SEO and Lead generation are among the two most important elements for creating an effective marketing plan to grow your business.
Although lead generation and SEO are different, when you bring these two powerful strategies together, you will be able to Whether you own a new website or are simply a hands-on person who does all of your online marketing it will only take a few basic tips to generate more leads from basic SEO principles.
The Importance of SEO
- Visibility and Rankings: When searching for a service or product online, users are more likely to choose one of the top five suggestions that the search engine shows them.
- Web Traffic: To put it simply – if potential customers can’t find your website, sales opportunities are being missed. SEO increases your organic search engine traffic, in turn increasing the number of visitors your page sees each day.
- Trustworthy: The better your SEO score is, the higher you’ll appear on search engines like Google and Bing. While ranking higher on Google is appealing to all brands because on increased visibility, a secondhand benefit is the trust you gain with potential customers.
- User Experience: A well-optimized website clearly communicates what product or service is being offered, how to obtain it, and answers any questions surrounding it. By catering the site build to the user’s experience, search engines like Google and Bing are able to easily pull the information they need to then relay to users.
- Growth: There’s no doubt about it – SEO is key to the growth of your brand. As we mentioned above, the higher you rank on a search engine for a variety of high-volume keywords, the more organic (aka non-paid) web traffic your site will receive. It’s as simple as that.
A website that is well-optimized is more likely to gain more customers and make more sales. People are also more likely to then share your brand across other social platforms like Facebook or Instagram once they’ve found your website through a search engine.
Why is SEO a Perfect Fit for Lead Generation?
SEO can complement a business’s lead generation efforts by increasing awareness for the company through organic traffic to the website. The more often your website shows up on Google’s first page, the easier it is for your target customers to find you and learn more about your business solutions.
- Helps you rank for business-related keywords you want to target
- Potential customers will find your content via organic search results
- If the content meets the needs of your target audience, you will have the opportunity to convert the ordinary visitor into a lead, and eventually, make a sale
SEO will serve as a funnel that brings in a stream of leads to your website. Overall, it will make your website one of the best lead generation tools.
Earlier, most of the companies used cold calling (an outbound marketing tactic). After the advent of digital marketing, cold calling has become quite ineffective.
In contrast, SEO (inbound marketing tactic) helps leads find you. The SEO leads that approach you will be more receptive to what you offer than the people you approach out of the blue.
Here are some interesting statistics about SEO lead generation that you need to know.
- 57% of B2B marketers say that SEO generates more leads than any of their other marketing initiatives. (Source – Junto)
- SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate. (Source – HubSpot)
- If done right, SEO can drive a 14.6% conversion rate. (Source – 99 Firms)
On the whole, if you are looking for effective tactics to generate more leads, SEO lead generation is one strategy you can’t ignore.
7 SEO tips to boost lead generation
Although the following SEO tips are fairly basic, the effects on traffic are exaggerated for local business owners. The same rings true for websites in a non-saturated niche where link building is less of a ranking factor and great content reigns supreme.
1. Build a blog with SEO-optimized content
One of the best ways to use SEO to get more leads is to build an active blog with optimized blog posts. A blog combines all the elements you need for great website SEO. By posting content regularly, you are essentially providing fresh content, keywords, backlinking, images, social media engagement, and so on.
Here are some of the basics of SEO optimizing your blog:
- Use keywords: Do keyword research to find the most important keywords in your industry, and then embed them in your headline and throughout your blog content. Just remember to keep it natural and avoid stuffing keywords, as this might result in penalties from Google.
- Publish regularly: To get the most from your SEO efforts, you need to create content consistently. As evidenced by the graph below, the more frequently you post to your blog, the better results you will get.
- Use subheadings: Using H2, H3, and H4 headings helps to make your content scannable and improves your user experience. It will also help Google to more easily understand what your content is all about.
- Add links: Each time you publish a post on your blog, you must link it to other relevant content on your website. This improves usability, boosts page views, and helps to spread the link juice.
- Format Content: Your content must not only be packed full of value, but it must also be very easy for your readers to consume and digest. Use formatting best practices to make your content easier to read and more engaging.
Keep in mind, it doesn’t matter what kind of blog you have, these best principles should always be followed.
Keeping SEO in mind from the start of your blog launch is what will lead to consistent growth and business growth opportunities.
