Innovative marketing how-to: Optimize blog posts

It’s a fairly simple idea: the more visitors you can attract to your blog, the more chances those visitors will convert into qualified leads. But, beyond frequency, quantity and quality of your blogging – you really won’t get very far these days without also optimizing those posts. 

Not only do you need to optimize your content to grab people’s attention and rank well in search engines, you also need to introduce offers that can directly impact your lead generation efforts. Here are five different ways in which you can optimize your blog posts – from both an SEO and lead generation perspective:

1. Social media sharing buttons

Encourage readers to share your content and reach beyond your own connections.

2. Eye-catching & optimized titles 

Urgency, how-to’s, controversy, newsworthiness and more – good headlines tell the reader exactly what they’re going to get and are the first thing that compels a click. 

3. Great formatting

Dense copy is your enemy. Blogging is not like a book – it needs to move visually and be scrollable. Bullet points, bold text, images in between paragraphs all conspire to make your blog more visually appealing.

4. In-text and sidebar calls-to-action 

Both the blog and the website surrounding it can help to generate leads. Attempts to convert visitors into leads include in-text links to other resources and CTA banners and buttons in the periphery. 

5. Entertain

If your business is a typically dry topic of conversation, that doesn’t mean your blog has to be dry too. Informative doesn’t have to mean boring. 

Be bold, clear, direct and definitive is the name of the blogging game. Be passionate and unwavering in your advice. Be clear, direct and take a stand; great blog posts aren’t meek or subtle.

Learn more about what it takes to create great content. Get your free copy of our eBook, Content Marketing for Marketers.