Are you looking to get more leads for your business with SEO? Search engine optimization (SEO) lead generation is one of the best and most profitable lead generation strategies.
What is SEO lead generation?
SEO lead generation is when you generate leads on your website from organic search engine traffic. The more organic SEO traffic your website gets, the more leads you can generate.
Why is this important?
Rather than rely on paid ads or buying leads, SEO lead generation allows you to get new leads, appointments and clients in your business each month for free. It’s one of the most profitable digital marketing strategies you can use.
In this article, you’ll learn the best SEO lead generation strategies for your business.
What is the best strategy to get leads with SEO?
Here are some of our top-rated strategies to get free SEO leads:
1. Conduct keyword research
The first step to getting leads with SEO is to start with keyword research. In other words, you want to find out what the best keywords to target are.
The best SEO keywords will be:
- Questions your potential clients are searching for
- Have low competition so that you can rank for them relatively quickly
- Have a high search volume so you can get a good amount of traffic to your website
When you find keywords to target that meet the above criteria, you’ll increase your chances of generating leads with SEO.
I call these kind of articles “Hidden Gem Articles.”
This video explains how you can find these articles with SEO keyword research:
Tip: I’ve found the best keywords to target are questions that your potential clients ask on a sales appointment. These questions usually have low competition and a decent amount of search volume each month.
2. Achieve topical authority
If you want to get leads with SEO, it’s important to establish your website as an authority on the topic you want to rank for.
For example, I’d like my website to rank for keywords related to ‘lead generation’. That’s why I’ve created many articles about generating leads, such as ‘How to get financial advisor leads with SEO‘ and ‘How to generate high-quality leads‘.
The more articles you create about a topic, the more likely your website will rank for keywords related to that topic. And the more articles that rank at the top of Google, the more leads you’ll generate from SEO.
You can also use AI SEO tools to help you learn what topics to write about to achieve topical authority.
One of my favorite SEO keyword research tools is Surfer SEO.
Why?
Surfer SEO allows you to know which keyword topics you need to write about to achieve topical authority.
For example, if you enter a keyword into the “Content Planner” tool, it will tell you which topics to write about:
It can also organize the content based on difficulty, search volume or relevance.
3. Optimize your articles for SEO
To get leads from SEO, it’s important the articles and pages on your website are well-optimized.
To do this, look at which websites are ranking first on Google for that keyword, and then do your best to answer the question better than them.
If that takes too much time, you can automate this step using a tools like Surfer AI.
Surfer AI’s content editor will examine who ranks first on Google for any keyword and tell you what to include in your article to beat them!
It will give you a content score out of 100 as seen here:
The higher your “content score,” the more likely you are to rank for certain relevant keywords.
If you do this, then Google will view your website as the best website that answers the question and rank you higher on Google.
In fact, chances are you’re reading this article right now because of a Google search which is proof in itself that this strategy works.
Tip: Google uses something called “Topical Authority” to rank websites higher. In other words, if you create lots of content on the same topic, Google can eventually view you as an authority on that topic. This means you’re more likely to rank for keywords on that topic in the future. So, it’s a good idea to create well optimized articles around one theme or topic at a time.
4. Optimize your content for lead generation
Optimizing your articles for lead generation is important if you want to get as many leads as possible from your SEO traffic.
One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is spending time and money creating articles for their website and then not optimizing them for lead generation.
It sounds crazy, but I see this all the time.
A business will rank higher on Google for lots of different keywords and none of those articles will generate any leads.
So make sure you don’t make the same mistake!
To optimize your content for leads, you need to have a lead magnet in your article that sends people to the next step in your marketing & sales appointment funnel.
For example, throughout this article (and all over my website), you will see links sending you to my funnel. The funnel gives away some incredibly helpful and valuable free educational content, and in return, I’ll get your name and email address so I can start building up a relationship with you over time with useful follow up emails.
Here’s an example of places you can add links to your sales funnel:
So in your…
- Content marketing
- Blog posts
- Website
- Anywhere else
… Be sure always to send people to your sales funnel!
Optimizing your website for lead generation is one of the best ways to get leads from your website.
5. Track SEO results
Once you start creating content regularly on your website, it’s important to track website traffic and search impressions using Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Both of these tools are free to use.
Google Search Console will tell you how many “impressions” you’re getting from your SEO campaign.
The more impressions your website gets, the more your website rank is increasing.
You can also use tools such as Ahref’s to track SEO results and keyword rankings.
But what if you don’t notice a big difference in your SEO traffic yet?
This is where you may need to start implementing link-building strategies.
6. Build links to your website
The more high-quality websites that link to your website, the higher your website is likely to rank. And the higher your website ranks on search engines, the more leads you’ll be able to get from SEO.
In simple terms, every time another website links to your website, it counts as a “vote” in Google’s eyes. The more links (or votes) you have, the better your website will rank.
However, not all links are equal.
Links from high-quality websites are worth more than links from low-quality websites. In fact, links from low-quality websites can actually do more harm than good to your website.
