Every business does things differently. But there are some things every single B2B business in the world needs to do, and one of those things is driving leads.
Leads are prospective customers who show an interest in your products or services, but haven’t yet converted. It’s crucial to generate leads because everyone needs to become a lead before they convert. No leads means no sales, which means no revenue.
That being the case, you’re probably wondering what marketing strategies can help you generate leads. In particular, you might be wondering about search engine optimization (SEO). Is SEO effective for generating leads and how can you use SEO for lead generation?
Well, that’s exactly the question we’re here to answer. Keep reading to learn about SEO lead generation and how to get SEO leads or check out SEO services from our partners at WebFX to learn more.
Let’s start off by answering our original question—is SEO effective for lead generation?
To put it simply, the answer is yes.
There’s a reason SEO is known for being one of the most effective digital marketing strategies out there. It allows you to get your website in search results where people can find it, and with a good SEO strategy, you’ll end up earning tons of traffic from Google.
SEO is also perfect for generating leads. Some marketing strategies, like email marketing, aren’t really intended to generate leads—they exist more to market to people who are already leads. But SEO helps people find your website for the first time, causing many of them to become leads.
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SEO is a digital marketing strategy that involves creating content and optimizing your website to improve your rankings in search engines.
Lead generation is the process of generating interest in your business, product, or service so that you can convert interested leads into customers. Typically, lead generation involves collecting potential customers’ contact information so you can establish a relationship and nurture them toward a sale.
So, how do these two strategies work together?
With an SEO strategy, you can increase your visibility in search results for search terms related to your business that your potential customers are likely to search.
Creating relevant content that ranks in search brings your target audience to your website where you can establish a relationship with them and collect their contact information.
Here’s a look at a basic SEO lead generation strategy:
Define your target audience
The first step is to identify your ideal customers. Say, for example, that you run a contracting company focusing on home repairs and renovations. Your target audience would be homeowners in your area.
Create relevant, valuable content
The next steps is to create content that speaks to your target audience. In our home repairs and renovations example, you could create content about topics like how to complete basic home repair projects and how to choose the right type of deck for your home.
As your audience finds these articles through search and visits your website, they’ll get to know your brand and begin to trust your expertise.
Optimize your website for search
Another crucial step in the process is optimizing your website and content to improve your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
These optimization methods including content-related strategies such as creating highly valuable and relevant content and more technical tactics such as improving page speed and usability. We’ll cover optimization tips in more detail in the next section.
Collect leads’ contact information
The next step is to implement ways to engage leads and capture their contact information. Some leads might convert directly on your website through a quote form, for example. Others might sign up for your email newsletter and convert there several months down the road.
6 tips for using SEO for lead generation
Now that you know how SEO and lead generation work, you might be wondering how to improve your rankings in search so that you can drive more leads.
SEO involves many different tactics, but here are six of the most important tips for SEO lead generation.
1. Write content for search intent
The first thing to get right for your SEO is to create content based on search intent. What is search intent, you ask? Simple—it’s what people are looking for when they search for a particular keyword.
That means if you write a blog post targeting a particular keyword, you’ll want to check the current search results for that keyword to see what people seem to be looking for. Then you’ll want to write your post so that it matches that intent.
If you don’t consider search intent, you’ll end up creating content that people aren’t interested in reading. That means it will rank lower in Google, and your SEO will suffer, causing you to generate far fewer leads.
2. Optimize your page speed
A lot of SEO comes down to optimizing your website. A website that isn’t user-friendly will struggle to rank, and will consequently struggle to generate any leads. Thankfully, there are a handful of simple ways to improve your site’s quality, including page speed optimization.
Page speed is a huge part of SEO. A slow-loading page—by which we mean a page that takes more than three seconds to load—will cause people to hit the “back” button.
Another way to optimize your website for SEO is to make it mobile-friendly. This step is critical. In today’s world, the majority of web traffic actually comes from mobile devices, so failing to optimize your site for mobile will mean you rank lower and miss out on the majority of your potential traffic.
The best way to make a mobile-friendly site is to use responsive design. Responsive design is a type of web design where your site pages automatically adjust to fit whatever screen they appear on. So, a page will look one way on mobile, and another on desktop.
By using responsive design, you avoid the hassle of creating every page twice, all while still harnessing all the potential leads you can earn through mobile.
4. Create a Google Business Profile
Not every SEO tactic happens on your website. You can also boost your Google visibility by creating a Google Business Profile. These profiles are public and include information about your company, like your business name, location, contact information, and reviews.
The most common way for people to find Google Business Profiles is by performing local searches. So, let’s say you run a metal fabrication company in Austin, Texas. If someone in Austin searches “metal fabricator,” they might see a local 3-pack that includes your profile.
That can lead lots of people to further research your company, with many of them visiting your website and ultimately becoming leads.
5. Earn backlinks to your content
Google considers a lot of factors when ranking websites in search results. One of those factors is reputability. That is, Google prioritizes sites it sees as authoritative. So, how do you get Google to view your site that way? Easy—you earn some backlinks.
Backlinks are where other websites link to your content. By earning backlinks, you can show Google that those sites see you as reputable. To earn backlinks, you can look for linking opportunities on other sites and recommend that they address those opportunities by linking to your content.
However, be sure you aim for reputability and relevance in your backlinks. That is, try to earn backlinks from sites that are relevant to your industry and are considered authoritative. Two or three reputable backlinks are worth more than 100 average ones.
6. Keep up with SEO and customer analytics
Finally, something that’s vital to SEO for lead generation—as well as any other marketing campaign—is analytics. You absolutely must track metrics related to your SEO performance so you can see how well you’re doing.
For SEO, there are a few types of metrics you’ll want to track. The first and most obvious metric is rankings. It’s important to know which keywords your pages are ranking for, and how high they’re ranking for those keywords.
You’ll also want to keep up with the amount of traffic coming into your site. Keep an eye on how much of that traffic comes from Google, which searches produce the most traffic, and which pages that traffic gravitates toward.
Finally, for the purposes of SEO lead generation, measure how many leads you earn as a result of your search traffic. Measuring all these things will help you improve your SEO, but it will also help you understand your audience better so you can market more effectively and drive more sales.
Let us help you drive up your lead generation
Anyone can learn the basics of SEO and start driving more traffic to their business’s website. But if you want to save time, leave it to an expert, and get huge value for your SEO spending, we recommend investing in SEO services from our partners at WebFX—the agency behind $3 billion in client revenue.
