Lead generation is an important part of the sales process for all companies big and small. In its simplest form, lead generation is when you actively attract people to your business, with the goal of converting them into paying customers.
Over the years, lead generation has evolved drastically, where once upon a time marketers would cold call residencies in the hopes of selling them a product over the phone. Nowadays, lead generation is a multi-layered tool that varies from business to business, but still with the primary goal of converting prospective users into sales.
So how does search engine optimization (SEO) come into it?
Any marketer and their office dog will keep barking about the importance of SEO for your website, social media and overall online presence. Here at Integrate Agency, we understand the importance of SEO for lead generation. We work hard to make our clients reach the first page of Google to pique the curiosity of potential buyers.
In this blog, we’ll explore why SEO is so important for lead generation, as well as share our tips and tricks for SEO success.
What is SEO?
To put it simply, Search Engine Optimization is when you improve your online presence to boost your overall visibility. This visibility will often come in the form of search queries – people looking for specific products or services. Having SEO-rich content is an effective way to appear in front of a wider audience, meeting them as they research the products and services that meet their needs.
For instance, implementing an effective SEO-rich Google Ads strategy improves your chances of appearing on Google’s first results page for certain keywords or queries. This can allow users to know that your product or service will satisfy their specific needs.
As more people are exposed to your online presence during their initial search, they might head to your website or online store to do further research into your business’s benefits. Then, if they decide to buy your product or service, you’ve effectively completed the lead generation cycle.
How Can You Identify and Target the Right Keywords?
Keywords are an essential element of SEO and the strategy surrounding it. Your keywords can be as little as two words or as long as a sentence, giving you a sneak peek into what your audiences are typing to find what they’re looking for.
This then begs the age-old marketing question – how do you find your keywords?
As a starting point, you should come up with a list of topics that are relevant to your business. From there, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and come up with their search queries. As you develop these queries, consider the customer’s intent. Do they want to buy a specific product? Are they researching a short list of services? Once you’ve come up with a list of search queries, analyze their credibility through various SEO tools.
Create SEO-Rich Content
Though SEO-rich content can come in many forms, such as standard web copy and blogs, there are some factors to consider when optimizing content. Relevance plays an important role, as Google will rank content based on the relevance of the search queries. This is where thinking like your customer comes into play. For example, writing blogs that include one or two keywords that benefit the reader is more relevant than a blog that has the same keyword repeated in each paragraph.
Having an authoritative presence is also key to SEO success. You need to have high-quality content that is helpful and informative for the users. You should also be promoting this content across other channels, like social media or via email, to generate more volume.
Undergoing an SEO audit of your website is a great way to identify where you can optimize for better Google results. Those tools that we identified previously might offer a simple way to do this work for you.
Strategic Link Building
When a website or other piece of digital content links to pages on your website, it means that your content is relevant and worth featuring elsewhere. Link building is a fundamental part of any SEO strategy, as Google tends to favor websites that have strong backlinks.
Having said that, Google loves high-quality website content. So, having your website featured on a different online source with a high authority score – the numerical representation of your website’s quality – will boost your rankings on Google considerably.
There are multiple ways to create a healthy backlinks presence. You can ask other websites to feature your links in blog posts, guides, infographics and other online mediums that are suitable. Or you can simply add links to online platforms, such as your social media profiles, profile pages, online forums and other appropriate places.
The Power of Social Media
When it comes to creating and executing any marketing strategy, social media will have a large role to play. If your marketing goal is to drive traffic to your website as a way to generate leads, then social media can be a game-changer.
For starters, you should be optimizing your social media profiles as you optimize your website. Whether that’s weaving keywords into your profile and captions or conveying your brand’s tone and messaging succinctly, profile optimization can help you stand out from competitors.
During this profile optimization, include relevant links to your website. Whether that’s directly in the bio or about section, or on a caption if the platform allows for it, this can direct users to learn more information about your product or service. You should also determine an appropriate posting frequency that complements your product or service, as well as the content you’re publishing.
Measure for the Future
It’s super important that you measure and track the effectiveness of your SEO efforts, forming one of the best ways to set yourself up for the future. Though there are many websites and tools that you can use to measure your traffic, there are a few simple things to keep a lookout for.
Organic traffic is a great metric of note, as it shows the number of people who visit your site by clicking on your webpage when it shows up in a person’s search. The more organic traffic that you have, the more you know that your SEO strategy is working well.
Tracking your click-through rate (CTR) and bounce rate are also great indicators of how well your SEO is going. Your CTR is the percentage of people who click on your webpage via a search engine, while your bounce rate is the percentage of people who click on your website but don’t do anything else. You can also track search engine result page (SERP) visibility. This can measure how many people see your website on a SERP, giving you a holistic view of your overall SEO strategy.
If you find that certain metrics are low in some areas and high in others, then consider shaking up your SEO strategy. A great way to do this is to do some A/B testing to see which keywords work well, and how you can best implement SEO-rich content moving forward.
Improve Your SEO with Integrate Agency
Here at Integrate Agency, we thrive on elevating our clients’ online presence through SEO-rich content. Whether it’s a humble blog post or an entire website, our experienced team of copywriters are experts in curating SEO-friendly content that can garner great results.
If you want to improve your overall search rankings, boost lead generation and increase your sales, then get in touch with Integrate Agency. We’ll work with you to develop a robust SEO strategy that can take your business to new heights.