Whether you run a brick and mortar shop or operate solely online, your website is a vital source for lead generation.
Yet, there are likely hundreds, if not thousands of competitors in your industry, working towards the same goal as you: to generate leads and to eventually turn these leads into loyal customers.
But how do you make sure you’re outsmarting your competition? You need to make sure you are implementing SEO procedures that will help you generate more leads. How do you do this exactly?
Keep reading to find out.
1. Know Your Audience
Regardless of how awesome your product is, you need to understand whatever it is you sell isn’t for everyone.
Therefore, you need to make sure you focus your SEO strategies on your specific audience. In other words, you want to develop a buyer persona. Some characteristics of the buyer persona may include:
- Gender
- Education
- Socioeconomic status
- Age
- Pain points
- Sources of information (i.e. where do they turn to when they want to find an answer to a problem?)
Having this sort of information is vital because it will help you optimize content for this specific audience. For example, let’s say you’re selling a weight loss shake. If your target audience are women in their 30s and 40s, then you could create content about how to stay fit as a busy mom.
2. Identify Keywords
Once you know your target audience, you want to pick keywords that you can use in your content. The keywords need to be terms that your buyer persona would likely type into a search engine.
But, you don’t want to just guess to find these. Instead, you can use Google Search Console to discover what people already search for and Google Analytics to find trending keywords.
Mark Alperin, an expert at turning SEO from lead to conversion, states, “Keywords are a vital element of any SEO campaign. The trick is to find the right keywords.” If you want to convert your leads through SEO, right keyword selection is a must.
3. Guest Blogging
You know your audience is out there, but maybe they don’t know you exist?
If this is the case, then guest blogging is your answer. Guest blogging is when you produce content for another website. Now why would you want to waste your precious words on someone else’s site?
Because when you guest blog, you get to link back to your own site. And, guest blogging means reaching an untapped audience who may fit perfectly into your buyer persona, but for whatever reason, hasn’t yet heard of your product or service.
4. Outreach
When someone links to your site through their own site, it’s like a vote of approval for your site’s content and quality.
You don’t want to flat out ask a bunch of other businesses for links, as this can appear as scammy. However, you should work on slowly building relationships with other closely-related industries. And eventually, you’ll be able to help each other out with links.
Plus, links aren’t only a vote of confidence for your site. When someone finds your link in an article, there’s a good chance they’ll click on it and you’ll potentially find yourself a new customer.
