How to Use SEO For Amazing Lead Generation Results

SEO is a great way to generate leads and increase brand awareness. But how do you use SEO to generate leads?

Your Goals of SEO are twowfold- to reach your target market when they are searching for stuff in Google.

And how are you going to get your target market’s attention when they’re searching in Google? Then, how are you going to capture those same people’s email addresses?

But here’s a high-level view of the process…

Research Keywords To Determine WHAT Your Target Market is Searching For
Optimize Your Pages & Blog Content to Rank for SPECIFIC Phrases in Google
Create Lead Magnets and/or Content Upgrades to Turn Your SEO Traffic into Leads

In the below steps, we’ll walk you through the process of making this happen for your own online business.

Step 1. Understand Your Target Market

Before you even think of trying to rank in Google, you need to have a solid understanding of your target market.

Because the search terms you target will be determined by what your ideal customers search for in Google.

But you can only find those search terms if you know the jargon that your target market uses.

If you knew nothing about real estate investing, for instance, and I told you to write content to rank in Google for real estate investors, you’d probably target some pretty basic terms like…

Real property tips — 200 search volume
How to start investing in property — 2,600 search volume
Property investing ideas — 10 search volume

Those are great.

But they are highly competitive search terms.

And if you don’t know the jargon of property investors, then you’ll miss out on all of these other search terms that are less competitive and could provide a ton of free traffic to your website…

How to wholesale property — 4,400 search volume
Wholesaling — 10 search volume
Property skip tracing — 150 search volume

Unless you’re a property investor, you probably don’t know what any of those things are.

But they’re real terms that mean a lot to property investors.

That’s why — as it pertains to SEO — it’s so important to intimately understand your target market.

You can only rank for the right keywords if you know your target market and the jargon they use when searching in Google.

Step 2. Research Keywords & Understand Intent

Once you understand your target market, it’s time to brainstorm keyword ideas.

This part is a bit of guesswork.

What do you think your target market might be searching for in Google?

Make a list. Write down at least 10 – 20 terms.

To determine if those phrases actually have search volume in Google, you’ll need a tool.

Once you’ve got a keyword research tool to use, enter your keyword ideas in and take note of the following information…

Volume — This is the number of searches that the keyword receives every month in Google. More searches mean more potential traffic if you rank on the first page.
Difficulty — This refers to how competitive the keyword is and how difficult it’ll be to rank on the first page. The higher the difficulty, the harder it’ll be to rank.
Relevance — This is your own sense of whether people looking for this specific term fall within your target market or not. Are these people that you want to drive to your website?

When it comes to SEO, the best keywords are the ones that are relevant to your target market, have a good bit of volume, and have very little competition.

That’s why, again, it’s important to dive into the jargon that your target market uses.

Rinse and repeat this keyword research process until you have at least 5-10 keywords that you’d like your website to rank for.

But none of those keywords should be too similar — each should be distinct in the topic it’s addressing.

“How to generate leads” and “guide to generating leads” fall under the same umbrella, for instance, and Google will treat them as the same type of resource… no need to write two articles for those separate terms.

Step 3. Optimize Pages

By now, you should have a list of keywords that you’d like your website to rank for.

Some of those keywords should be targeted on your website’s blog, and other keywords should be targeted on your homepage or landing pages.

Here’s the distinction…

Blog — If the keyword indicates that the searcher is trying to learn how to do something or improve their knowledge around a specific topic — for example, “How to generate leads for my business” — then write a blog post targeting the keyword.
Page — If the keyword indicates that the searcher is looking for products or services like yours — for example, “project management software” — then create a landing page to try and rank for that specific keyword.

By the way, you should only choose ONE keyword to try and rank for per page or per blog post. Choose a “parent keyword” (i.e. a keyword that encompasses many other keywords) and gun for it.

You’ll want to include the exact keyword phrase in your title tag, meta description, and URL for the page…

Because Google knows what the page is about. That’s your goal.

If you want a landing page or homepage to rank for a specific keyword, put that keyword in the title, subtitle, meta description, and URL of the page.

Step 4. Create & Optimize Content

The second part of SEO — in some cases, the bigger part — is writing blog content that ranks in Google, drives traffic, and builds brand awareness.

Here’s the basic process I use- choose a keyword

Choose a keyword that you know quite a bit about. It’s far easier to write a long-form piece of content when you know the topic material really well. Again, only choose one keyword for each blog post that you write.

Look at the Top 10 Results For your article research, you’re going to type your target keyword phrase into Google and look at the top 10 results in detail.

Take note of what each article talks about and add those to your outline.

Your goal is to write something that’s more complete than those articles.

If you want to rank #1 for this phrase, then your content needs to be more thorough and valuable than all of the articles that currently sit on the first page.

Step 5. Use Content Upgrades

You know how to find great keywords to target… and you even know the basics to create content that’ll rank on page 1 of Google for those specific keywords.

But there’s still a gap between traffic and lead-gen.

That is, how do you turn SEO visitors (people who find your content through Google) into leads?

The answer is with content upgrades.

This is where, in the midst of your visitors perusing your content, you offer them something extra special… for free.

To get it, all they have to do is give you their email address.

These are called lead magnets, bribes to subscribe, or content upgrades.

You could offer a checklist…

Use Content Upgrades, Facebook example.
An eBook…
Use Content Upgrades, Facebook offer example.
Or some other downloadable resource.

The key is to offer something that’s…

Free, Awesome, and relevant to the content the person is currently consuming

Step 6. Consider Load Speed

For obvious reasons, Google only wants to rank pages on the first page that load quickly and smoothly.

Multiple SEOers have researched this tendency and found that improving your load speed directly impacts your website’s rankings.

Here are some quick tips for improving your load speed.

Improve Your Website Hosting
Compress Your Images
Reduce Redirects
Reduce CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
Get Rid of Unnecessary Plugins

If that sounds confusing, then either hire a technical SEO person to help or change your hosting service to a company focused on performance.

Step 7. Build Links

Links are one of the most important factors Google uses to determine the authority and trustworthiness of a page.

More links from high-quality sources improve the reputation of your own site (those are called “backlinks”).

But this is also true of internal links on your own website — that is, pages and blog posts on your website linking to and from one another.

However, these links should be relevant — you don’t want to spam them like a Wikipedia page. Try to add at least three relevant internal links to every blog post you write.

And make sure the anchor text you use fits the keyword that you’re trying to rank for.

Conclusion on Thoughts on SEO for Lead Generation

SEO is currently one of the most powerful marketing methods for generating high-quality leads.

That’s what we’ve shown you in this article — from understanding your target market and identifying key search terms to creating SEO content, turning visitors into leads with content upgrades, and adding internal links to your site.

That’s the process.

If you want your business to make you more leads and sales by improving your online business and online digital marketing and sales conversions, please contact us NOW or ring us on now on 01242 521967 to see how we can help you to make money as well!