SO TRUE! I just did a redesign of the site and BECAUSE of my 2,3 and sometimes 4x's a week blog, is the reason why I am ranking in search engines that are important to my company not to mention many other keywords that I did not necessarily optimize.

I totally agree. I spend too much time on the "social / community / conversation / ask a question" process and can not measure its worth.

Well said, Rick.  
 
 
 
If done right, a blog can generate a crapload of targeted traffic. Of course, community and conversation begets links, but if a biz owner just uses a blog just to publish keyword rich articles, it'll help tremendously with generating targeted traffic.

I agree. I am new with HUBSPOT and Bloging. When I first got involved I was able to see the traffic grow each day and week. I got distracted, didn’t Blog and the traffic went down. I just started posting two Blogs a week on Tuesday and Thursday and traffic is increasing.

Excellent Post! I like what was said about blogging. The best thing about blogging is that it's free, unlike PPC.

I partially agree. I definitely agree that business blogging helps SEO results. To that I say yeah! But, "forget about community?" Huh? If you really mean that why do you post your blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, etc.? Isn't your community part of your media? Community helps build traffic too. Remember links? More links = better rankings. They're all connected.  
 
 
 
 
 

The nice thing about the traffic our blog creates is that its "sustainable." I wrote articles two years ago that still produce qualified traffic to the blog which convert into leads/customers on HubSpot today. 
 
Google adwords is absolutely fantastic, but there's nothing sustainable about it -- you just pour more money in every month as your keywords get more "efficient."

@Bernie Thanks for keeping me honest! I agree with you. When I say forget about community, I mean forget about community when you're trying to justify blogging in a business environment. I say this for two big reasons: (1) It's hard to measure community enough to make the justification, and (2) SEO alone justifies blogging, so you don't need to justify it with community or conversation. Those are just gravy.

Rick, 
As a marketer, I respectfully disagree with Hubspot on this one.  
 
If companies use their blog for the sole purpose of SEO vs. thought leadership or community relations, they will need to make sure that ALL blog content is keyword (tag) driven and that those keywords are similar to their website. Why? Because they will need to consistently use the same keywords in their blog copy that they use on their website or landing pages to receive consistent and high Google rankings. 
 
What happens at that point is that their blog becomes just another promotion (i.e. a place to pitch product, be self-promotional, and regurgitate website copy, collateral, etc.) tactic. Just like in your windmill example. Thought leadership and conversation often does not revolve around key words specific to your company or its products.  
 
And yes, thought leadership and conversation are hard to measure. But what you are suggesting is akin to saying stop having conversations and meetings (on- or off-line) with customers because unless there are exact measurable results for those conversations or meetings it doesn’t count or drive leads.  
 
We are no longer in Web 1.0. Consumers are interested in hearing from people other than your marketers (one-way); they want to engage with the company and other customers (two-way).  
And, in my opinion, an SEO-driven blog negates this process.  
 
I would suspect that your customers select Hubspot because of the thought leadership you offer and not for pure SEO skills. Isn’t that what you’d want for your customers too? To be seen as a company that converses with their customers? Or as a thought leader who understands the industry deeply enough to understand their critical business issues?  
 
In today’s Web 2.0 world, measurement is difficult. But marketers need to understand and do both—optimize their website with SEO to generate leads and provide a blog that is thought provoking, engaging and stimulates conversation. The two don’t need to have the same keywords to work together or be effective in generating revenue.

@beth I absolutely agree with you. As a company, you need to converse with your customers, and you need to create a community around your products and services. 
 
I'm just trying to address the concerns of folks who continue to resist these ideas. My point is that even if you completely reject community and conversation (which you shouldn't!), blogging is worth doing for the SEO value alone.

It's true about bloggers really pushing their product. Anyone that I know that blogs, always works "you should blog!" into the conversation. It is true that search engines do like new content, especially if it's relevant to many of the searches that are being performed on the given topic.

Blogging as you see is just for internet marketing and most bloggers these days only post stuff for good internet advertising and promoting their websites. it is next to bulk email marketing as done by most webmasters

Did you seriously just write "forget community. forget conversation."? I'm going to try to forget I read this blog entry, which contains some of the worst social media counsel I've seen in a long time.

Hi Annie, I certainly don't think it's wise to forget community and conversation. The point I'm making is simply that community and conversation are the most talked-about benefits of blogging, but also the most difficult for businesses to measure. People overlook the easier-to-measure SEO value of blogs.

