design hassles, additional expense and problems. But if you built your site with a blog mentality the limitations are removed. You can add as much new information as you desire. In fact, the blog demands your attention and will keep your organisation more focused on driving your site onto bigger and better things.

6. Blogging is thinking. The discipline of blogging about your industry and organisationand creating new content can lead to great insight. It forces you to constantly consider why your organisation exists and how it can benefit others. Sometimes that “light bulb” moment can come whilst writing a thoughtful blog post.

We urge most organisations to add a blog to their online presence and have seen wonderful results from those who have embraced it. So move away from the old-fashioned corporate web templates and incorporate a more dynamic approach to your website.

For another take on how to blog successfully, watch this great presentation by Jason Fried called Marketing by Sharing

web design for inbound marketing

Welcome to the new-look GetSticky website. This is the fourth iteration of the site since it’s launch in April 2009 and is representative of our missi0n to constantly improve design and layout to achieve better results.

Inbound marketing is made up of 5 distinct areas: web design, search engine optimisation, content generation, social media and conversion strategies. These 5 elements all combine to create a powerful marketing model that attracts qualified traffic to your site and turns it into enquiries or business.

Here at Sticky we work hard on each element of the Inbound Marketing formula, testing new tools and ideas to identify best practices. We treat our sites as the guinea pigs before rolling out the best ideas for our clients.

And that’s the reason behind the latest look for this site. We have introduced a cleaner, less cluttered design with concise information about who we are, what we do and how we can assist you. Everything you see is there for a well-considered reason.

The next step is to now measure the results of these changes. We’re doing heat-mapping of the site to see how visitors interact with each element. We’ll be studying the analytics behind the site very closely and we’ll be tweaking where necessary to achieve better lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates.

Then we’ll be able to pass on our best thinking and insights to our clients.

As far as we’re concerned, a website is a constant work in progress requiring regular fine-tuning and updating. A well-managed website can be your organisation’s greatest marketing asset, so give it the attention it deserves.

Inbound marketing case study

Sticky has performed SEO contracts with ACRF in two phases. Initially we were contracted to optimise their existing website for 3 keyword terms, with the contract beginning in October 2009. The website was already performing reasonably well in most searches however, being a charity relying upon online donations in a competitive sector, the higher the search ranking the greater the returns.

Using NLYZR, we performed our standard procedures:

- Keyword Analysis

- Benchmarking

- Competitive Analysis

- Recommendations

- Refinement of SEO

Just over two months from beginning the contract, and one month from implementation of recommendations ACRF hit first place in Google global searches for all 3 terms.

We have since launched a new website for ACRF and broadened their keyword search base. We used NLYZR to benchmark the old site and its SEO then to provide post-launch recommendations for ongoing SEO improvements and broadening of the search base. Our websites are extremely search friendly and have allowed us to improve search rankings for a large number of terms. Already ACRF web traffic has increased 60% in the first month.

We think NLYZR is exceptional. We’d trailed global charity groups in three key search categories for three years, pretty much giving up on organic search. Sticky worked on it, and in just over two months, Voilà! We hit #1 in all three.

- Suzie Graham, Executive Manager, Philanthropy, Australian Cancer Research Foundation

We have been working with Sticky since last year. Over that time we have used them for optimising our website and we have just launched a new website in the last couple of months which is wonderful.

Over that time they have really helped us with optimising search on our site. Its been so exciting seeing ACRF being lifted up in the Google rankings and also seeing all the extra traffic that is coming through to the website.

They have been really wonderful to work with. I have worked with a number of agencies both big and small over the years and none have been as easy to work with as Sticky and is as passionate about our business as we are. Sticky are always on the end of the phone or email to help us out. They are always looking for new ways to better us on search and to improve our website, which is really great.
We have really enjoyed working with them.

- Claire McArthur, Fundraising Program Coordinator, Australian Cancer Research Foundation

Inbound marketing for Google's new search results

Google has launched a new look for their venerable search interface, borrowing heavily from the Bing user interface. According to Google they are now offering more contextually relevant navigation options to the page. You can now Google search Everything, News, Blogs, Images, Video, Books and much more.

But the big story is the ongoing move towards relevance. Google’s changes are great news for those who practice professional inbound marketing. We have been saying for some time now that search is increasingly going to be about relevance. Bing made a big deal about their desire to provide more relevant results and now Google is responding. The list of options Google is now providing allows users to drill down to more relevant searches more quickly, including variable date ranges, shopping sites and related searches.

What does this mean to your business? A lot in our opinion. Now, more than ever, you need to professionally optimise your entire web presence rather than just your website. Your customers will have the ability to find you, or your opposition, through a multitude of search options. It’s crucial that you have addressed each of those options.

Video optimisation. Image optimisation. Blog optimisation. News optimisation. Related search optimisation.

