Inbound Marketing Commandment #9: Thou Shall Not Publish Garbage

As part of the LeadG2 series on "The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing," this post looks at the ninth of The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing is: "Thou shall not publish content for the sake of Google. Write for humans not Google." (Tweet This)

Have you ever read a blog post that repeated a keyword over and over and didn’t really offer anything of value? Yeah, me too. That’s what happens when a company decides they want to “focus on a keyword” to the detriment of creating easy-to-read, valuable content. The is why the ninth Commandment of Inbound Marketing is so important: "Thou shall not publish content for the sake of Google. Write for humans not Google."

Writing content that is primarily focused on trying to increase your search rankings can work, but you have to be smart about how you do it. What you don’t want to do is to jam your keywords into the titles of blog posts or into the body of your content in an awkward way. Having well-written blog posts that include keywords but don’t overly use specific keywords is what you should be trying to accomplish with your blog. At LeadG2 we like to call this, "Writing for Humans not Google." When you write specifically for Google and repeat keywords over and over again, it doesn’t make for very compelling reading and certainly won’t get much interest from your target persona.

The saying “Garbage in, garbage out” applies to content creation and inbound marketing. If you are creating content that overly-stuffed with keywords and not of interest to your audience, you also won’t generate any leads. The result? The crappy content that you create won’t translate into the flood of leads you were expecting, and everyone will be disappointed.

If you really want to connect with your target persona, write for humans and not Google!

The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing

1. Thou shall not put pen to paper before conducting research and understanding your target persona.  (Tweet This)
2. Sales must be involved in your inbound strategy at each stage from conception to implementation to follow up. (Tweet This)
3. Your website must be mobile optimized or responsive. (Tweet This)
4. You must have a written plan for lead follow up that’s agreed upon by both sales and marketing. (Tweet This)
5. You must have someone responsible for your inbound marketing program. (Tweet This)
6. Consistently be publishing content on your blog. (Tweet This)
7. You must have premium content (white papers, guides etc) on your website if you intend to generate leads. (Tweet This)
8. Do not ignore SEO / Organic search.  This is your website’s lifeblood. (Tweet This)
9. Thou shall not publish content for the sake of Google. Write for humans not Google. (Tweet This)
10. You must use a CRM. (Tweet This)

Make sure to subscribe to the LeadG2 blog to get each of The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing and other great blog content delivered to your inbox. Or you can download The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing, which includes all ten of the blog posts and some added content.