Why all business need a blog
If you run a business you must have a website with a consistent stream of new content. It’s not enough to have a virtual billboard — a website that lists location, business hours and a phone number. If you go the billboard route, your customer needs to know specific information about your company in order to find you in a Google search.
Most Google searches consist of specific phrases or keywords, such as “tree trimming services” rather than “Shick & Sons Tree Trimmers.” True, there may be a handful of customers who know the company name and search Google using that phrase, but the point of a website is to reach new customers searching terms that do not include the business name.
That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. If you are constantly writing new blog posts about your services while using common search phrases, Google will find your site and list it in their search results. And with Google, the blog with the most marbles usually wins.
Image via CrunchBase
So the more blog posts you write about your services, your specific location (tree trimmers in Atlanta, GA) the more Google has to offer someone searching for tree trimmers. If you have 125 posts about tree trimmers in Atlanta chances are good your blog will come up in the first ten results. Conversely, if you have one post about tree trimmers in Atlanta your site will probably show up at the end of those search results.
What is HubSpot?
HubSpot is an all-in-one online marketing solution for businesses. While they offer intense marketing and SEO services, including the ability to create a blog, forms and inbound marketing efforts, they charge at least $200 per month. HubSpot definitely appeals to a large market but eventually some users decide they’ve learned enough and decide to leave HubSpot.
Why not use HubSpot’s blog platform?
It isn’t just Hubspot; all blogging platforms that are hosted on their own domain — and not on yours — will take any Google juice you hope to create. Having a blog hosted outside of your own website sends any SEO to the hosting site and not to your own.
Google’s new algorithm rewards frequently-updated websites with more search results that are ranked higher on the search results page. And Google doesn’t care if you have a blog or a website — to Google they are all websites. Businesses need a blog hosted on their own domain (www.yourcompany.com/blog not www.yourcompany.hubspot.com) because usually website content is static while blogs are update on a regular basis.
If you are a business owner and you don’t have a blog you can read all about why your business needs a blog here. Therefore if you have your blog hosted on Hubspot, or Blogspot or WordPress.com you are giving those businesses (Hubspot, Blogger, WordPress) your hard-earned SEO.
That SEO should be going to good use on your own website.
Now this where things get sticky. HubSpot does not offer a simple way to export a HubSpot blog. It can be done, however you have to really know your way around a blog.
How to export a HubSpot blog
Method One: Cut and paste every blog post manually.
Clicking on the “All Posts” link at the bottom of your HubSpot blog page will show you the title and give a link to every blog post that has been written so far.
Then you will need to open each link in order to copy the post and then paste it into your WordPress blog. Needless to say, that’s clunky and extremely time consuming.
Method Two: Export your HubSpot RSS blog feed and then import the feed to WordPress.
Export the HubSpot RSS Feed.
When you click on the RSS Feed button, HubSpot will show the latest 25 blog posts. You must edit the “maxcount” variable in the URL to go from “25″ to “1,000″ (or a higher number if you have more than 1,000 blog posts) for the RSS feed to show every post that has been published so far.
When the feed shows all posts in your browser, copy it and then paste it into a text file using Notepad. Save the file on your hard drive.
Import the HubSpot RSS Feed to your WordPress blog.
In the WordPress dashboard go to Tools then Import. Click on RSS and then select the Notepad file that you saved on your hard drive then click Import. Depending on the feed and format, you may not get the entire file loaded on the first attempt.
To determine how many posts were imported go to the WordPress Dashboard then select All Posts. When you know how many posts were imported remove those posts from your saved RSS file and then re-import the file.
Method Three: Hire a company to convert your HubSpot blog to a WordPress blog.
Because methods one and two are very cumbersome, you may choose to hire a company to convert the HubSpot blog to a WordPress blog.
Hiring a company to convert your HubSpot blog to WordPress is, by far, the easiest option, however it’s not always economically feasible for a smaller business or mommy blogger who’s just starting out. If that’s your situation, consider moving just the last 10 or 20 posts. And if you haven’t started a blog yet make sure to create your blog on your own domain.
