drive business and boost sales. For instance, using SEO to increase lead generation can be a highly effective way of securing new customers and prospects. This is because many studies assert that SEO provides the highest ROI in terms of lead generation.
Nevertheless, if you are not adept in lead generation and SEO, you may struggle with the process. With that in mind, here is an overview of the SEO best practices for lead generation.
Why SEO Is Important For Lead Generation
Before we explore stats and the best SEO practices for lead generation, let’s discuss why SEO is important for lead generation.
- Highest rate of return: As mentioned, SEO provides the highest rate of return when it comes to lead generation. On Average, SEO represents 12% of a typical marketing budget while generating an impressive 14% of leads.
- Cost-effectiveness: Additionally, this is a highly cost-effective marketing method. Most SEO budgets are between $2-4K, while other marketing methods can cost up to $300K.
- Become an authority in your field: Using SEO for lead generation also makes it possible for you to become an authority in your field. Boosting your SEO ranking will make you a pillar in your chosen sector. People will start to seek information, products, and more, based on your perceived authority on your content.
Some SEO Stats to Consider
As mentioned, a recent study shows that SEO provides the highest ROI in terms of lead generation. However, here are some other interesting stats to consider:
- According to Simpli Learn, SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate: SEO leads have an amazingly high close rate. Given that there are minimal costs associated with SEO advertising, it is highly cost-effective to generate new business.
- Simpli Learn also asserts that 75% of users only view results on the first page: As useful as Google can be, if you fail to secure a high-ranking, you may never reap these benefits. Since most customers only visit pages that appear on the first page of the search engine, securing a high ranking on Google is the key to unlocking lots of high-quality prospects.
- Organic vs. Paid Results: Lastly, According to Search Engine Watch, organic results get 94% of the clicks compared to paid results. This means that raising your Google ranking is much more valuable than paying for ads and other services.
SEO Best Practices for Lead Generation
If you’re interested in using SEO for lead generation, here is a list of methods that will help you do just that:
Proper keyword research and mapping
Finding the right keywords can be highly beneficial when boosting your SEO score. To conduct proper keyword research, you may:
- Make a list of topics
The first step is to make a list of topics related to your business. Therefore, for instance, if you have an athleisure brand, you may make a list of topics that include topics such as high-quality workout clothes, trendy leggings.
- Expand the list with phrases
From there, you may want to expand the list with phrases. Using the same example, you may develop the topics to something like “how to find trendy leggings”.
- Find related search terms
After that, you can focus on finding related terms. To do so, you can simply enter the keywords or phrases and scroll to the bottom of the page; this will show you which words and phrases are most closely related to your chosen words and phrases.
- Analyze keyword strength
Next, you need to analyze the strength of your keywords. To do so, you can use various apps. These tools will tell you the exact words and phrases that are most popular, who your competition is, and more.
- Find your rank
After that, you should find out if the search engine is already filled with major companies that also use your chosen keywords. If so, you may want to analyze SERPs to find long-tail keywords that are less competitive.
- Substantiate search intent
Lastly, you need to take the time to find out why your potential customers are searching for your chosen keywords. The content you create should offer a remedy to the most common queries in relation to your keyword and industry.
Optimized landing pages
If your content is not attracting enough qualified leads, it may be time to conduct an audit. This means you should take the time to analyze all your content to determine whether it needs an SEO boost, paying particular attention to landing pages. So, for instance, you may need to extend the word count, add keywords, make it more informative, etc.
These are the best methods of raising your SEO rankings overall. Either way, if you have completed the other steps and are still struggling with SEO lead generation, it may be time to revise and upgrade your existing content.
Content marketing strategy
Another way to leverage SEO for lead generation is by developing a content marketing strategy. Here are the steps to do so:
- Define your goals.
- Establish your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), which are objectives that you can check off your list once they have been achieved. These can include anything from boosting your search engine ranking to a certain number, boosting traffic and engagement, and more.
- Learn your demographic. This means finding out the average ages, locations, income, education, etc., about your target customers. You can also create buyer personas.
- Find the best content channels and mimic them.
- Decide what types of content you may want to use. For instance, blog posts are one of the most used content types. However, you can also use press releases, videos, long-form articles, eBooks, and more.
- Resource allocation. This involves putting someone in charge of content, figuring out what kinds of tools and resources you need, and developing a unique content workflow.
- Create the content.
- Distribute and market the content.
- Measure your results. Analyzing competitors’ performance
If you have competitors thriving in your sector, learning about them can be one of the best ways to leverage SEO for lead generation. For instance, using websites such as Similar Web allows companies to size up their competitors for free. This can enable you to assess where the majority of their traffic is coming from, which can then be used to boost your own SEO efforts.
Backlink strategy
Next, you may want to develop an effective backlink strategy. You can do so by:
- Write easily shareable content.
- Create replacement content, which means you will search for broken links related to your chosen keywords and create content that fills the void created by the broken link.
- Write guest posts, which means you can write posts for other sites that include backlinks to your own site.
- Check for brand mentions, which means you search for pages that have mentioned your brand or products and ask them to include a link to your website.
- Find an influencer to help promote your brand by posting products and links.
- Exchange links, which means you will post a company’s link on your website, and they post yours in return.
Website’s technical aspects
Another great way to use SEO for lead generation is to focus on technical aspects such as the level of mobile-friendliness, removing duplicate content, creating XML sitemaps, adding structure data markups, and more.
One common way to address technical issues is by boosting your website speed. You can boost your website speed by:
- Fixing broken links.
- Deleting spam comments.
- Switching to a more reliable web host.
- Removing useless scripts and plugins.
- Make your website more responsive.
- Cleaning your database.
Final Thoughts
Overall, using SEO for lead generation is one of the most cost-effective methods of strengthening your sales funnel. Although it can take some time and energy, you are very likely to achieve substantial results in the form of more traffic, higher quality leads, and a boost in revenue overall.
Originally from the public sector, in 2022 I founded Clockwork Copy to bring a breath of fresh air to the content writing industry. We pride ourselves on being a firm that practices consistency, professionalism, and honesty, with the eventual (lofty) goal of being one of the best in the world.