Nothing matters more in business than attracting new customers. All too often, it can feel like a passive process, like you’re sitting around waiting for people to bite. With lead generation, you can reach out to potential customers and begin establishing a relationship; it’s a way of scooping them into your marketing funnel.
So, What Exactly Is Lead Generation?
Let’s give you an example. Let’s say you’re selling guitar lessons. On your website is a form that people can fill out with their email addresses to download some free teaching resources. They also have the option to “keep me updated with news and offers.” In doing so, they have expressed interest in your business and given you permission to contact them.
What you’ve done here is generated a “lead.” You can now nurture this lead over time with offers, personalized marketing, and relevant content until they are ready to make a purchase.
Lead generation is one of the most essential practices in marketing. In fact, 85% of marketers listed it as their most important content marketing goal. At the same time, however, 61% said that generating high-quality leads was one of their biggest challenges.
Do Lead Generation And SEO Work Together?
Search marketing and lead generation go hand in hand as they’re both at the top of the “marketing funnel” in the awareness phase where customers are initially drawn to your business. By using tactics that leverage strong SEO and lead generation practices, you can maximize the number of potential customers coming to your site.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of tweaking your website or web page to get it to show up on search engine results pages. Search engines look for keywords to help them understand the content and context of a website to deliver relevant results.
As search engines evolve, they have gotten better at recognizing the intention behind a search query. Known as User intent, it’s an invaluable tool when it comes to lead generation. As your potential leads are at the very first stage of their buying journey, they are likely looking to learn more about the general area that covers your product.
A good SEO marketing strategy can target your lead-generating content to match user intent so that you are appearing in search results for those curious prospective leads. Providing relevant content for their search query will also leave a good impression on you, making them more inclined to do business with you further down the road.
So let’s now have a look at some ways you can optimize your SEO for lead generation. To learn more about eCommerce SEO tactics, check out this resource on SEO strategies for eCommerce web development.
1. Build An Effective SEO Plan
In order to create successful sales leads using SEO, make sure you’re doing the following:
Understand Your Target Audience:
Like any other form of marketing, you need to plan around the customers you’re planning to attract. For this, you‘ll need to build a solid buyer persona in order to develop a more focused strategy.
Think of the kind of person that would be interested in your product. A good place to start is with pain points. What problem does your product solve? What kind of people have this problem?
Try and be as specific as possible, including characteristics like:
- Age group
- Income
- Education
- Buying behaviors (online and offline)
With this information, you will be able to tailor your content to generate high-quality leads.
Find Target Keywords:
Keywords are the foundation of SEO. You can use Google’s Analytics and Search Console tools to find out which keywords are driving traffic to your site as well as what your potential customers are searching for.
You can also use long-tail keywords to rank more precisely for user intent. Long-tail keywords are search terms that incorporate a primary keyword into a phrase. While these usually have a smaller search volume, they also tend to be more specific and easier to rank for.
Monitor Your Search Engine Rankings:
It takes a lot of work to get to the first page of Google’s search results, so you’ll need to keep monitoring your progress to see what’s working and what isn’t so you can tweak your strategy accordingly.
2. Craft Informative And Engaging Content
Once you know your target audience and what keywords to reach them with, you need to create content that they’ll want to consume and that enriches their experience with your brand. It’s all well and good managing to get your site on the first page of Google’s search results, but if you’re not offering anything valuable people will click away and those leads will quickly disappear.
The more a visitor likes your content, the more likely they are to engage with your call to action. You can generate leads through many different types of content and you can use your buyer’s persona to make it as targeted as possible. Your content could take the form of an ebook, blog posts, tutorials, videos, or anything else that could add value.
3. Build Authoritative Backlinks
To rank higher with your SEO strategy, you need to demonstrate to Google (and customers) that you are trustworthy. Google places value on pages that have been linked to many times and it works a bit like citations in academia, in that if lots of people are referring to you as a source, then you are considered an authority on that subject. Once Google recognizes you as a credible source in your field, you will rank higher in search results.
Google also values your backlinks based on the website that it links from and you will benefit far more from backlinks from others in your sector, rather than those from non-related sites. Sites that are already authorities in the industry carry a lot of weight with their links, so getting linked from these can majorly boost your SEO.
By posting useful and informative content relating to your field, you’ll be more likely to earn these authoritative links. Not only will Google see you as an authority, but potential customers will see that high-profile sites consider your content trustworthy and this can go a long way towards generating leads.
Blogs And Social Media
Though building an effective lead generation SEO strategy can be challenging and time-consuming, your efforts will be worth it in the end. In the saturated world of online retail, marketing is your greatest strength to leverage your online presence and by using the tips in this post, you will be able to start bringing in new, high-quality leads for your business. To learn more on how to improve blog traffic, check out this resource on effective ways to increase blog conversions and traffic.
Just remember to stay consistent and don’t expect results immediately, as with any relationship, good things come to those who wait.