There’s a lot to look at but can your business afford to miss out on the new customers that might find you via these options?

Corporate marketers need to adjust their thinking about their search marketing strategies in order to keep with the latest changes to search engines. Its important to keep creating and publishing diversified content that is relevant to what your customers are searching for.

The marketer who is only just getting around to finally optimising their website might find that the market has already moved on. However those who actively optimise their entire web presence will be a long way in front of the bulk of their competitors.

You can check out how well optimised your current website is with a Free SEO report at www.nlyzr.com

Inbound marketing case study

Colliers International contracted Sticky in 2009 to initially optimise their website for 6 keyword terms after failing to achieve any SEO success with their previous suppliers. Prior to commencing work on the Colliers website they were not ranked in the first 100 results on Google for any of the agreed search terms.

We performed our standard procedures in a staged roll-out:

Keyword Analysis

Benchmarking

Competitive Analysis

Recommendations

Refinement of SEO

First page Google results were achieved rapidly. The first term we targeted reached Pages 1 within 2 weeks. The second term reached Page 1 in 1 week. The third term jumped to Page 1 in just two days. By the end of the initial contract, 4 months, all 6 terms were on Page 1 of Google.

We’ve been working with Sticky since about mid 2009 on our Search Engine Optimisation. We’ve been absolutely thrilled with the results we have received within the last six months from Sticky. We went from not being found on Google, to being on page one for every single search term within a period of about 3months.

One of the main advantages of Sticky is their NLYZR tool. This reporting system gives us really in-depth reporting and creates the competitive landscape for us and gives you a really good understanding of where you are in the market.

The customer service at Sticky is fantastic. They are always coming to us with ideas and with insights and recommendations on what they would think would be the best results for us.

Over the past 6months we have been so impressed with Sticky with our corporate website that we are actually now rolling out a plan with all our partner and franchise networks to include Search Engine Optimisation in their online strategies.

One of the best things about Sticky is their understanding of our business, they really took the time in our initial stages of our development to really understand what our requirements and needs were. And they came back each and every time, on time, with reports that were just perfect for us.

- Justine Dyball, Marketing Coordinator | Corporate Marketing & Communications, Colliers International

Here at Sticky we are big fans of 37 Signals and their approach to business and marketing. Recently Gavin Heaton posted this video on his site and I was surprised that I hadn’t seen it before. In it, Jason Fried from 37 Signals discusses marketing by sharing, which is a big part of the whole Inbound Marketing approach we encourage. Its such a good video that I thought I’d share it with you too.

Grab a coffee and put your feet up for 20 minutes to watch this.

This week I have been at the Connect Now conference in Sydney. It has had a stellar line-up of speakers including Gavin Heaton @servantofchaos, Katie Chatfield @katiechatfield, Tara Hunt @missrogue, Brian Solis @briansolis, Laurel Papworth @silkcharm, Jim Stewart @jimboot, Darren Rowse @problogger, Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee, Debs Schultz @debs, Stephen Johnson @huxley, Fi Bendall @fibendall, Simon Mainwaring @simonmainwaring, Natalie Hofsteede @givealittle, Simon and Marie Young @audaciousgloop and Chris Noble @worldnomads.

While much of the information and advice might not be new to those already operating in the social media space, it has been extremely beneficial for the vast majority of people who are beginning to use inbound marketing and social media in their businesses instead traditional marketing techniques.

But as someone who attends a lot of new media conferences in Australia and the USA, I was still struck by a few of the key messages at Connect Now.

The biggest take home for me was that authenticity is crucial. While businesses are flooding into social media to take advantage of its burgeoning popularity, very few are succeeding, and that is likely because they lack an authentic voice.

But those who are succeeding are really showing the way forward with their truly authentic attitudes.

Consider Gary Vaynerchuk. The founder of Wine Library TV has enjoyed explosive popularity and a booming business empire without any traditional marketing or advertising. Gary video blogs daily and speaks with amazing passion and authenticity. Its the sort of thing than cannot be scripted or contrived, its 100% genuine.

Gary implores us to forget about the technology and fancy dressing of lighting, graphics and heavy editing. The message is the key for Gary. He concentrates on pushing out his content then takes the time to interact with his audience.

Gary says you must love your audience in order to succeed in social media. He claims that in the early days when he was building Wine Library TV he spent 30 minutes a day creating content then 14 hours in the community.

Gary urges people not to just talk about it, but to live it and its very clear that he does. His passion and authenticity is rocket fuel for his business.

Darren Rowse is one of the world’s most popular bloggers. Blogging is a business for him but you don’t think of Darren in a traditional business sense. His blogging is helpful, passionate and authentic first and foremost. He works hard on content and community and as a result his business thrives.

