Leads are the most crucial components for any business to survive and thrive. Lead generations are meant to draw qualified prospects who are interested to opt for your products or services. And one of the most trusted ways to attract people who are genuinely looking for a business similar to yours and convert them to leads is by using SEO.
You may perform SEO and may drive organic traffic to your website. But the main challenge is to retain that traffic and convert the visitors into your prospects.
Fundamental Principles Of SEO Lead Generation Process
It’s all about content
Selling ideas is simpler than selling stuff. A robust content strategy positions your company as an expert in your industry. The value your content offers will build trust between you and the reader. And it is the key to getting more conversions or leads. You should help your readers with their issues by using SEO content, and thereafter, you can suggest items that logically relate to those issues.
Ascertain your user intent
Search engine algorithms are becoming better at figuring out what people are truly searching for. So to have a better and more successful process for generating leads using SEO, your website content must align with your user's search intent.
Driving traffic is not enough
Focusing on traffic that truly has the ability to convert to leads is essential for effective SEO lead creation. Usually, when businesses first begin conducting keyword research, they just consider the volume and ranking difficulties. But the traffic should be driven from the keywords that have the relevant intention of taking your service or product.
Now that we have discussed the basic fundamentals of creating more leads, let's discuss the top methods to do it using SEO.
10 Steps To Generate Leads From SEO
1. Perform A Website Audit To Track Lead Conversion
A lead conversion audit will help you understand the conversion of your website. You can discover where your visitors are taking action and where they are exiting without performing any actions. This audit will help you analyze the source and behaviour of your website users.
By using Google Analytics, you can easily track the behaviour of users and find pages with the most exit rates. By doing so, you can work on optimizing the pages with lower conversions and make them helpful for users.
Some of the factors that you need to observe using Google Analytics:
- Bounce rate
- Exit rate
- New users
2. Choose Keywords With The Right Intent
Keywords are the base to generate leads from SEO. Did you know? Users visit your website by using keywords on search engines. Targeting the wrong keywords may drive people that have a different query on your website. Performing extensive research using some advanced keyword analysis tools is crucial to find phrases that match your page’s content.
The basic agenda of targeting keywords is to bring the right people to take the right action on your website. If an eCommerce website is looking to find leads using SEO techniques, the first thing to get straight will be choosing transactional or commercial keywords for their pages.
Let's take another example to understand this. A real estate website is selling property in the Vegas Bay Area. If someone is searching for “Los Vegas Bay Area” and the real estate website appears on the search result because of their SEO optimization strategy for that keyword. But it’s less likely to get a lead on that search as the user is only looking for information about the area. Whereas, if the search term is “Property In Vegas Bay Area” Or “Buy House In Vegas”, the chances of the user taking an action on the website and converting into a lead will be much higher.
So, the bottom line is choosing the keywords with the right search intent is very important if you are using SEO for lead generation.
3. Optimize The Funnel For Each Stage
No one is ready to buy on the first visit to your website. You must nurture them and move them to your sales funnel gradually. If a user is searching for a “leaking tap issue” and comes to your blog about “tips to fix a leaking tap”, and unfortunately, you direct him to your “roof fixing service” page, it’s not going to be a solution to his problem.
In such a case, you have to redirect users to the page that is offering the same solution to their query. Make sure that the service you are offering and the page the users are on is similar. This will generate interest in the user's mind and you can take advantage to convert them into leads.
Additionally, your website experience and page layouts also play a huge role in conversions. The user’s journey from landing on your page to your lead or sales page must be well-optimized. To increase your leads from SEO traffic, use the following method to improve your conversion path:
User Experience
The experience you offer on your website is a deciding factor in retaining users and getting leads. Moreover, with so many digital devices developing, the accessibility of a website from multiple devices has increased. You must optimize the website for conversion by making it easy to browse from any device. Few of the factors you can work on to improve the user experience for a better generation of leads:
- Simple and easy-to-understand page design
- Responsive on mobile devices
- Visible and clear CTA
- Easy navigation system
- Fast loading pages
A/B Testing
A/B testing is to use two different versions of landing pages to showcase different users. You can then analyze the performance of both pages to determine which version provider better leads conversion. To enhance lead generation using A/B testing, you can either make multiple or single changes on your two sets of testing pages. Elements like CTA’s, Forms, Page Design, Thank You Pages, etc can also be interchanged to boost lead generation from SEO.
4. Use Lead Magnets
People usually hesitate to provide their personal information like a phone number or email id. To extract such information from your website visitors, you must offer them something that is valuable and worth sharing their contact information with you. You can make use of various lead magnets on your web pages that will attract users.
