There is no greater feeling than nurturing a lead into a paying customer—especially when it’s a lead you didn’t have to pay for.
B2B marketers rely on SEO, or search engine optimization, to generate high-quality leads at very low cost through organic search. This process starts with publishing content on your site based around strategic keywords, having potential customers find your content by searching for those keywords, and then converting those visitors into leads.
Unlike PPC advertising, you’re not spending a dime to put this content in front of searchers—outside of what you pay your content team to produce it—which makes SEO an incredibly cost effective lead source. But while it may sound simple, SEO lead generation can be quite the intricate process. That’s why we sat down with 10 experts to get their tips on how to generate more B2B sales leads through SEO.
The most important thing is to differentiate between “website visitors,” and “qualified B2B leads.” A TOFU page may get thousands of visitors, but few of them convert. Thus, that type of content may not be the best way to generate B2B leads.
Long-tailed keywords with low search volumes (less than 100/month) are a much better approach, especially money keywords that relate to buying intents with specific geographical locations in mind (e.g., “best southern vietnamese restaurants in zurich switzerland”).
Hung Nguyen, Content Marketing Manager of Smallpdf
Create a Visit-to-Lead Path
Attracting visitors to your website is only the beginning of the lead generation process. Once you get visitors in the door through SEO content, you have to convince them to complete a conversion action, such as filling out a form to contact your sales team, signing up for a demo, or starting a free trial of your service. That’s what turns content consumers into actual sales leads.
For example, on any Nutshell blog page you’ll see a START FREE TRIAL button in the top right corner of the page, a “Ready to try Nutshell for free?” sidebar form that follows you on the right side of the page, and occasional CTAs within the article copy that ask you to download a relevant content offer or start a trial of our software
The point is, you have to make sure your visitors know that you offer something of value beyond just your content. No matter what page they land on, make sure the visit-to-lead path is clear and coherent.
Include a search bar on your website and check the search terms in analytics regularly. Doing so will give you insights into what your customers are having a hard time finding on your site, and can give you a wealth of ideas for new content.
A great way to drive more leads via SEO is to consistently update your blog posts. You can find out what customers are searching for via Google Search Console and then either update existing articles or create new ones around those queries. This can also help to draw more backlinks so your content will always be relevant.
When creating your SEO lead generation strategy, make sure you create a target persona first, so you can identify your ideal audience and their needs. It is crucial to ensure that your website includes the keywords your target persona is using when searching for information. Once you deeply know your ideal target audience, you can create meaningful content and post it on your website.
To engage with your customers, publish valuable resources that potential customers can easily view or download, and convince them that the service you provide is the solution to their challenge or need.
To drive more B2B leads, I recommend publishing content that answers basic questions. I published a short guide to SaaS acronyms on my website that worked very well for answering search queries. You can use the same tactic to attract B2B leads—publish a short guide that defines some of the most common jargon in your industry. Not only will you generate visits, you’ll also build authority with potential customers.
Bruce Harpham, Technology and SaaS Marketing Consultant
Test Out Visual Materials and Resources
Written content is undoubtedly useful but today, visual materials such as infographics or videos are very effective for B2B marketing purposes and they will continue to be one of the most frequently used marketing strategies for 2021.
Because we process visuals 60,000 times faster than text, it is far simpler for people to remember visual information than the same information in a written form. That is why marketing videos and especially infographics are all the rage now for increasing traffic and lead conversions.
Rameez Ghayas Usmani, Digital Marketing and Analytics Executive at PureVPN
Speak the Language of Your Buyers
You want to be sure you’re being specific and purposeful in your language when crafting marketing content. Especially with B2B, the more your words are tailored to the language your market speaks, the more likely they’ll be able to find you in search engines.
Buyers looking for products and services for their businesses are more likely to use industry language terms. For example, in our business, recycling is a very broad topic to cover. Variations of industrial recycling or manufacturing recycling are better for our SEO because they are more relevant to our service and for B2B client development.
Jonathan L. Cohen, Founder and President of Generated
Find a way to communicate through your SEO content that you understand what success means to your target customer. Research-backed content such as white papers can appeal to decision makers at businesses you are targeting. Remember that the nurturing process takes longer for B2B sales so stay patient and continue to produce insightful content that is relevant to them at all stages of the buying cycle.
If you run a small business that serves a specific area, it doesn’t make sense to employ the same strategies as companies operating on a global scale. Instead, make sure your Google My Business profile is accurate and up to date, work to get listed on directories, and utilize local keywords throughout content on your website.
Kayla Centeno, Client Services Manager at Markitors
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