2. Increase your website speed
Website speed affects search engine rankings. Google’s main goal is to provide its users with the best experience possible, and the speed at which your website runs is a massive factor in helping them achieve that goal.
The faster your website responds to search, the higher Google will rank it.
Here are a few basic ways to increase website speed:
- Use a reliable web hosting provider
- Make your website mobile responsive
- Use an image optimizer plug-in like TinyPNG
- Optimize your scripts using a plug-in like WP Fastest Cache
- Remove unnecessary scripts and pluginsFix broken links and delete spam comments
- Clean up your database using a plugin like WP-Optimize
- Enable caching using WP Total Cache (or MaxCDN if you’re not using WordPress)
You can use a tool like Pingdom to help you check your website speed. Once you know how your site is performing, you can start to improve your load times based on the suggestions the tool makes.
3. Conduct keyword research
Keyword research is a critical element of successful SEO. It involves finding terms that users type into search engines when searching for information, products, or services. When done right, keyword research can be a solid foundation of all your online marketing efforts and help drive every decision you make.
There are many keyword research tools that you can use to find the relevant keywords that lead to your website so you can drive more traffic, increase sales, and get a great ROI from your marketing.
4. Start link building
Link building is the activity of acquiring links from other sites to your own. Links help users to easily navigate between pages on the web. They also help search engines to crawl between individual pages on your site, as well as between entire websites on the internet.
Link building is an important element in your overall SEO lead generation strategy, but it’s important to do it credibly if you want to get positive results from your efforts.
For instance, you must never buy links and only link to high-quality sources that will help improve the ranking of your own domain. Manual outreaching to bloggers for guest posting and link placements is still a very credible way to build links.
Make a list of people you’d like to reach out to. Come up with a subject line that works well in your niche and explain the benefits of accepting your offer (maybe offer them something in return) in the body of the email.
5. Use local SEO strategies if you are a local business
If you have a local business, then you stand to benefit greatly from using local SEO strategies to ensure that your audience can find you on Google.
Use the following local SEO strategies to benefit your business:
- Claim listings in online directories: Use online directories to build and market yourself so you can create a stronger presence online.
- Optimize content for local search: Use local keyword data to optimize your content and tell your audience exactly who you are and where you are.
- Generate positive reviews: Studies show that over 88% of consumers trust reviews online as much as recommendations from family and friends. Always ask for reviews, the more positive reviews you have, the more leads you will get.
6. Have active social media channels
If you aren’t sure exactly how social media helps SEO, you are not alone. Many marketers are confused about the impact that social media has on SEO.
Google says that social signals are not among its ranking factors, but data from Search Engine Journal shows that social media can help your website rank better.
The data shows a very high correlation between ranking position and social signals, with the top-ranking pages on Google displaying significantly more social signals than the websites that don’t perform as well.
It could be argued that social media has an indirect correlation with SEO because the more of a social media presence you have, the more likely you are to attract those who will link to you.
So make sure you maintain active social media channels to help boost your SEO lead generation campaigns.
7. Promote and manage customer reviews
Customer reviews positively impact SEO, as well as your overall rankings. They act as a strong signal to Google and other search engines that your website is trustworthy and authoritative (the positive reviews, anyway).
Here are some basics behind utilizing them effectively:
Encouraging reviews: A great way to start acquiring reviews from your customers is to simply ask for them. Also, make it as simple, easy, and convenient as possible for people to leave a review to make it more likely that they will do so.
Repositioning: The digital prominence of your business plays a role in Google’s rankings. The search giant looks at your business’ involvement online to determine where to rank you in search. So make sure you position your business in the best light in order to improve your SEO.
Here are some ways you can do that:
- Make sure your articles are written by a credible content creator with a good reputation on the web.
- Be sure all URLs associated with your business have useful content.
- Responds to all comments, reviews, and conversations that are happening around it.
- Use a SEO reporting tool to keep track of the important factors such as keyword usage, URL compliance, link clicks, etc. The insights you gain from these tools help you a lot in online repositioning.
All these tactics come together to help you reposition your business in the best light possible.
Conclusion
From creating an SEO-optimized blog to maintaining active social media channels, each of these seven SEO lead generation tips will allow you to experience consistent growth in your business.