Let’s face it, you didn’t start using SEO as a marketing channel to simply grow your traffic. As a business owner, lead generation is your main marketing goal. While increasing brand awareness is important, to see a solid ROI in your SEO efforts, you should be focusing on SEO lead generation within your strategy. So, what exactly does a lead-focused SEO strategy look like?
What is an “SEO Lead Generation” Strategy For Local Businesses?
An SEO lead generation strategy will look different for different types of businesses. For a local business, this may look like doing in-depth keyword research into the businesses’ products or services and building out pages dedicated to those longer tail keywords, optimized for the businesses’ specific location.
For example, if you are a health or beauty clinic, and you have only one single page outlining multiple services, you’re missing out on a ton of SEO opportunities. Conducting keyword research and building out multiple pages optimized for specific services is an effective, lead-focused SEO strategy for your local business. When you have multiple services on one page, Google is much less likely to serve your content for individual service keywords.
What is an “SEO Lead Generation” Strategy For Online Businesses?
A lead-focused SEO strategy for an online business will likely look a little different. The strategy may be a mix of pages and blog posts depending on what potential clients are searching for related to the product or service. Lead-focused pages would function similarly to what was described above for local businesses. For example, if you are an online therapist, you could create different pages for your different approaches to therapy based on your keyword research.
Top-of-the-funnel blog posts, like FAQS related to offerings, can also be helpful to increase brand awareness and organic traffic. To encourage lead generation, it’s important to optimize your SEO material for conversions.
When trying to optimize for conversions, t’s important to think about where your users are in their buying journey. Often, when people are researching topics higher in the funnel, they may need a few more touchpoints before converting on your offer. Formatting your FAQ and how-to blog posts to encourage people to sign up for your sales funnel is one way to increase your organic leads.
The Difference Between Pages Vs. Posts in Their SEO Value
As discussed above, there is absolutely SEO value in producing both blog posts and static pages. I typically find, however, that pages tend to be more lead-focused because they can focus on more transactional keywords such as “chiropractic services Toronto” or “wedding photographer near me”. I usually recommend doing a deep dive into competitor websites and what is currently working on the existing website, and exhausting page/transactional focused keywords first before moving onto a blog strategy.
How To Increase Leads from Your Website
If you’re just skimming through, and you’re looking for some quick tips to increase SEO leads from your website, here are my top suggestions:
First and foremost, make sure all your pages are properly optimized for a relevant keyword with sufficient search volume.
Audit your existing content, check out your competitors, and create an actionable content strategy with keyword targets. My advice is to start with the most transactional-focused keywords and then move up the sales funnel to more informational-based blog posts.
Add a clear call-to-action to every post and page, and consider where the user is in their buying journey when they are searching your target keyword.
Ensure it’s clear to the user how they can actually work with you. If a user is landing on your website through SEO, but your copy doesn’t speak to them, they’re much less likely to convert.
Try creating relevant lead magnets related to high-traffic blog pieces. For example, if you are a chiropractor with a well-performing blog post on how to deal with back pain, creating a lead magnet specific to back pain will likely convert better than a general chiropractic or wellness one.
Optimize your forms. Don’t ask a million questions or make it difficult for the user to sign up. A general rule of thumb is, the shorter the form, the more leads you’ll get.
Bonus: make sure your website is mobile-friendly! In 2022, this should almost go without saying, but double-check that your CTA’s, forms, and landing pages are mobile-friendly. With over 50% of users browsing on their phones, this is super important for conversions.
Ready to Increase Your Organic Leads?
If you’re ready to implement a lead-focused SEO strategy, send us a message! We love creating & implementing custom SEO strategies for heart-led businesses. Let’s grow your online empire together.