Optimize 3.0 Inbound Marketing Blog

What is Hubspot? A Peak Under the Kimono

Posted by Doug Kirk  Aug 15, 2011 2:17:00 PM

Exactly what is Hubspot?  Well, by way of a real world example I’m going to shed some light on what it is and how it can help your business.  Starting from keyword research, to blogging, to lead generation, to sales conversion here’s a step by step example of how I earned a client using Hubspot together with inbound marketing principles. 

1)      SEO.  Everything starts with keyword research in Hubspot.  I’ve tried a few others like Market Samurai, but this is far more straightforward.  Hubspot’s keyword grader tool identifies which keywords are relevant to your business.  Two numbers from the tool I really monitor are Monthly Search Volume and Difficulty Ranking.  These show how many people search on a term and then how difficult it is to rank for that term from 1 to 100.  The higher the difficulty score, the harder it is to rank for your site.  Initially, I found terms with low difficulty such as “Inbound Marketing Agency New York” (low monthly volume, diff score of 20).  Using Hubspot’s page building software showing exactly where to place these terms, I got a #1 ranking in Google quickly.  I continued my research (now over 700 terms) and discovered “Hubspot Review” with search volume of 210 and a difficulty score of only 54.  Pretty good volume, low difficulty =  keyword gold.     

Hubspot Keyword Grader

2)      Blogging.  Once I had identified “Hubspot Review” as a target term, I needed to create content around it.  This is where the core principal of Inbound Marketing comes in: Create remarkable content.  It so happens that I recently met a very successful Hubspot user (Tom Telford) through one of my blog posts.  The lightbulb went off and I decided to interview him.  This became the basis of my “Hubspot Review” titled blog post.  Hubspot’s blog platform has some distinctive features that far exceed other platforms such as Wordpress.  In Hubspot, as you create the article there are prompts to add important SEO elements.  For example, the software tells you to enter a targeted term from your keyword grader into the title of the article (article titles tell Google what your page is about – choose wisely!).  The same goes for the article image (alt text), meta keywords and meta description.  Each critical component for structuring an SEO friendly blog post is built right into the software.   I follow these rules to the letter.        

Hubspot SEO Blogging Platform resized 600

3)      Social Interaction.  I posted the article on July 12th, 2011.  Since Hubspot automatically connects your blog to social media accounts (Twitter and Facebook) the blog title and links went right into Twitter (and from there to my Linkedin account) and FaceBook business page.  Instantaneous promotion!  Another important detail is that Hubspot locates the “social share” buttons prominently displayed above each post.  This came in handy when Dharmesh Shah, one of the founders of Hubspot, read the article and Tweeted it.    This brought in more viewers and Google started to see the page having some “SEO juice.”  

 Hubspot social sharing buttons resized 600

 

 

 

 

 

4)      Analytics.  In Hubspot’s Blog Analytics I could see that the post was one of my most popular (over 333 pageviews to date).   I’d tapped something!  Back in the Keyword Grader I can see that I’d made it on the first page of Google in almost 2 days!  Actually, as high as #5 where I’ve been hovering there since.  Here’s another interesting result: I started ranking for other related terms for “Review Hubspot” as well.  To date, I’ve had 11 Google visits for these terms.   These are very highly targeted towards people interested in Hubspot.  Optimize 3.0’s target demo.   Importantly, this feedback tells me that people are curious about Hubspot and and possibly the services of Optimize 3.0.  Now I know where to focus future blog posts (effectively, what you’re reading now).     

Hubspot Analytics

5) Conversion.  Two other immensely smart features in Hubspot are the call-to-action (CTA) button creation and landing page tools.  Using these, I built out a CTA “Free Website Review” (A/B test buttons included) and put that at the end of my Hubspot Review post.  I linked this CTA to a landing page that captured the website and email info for interested leads.  This worked particularly well since I earned a new client via this CTA I placed in the post.  Not bad for one post and a very nice example of what is Hubspot.     

 Hubspot CTA Builder

What is Hubspot?  It’s a software platform that integrates critical online business optimization tools right into your website.  Make no mistake, there’s work involved (as with anything) but it’s an awfully effective way to drive leads and convert sales on your website . 

Interested in Hubspot software?  Here's a good place to start:

 Want to try Inbound Marketing?  Try Optimize 3.0's Inbound Marketing Starter Package.  Get up and running and self-sufficient in 3 months:

 

 

Topics: hubspot, inbound marketing, Blogging Benefits, seo