Gavin Heaton’s success in social media is not defined by sales but through his considerable “social equity”. One of Australia’s leading marketing bloggers, Gavin is a connector for many people who now operate in the space.

During the Q&A session on day 2 of Connect Now Gavin nailed it when he said “we now operate in a economy of generosity, the more generous you are, the bigger your potential”.

The implications are clear. Those who join social media to sell, sell, sell without making any attempt to engage, listen and help will not succeed.

Debs Schultz supported this feeling by saying “there’s no such thing as a social media campaign.” Debs says that you should start small, keep testing, success takes time. Join the lives of people rather than interrupting them. If you help users participate the benefits will flow later.

Inbound marketing relies on this fundamental shift in marketing thinking. But its also quite real. As Debs Schultz says, “The customer is not elusive, they’re annoyed”. We need to stop broadcasting, stop interrupting and start engaging.

And the best way to engage is with authenticity.

NLYZR optimisation engine

Meet Australia’s Top 20 Fastest-Growing Franchises by Revenue according to  BRW and then as assessed by NLYZR

NLYZR assesses a website using criteria such as On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Keyword search results, Competitor scores, Social media and traffic conversion. These are crucial aspects of Inbound Marketing and Internet Marketing Strategies.

How did the rapid growing Franchise’s Rate Online?

Australia’s Fastest-Growing Franchise Websites

Ranked 1st
90.3/100 for Priceline & Priceline Pharmacy

Ranked 2nd
89.3/100 for Crust Gourmet Pizza Bars

Ranked 3rd
81.6/100 for Grill’d

Ranked 4th
78.2/100 for SumoSalad

Ranked 5th
74.6/100 for Matchbox

Ranked  6th
74/100 for Aussie Farmers Direct

Ranked 7th
74.4/100 for Aussie

Ranked 8th
70.8/100 for Souvlakihut

Ranked 9th
69.8/100 for Villa and Hut

Ranked 10th
67.2/100 for Refund Home Loans

Ranked 11th
64.8/100 for Espresso Essential

Ranked 12th
63.2/100 for Go Gecko Property Sales

Ranked 13th
60.3/100 for Appliance Tagging Services

Ranked 14th
60/100 for Telcoinabox

Ranked 15th
55/100 for Chocolateria San Churro

Ranked 16th
54.7/100 for Pizza Capers

Ranked 17th
52.8/100 for Back In Motion Health Group

Ranked 18th
48/100 for Gametraders

Ranked 19th
36.1/100 for Xpresso Delight

Ranked 20
19.2/100 for The Coffee Emporium

As part of our Inbound Marketing series, this episode of Sticky TV concentrates on our Top 7 Web Design Basics for creating a dynamic site.

An effective website requires a lot more than you might think. In this episode Craig Wilson and Kendall Wheeler discuss the 7 basics you must address to ensure that your website is an effective marketing tool and not just a glorified brochure. Its surprising how many corporate marketers don’t get this right.

Following are the NLYZR scores for the websites of many of Australia’s leading health and safety providers. The original list was sourced from BRW Magazine.

NLYZR assesses a website using criteria such as On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Keyword search results, Competitor scores, Social media and traffic conversion. These are crucial aspects of Inbound Marketing and Internet Marketing Strategies.

Who ranked where?

HEALTH & SAFETY TOP 26 WEBSITES

Ranked 1st
78.24/100 for Ranstad

Ranked 2nd
72.8/100 for Seton Australia

Ranked 3rd
68/100 for Konekt

Ranked 4th
67.2/100 for Ergonomics Australia

Ranked 5th
67.1/100 for RiskLogic

Ranked 6th
66.4/100 for Hartman Thomas

Ranked 7th
58.4/100 for IHR Australia

Ranked 8th
57.6/100 for Fire and Safety Australia

Ranked 9th
57.5/100 for Getex

Ranked 10th
54.4/100 for Australian Training & Safety Institute

Ranked 11th
52.8/100 for Tuffa Workwear

Ranked 12th
51.2/100 for PeopleSafe Australia

Ranked 13th
50.4/100 for Construction Skills Training Centre

Ranked 14th
49.6/100 for Courtenell

Ranked 15th
47.2/100 for Executive Health Management

Ranked 16th
46.4/100 for Recovery Partners

Ranked 17th
44.8/100 for Safetynet Management Solutions

Ranked 18th
41.6/100 for Edway Group

Ranked 19th
41.5/100 for Safe Work Procedures

Ranked 20th
31.2/100 for Minerva Consulting Trust

Ranked 21st
24.8/100 for Risk Disk

Ranked 22nd
24.7/100 for Tubal

Ranked 23rd
24/100 for AlertForce

Ranked = 24th
4.8/100 for Construct Health

Ranked = 24th
4.8/100 for McConnell Constulting Trust

Ranked  = 24th
4.8/100 for Worksafe Management Systems