I wish I knew how to do it

This post is great, it is both bold and inspiring.  
SEO is a practice that tries to conform a site to the criteria of a search engine. A search engine tries to conform a list of search results in order of relevance based on similar criteria to the human judgment process. Because blogs have gained in popularity and one may argue that they are the most appealing and efficient way to get new information it is no wonder the search engines rank them and their associated sites well.  
Therefore if you keep your marketing messages pure to the spirit of blogging by being appealing and efficient, you can promote your business well to spiders and humans alike.

Hey, you can blog, have a conversation and build community at the same time!  
 
Yes! You can have it all! Today, I conducted a online networking session, recorded it, posted it on my podcast page and blog! Google picks up my blog post, people can listen to people sharing information and knowledge .... and we are building an online community at the same time! 
 
Yes! We can have it all! (smile) 
 
Check it out: http://www.smartadvantagecoaching.com/pages/podcasts-blog-presentations-wiki--more.php

Overall I agree, but in practice I've seen so many businesses setup a blog only for them to go stagnant. Our company website ranks #3 for the term SEO Blog, but that wasn't our goal we mainly wanted to increase our index size for internal links. But then again it depends on the authority of a website and industry as to what value a blog will be (ie companies that make pop corn makers will see very little benefit other then index size).

I have four blogs on anger management. My website and these blogs have keep me at the top of this tiny niche for many years. My model is the industry standard worldwide.

I would just like to mention that I think it's important to write about topics people actually want to read and become engaged with. I've seen many companies use (and sell) blogs as a way to just paste extra long advertisments on to their sites and then call it "blogging." What's worse is people creating crap blogs that clearly hold no real readable value and then covering the page in adsense ads in the hopes of rolling in that sweet, sweet adsense dough.

I agree. We need to use the tool the way it was intended to be used. When I see someone use it to advertise they lose some credibility.

I am a new user in Hubspot. Just started a blog a few weeks ago. I have the following issues: 
 
1. Not getting blog analytics in Hubspot-i mean the data does not seem correct-any ideas are others happy with this feature.  
2. I am obviously not creating an impact with my blog becoz there are no comments-how do i direct traffic to my blog who may be interested in commenting.

Hi Ajay, 
 
Thanks for the note. I have a couple suggestions for you: 
 
1. If you think blog analytics isn't right, I recommend you log a support ticket. The HubSpot support team will investigate the specific problem you're facing. You can do that here: http://success.hubspot.com/log-a-support-request 
 
2. There are lots of ways to drive traffic to your blog. First, read our methodlogy section on "getting early readership": http://success.hubspot.com/InternetMarketingMethodology/A_Grow_the_top_of_the_Funnel/get-found-through-the-blogosphere/generating-blog-readership. Then, watch our blogging & blogosphere webinar: http://success.hubspot.com/Blogging%20%20Blogosphere%20-%209/28/07. If you need further help, talk to your Inbound Marketing Consultant. Best of luck!! 
 
Rick

Blogging has become an integral part of business these days. It's amazing and unbelievable how Blogging when used effectively can increase the possibilities of the Site to have good search engine results. Articles on blogs can be written with the keywords which also acts as affordable SEO.

Blogging is a widely used tool for business nowadays. It's astounding and remarkable how Blogging when used smartly can increase the possibilities of the Site to have good results on search engines. Smart bloggers use keywords too in their articles as part of SEO ;).

Blogging is a widely used tool for business nowadays. It's astounding and remarkable how Blogging when used smartly can increase the possibilities of the Site to have good results on search engines. Smart bloggers use keywords too in their articles as part of SEO ;).

optimizing a blog for search engine rankings is better in the long run. community will grow around your blog and other efforts if people are finding you via searches. having community where people can go after finding your blog is important to build long term brand loyalty.

Great read. I plan on utilizing a blog on my own site. canadian bodybuilding canadian bodybuilding forum

Great post. What people often fail to understand is that there are only three sources of blog traffic: Direct Navigation (RSS feeds or URL navigation) referrals (others linking to you) or Search traffic 
 
You can influence the first two, buy you can't make it happen. Search on the other hand is directly in your control. The more blogs you have and the more relevant content you generate, the more successful you will be. The more successful you are in search, the more direct navigation and the more referrals you get.  
 
Search needs to be the first goal.