A lead magnet is to provide any free resource or service to lure website visitors to take action. It can help you to get more email signups or form submissions. This can help you generate more quality leads which are most likely to turn into your customers in the future.
Leads magnets can vary depending upon your business niche. Ebooks, free webinars, a resource template, free trials, coupons or discounts, etc. are different examples of lead magnets that can be used to improve lead generation from SEO marketing.
5. Perform Content Audit & Fix Issues
With the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, today's users want accurate and quality information. Having an outdated and irrelevant piece of content will turn away people from your website. So, it is important to improve the old outdated content of your website or blog to keep users engaged.
A content audit can help you figure out its quality and relevance. Analyzing content thoroughly will provide you with the scope to improve its effectiveness and helpfulness for the readers. And helpful content turns your readers into your leads or customers.
6. Don’t Oversell
Over-promoting your product and services can be costly sometimes. Let's be honest, nobody likes to get too many sales-oriented keywords or pitches while browning a page. Overselling will make users question your intention and are very less likely to trust your website information.
Additionally, it can also hurt your brand reputation online if you try to oversell or pressurise users to opt for your product or services. This can result in users leaving quickly from your website lowering your lead generation and conversion rates. Maintain a proper ratio of promoting your products and answering users' queries. Once you have offered the proper answer to the user, then you can take the opportunity to offer him your service or product using relevant context. By doing so you can build a better relationship with your audience and increase the chances to turn them into leads.
7. Focus On Solving Users' Problems
People come to your website because they are seeking a solution to a problem. Your products, services, and content should be the answer to their problem. Don’t sell them your services, sell them a solution.
To solve users' problems and enhance your SEO lead generation, focus on the following points
- Improve the quality of your product, services, or content to provide users with a solution to their problems.
- Understand users’ pain points and try to solve them.
- Build trust with the visitor by providing them with valuable information.
- Try to clearly communicate with users about the solutions you are providing.
8. Earn Quality Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the main Google ranking factors. According to a study by Ahrefs, the more backlinks a web page possesses, the higher the chances of it ranking on the top. For any website to use SEO for lead generation, it's important for it to appear on Google search results. By earning more quality and relevant backlinks to your website, you can ensure to perform better on organic search.
Start by creating a link-building plan. Explore unique backlink creation techniques and find competitors referring domains to find more backlink opportunities. While linking to any website, keep an eye on its Domain Authority (DA). Backlinks from high DA sites will help improve your own web authority. Acquiring more links from such sites will also increase your website's DA.
When competing to rank for a keyword, having more referring domains and better Domain Authority than others will increase your chances of ranking. As a result, you can have more people visit your website and increase the number of leads.
9. Use Local SEO
As compared to international or national SEO targeting, the conversion percentage on using Local SEO services gets much higher. Local SEO targets the specific geographical area of a business. By optimizing your website for local searches, your business’s visibility will increase in the location of your business. Your business can attain a lot of local potential leads, who are most likely to buy from you.
Even though we are advancing digitally, there still are a lot of people who will trust and engage with a business from their familiar location. Using local SEO puts you ahead of all the international competitors that are in a similar business to yours. Some of the basic local SEO optimizations include:
- Google My Business Profile Optimization
- NAP updates
- Locally-based keyword targeting
- Listing on local directories
10. Improve Website Speed
A slow-loading website will always have lower conversions. People today, don’t wait for too long. According to Neil Patel, a top marketing expert, 40% of people leave the website if it takes more than 3 secs to load. There are multiple other websites that are providing the same services as yours. You can only increase leads using SEO when users stay longer and engage with your page content. So, to make people stay on your website, faster-loading pages should be the number one priority.
Here are a few easy techniques for speeding up websites:
- Use a reputable web host
- Make your site mobile-responsive
- Use TinyPNG for image optimization
- WP Fastest Cache for script optimization
- Remove extra scripts and plugins
- Fix broken links and delete spam comments
- Optimize your database with WP-Optimize
- Facilitate caching with WP Total Cache
To check the speed of your website, use software like GTmetrix, Google Pagespeed Insights, etc. Based on the recommendations provided by these tools about how your site is functioning, you can continue to decrease load times.
Conclusion :
An SEO campaign that doesn’t deliver leads or sales has no value to add to your company. Every marketer's and business owner’s top focus will always be creating a regular stream of quality leads, even while SEO itself is constantly evolving. Focusing on these 10 steps for SEO lead generation discussed above can drive you consistent traffic and leads.