A low-quality website is usually built solely to spam and manipulate search results.
It provides no actual value (or very little value) to the user.
A high-quality website has usually been established for many years, has lots of content, is already ranking on Google for lots of different keywords, and has traffic.
Your goal with link building should be to get as many high-quality, relevant links to your website as possible.
One of the best ways to do this is by guest blogging & running PR campaigns.
7. Build an SEO-friendly website
It’s important to build an SEO-friendly website that ranks higher to get more leads from it.
To make sure you have an SEO-friendly website, make sure that:
- Your website has no broken links
- You have a good website structure/organization
- You meet the Google core web vital requirements (have a fast website, use an SSL certificate, make sure your site is mobile friendly, etc)
- Optimizing the meta title tag and meta description of all your web pages
You can use AI website builders to build an SEO friendly faster and more easily.
You can check if your website meets the on-site requirements by:
1) The free way: Use Google Search Console. Google will tell you if your website has any major errors (such as broken links or 404 error pages).
2) The paid way: Use a tool such as Ahrefs.
The advantage of using an SEO tool such as Ahrefs is that it will give you an SEO “health score”:
Then this tool will tell you what things you need to do on your website to improve the SEO health score:
Just by fixing some of your on-site website SEO, you can see a boost in your search engine results.
8. Create content on a regular basis
Creating regular content (blogs, articles, videos, etc.) targeting keywords that people type in Google is one of the most powerful ways to generate leads with SEO.
The more content you create, the higher the chances are you’ll get leads from organic SEO traffic.
It’s crazy how many businesses are still not creating content on a regular basis.
This isn’t optional anymore.
If you want your business to get clients online, you need to be creating content.
And that content allows you to rank on search engines for free!
In addition, creating content has countless other benefits, including helping you build trust with your prospects so that they convert into clients and generate leads.
So, if you’re not creating content, start today.
If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, hire a copywriter, use AI writing tools or check out our lead generation services, and we’ll help you do it.
It is a long-term strategy, but one that is essential for success in this day and age.
9. Build a brand
Another way to get more leads with SEO is to build a real brand. The more traffic search engines see from other sources (such as social media, referrals, etc.), the more likely you are to generate leads from SEO.
So be sure to implement other marketing strategies to get leads from your website outside of SEO.
Some ideas include:
- AI lead generation tools
- PPC Ads
- Facebook Ads
- LinkedIn lead generation
You can see more lead generation ideas here.
10. Increase website speed
It’s important to have a fast-loading website if you want to get leads with SEO. This is because having a fast website is part of Google’s “Core Web Vitals” score.
In other words, search engines like Google check to see how fast your website loads to users. The faster your website, the higher you can rank for different keywords.
Having a website with a fast loading speed also provides other benefits. It provides a good user experience and helps increase your conversion rates.
11. Target local SEO keywords
Implementing local SEO strategies can help you attract more leads who live near you or your office.
Do this to get more local SEO leads:
- Set up a Google Business Profile
- Ask clients to leave positive reviews on your Google Business Profile
- Be featured in different local web directories
- Have content on your website that specifically targets local keywords
For example, one of my window cleaning clients gets commercial window cleaning leads each month by following this strategy.
If you search Google for “Window Cleaning London” you can see their Google Business listing is currently ranked on the first page as seen here:
11. Make content easy to read
Another good way to get leads from SEO is to make your content easy to read. The easier your content is to read, the more likely you will get leads from it.
The following tips will help make your content easier to read:
- Break up your content with headings
- Use short and simple paragraphs
- Include bullet points (like this list you’re reading right now!)
- Add images to illustrate what you’re content says
- Include calls-to-actions to your sales funnel
If your content is easy to read, you will provide a good user experience. This will increase the chances that leads go to the next step in your sales process.
12. Update your content regularly
An easy way to get leads from SEO is to update your old content. Over time, your website’s content can become outdated, gradually causing you to lose website rankings and SEO traffic.
An easy way to ensure your website continues to receive SEO traffic is to keep old content fresh and up to date.
Here are some ways you can do this:
- Set a reminder to update your content once a year
- Use SEO tools to track whether content starts to gain or lose rankings
- Check your competitors to see if your content is better than theirs
13. Analyze your SEO competition
Another great way to get leads from SEO is to analyze your website’s competition. By analyzing your competition, you can find:
- Keywords you could potentially rank for
- What keywords are your competitors ranking for
- How much content do you need to rank for certain keywords
To track your SEO competition, I recommend using Ahrefs’ keyword competitive analysis tool. With this tool, you can enter your main search competitors and track their rankings, as seen here:
(Source)
14. Use SEO lead generation tools
It’s a good idea to use SEO tools to save time and get faster results when getting SEO leads.
Here are some of the types of SEO tools you can use:
- Blog writing tools
- Competitor analysis tools
- Keyword research tools
- Rank tracking tools
- Conversion optimization tools
Using SEO and lead generation tools is optional for getting SEO leads. But they can be helpful if you want to automate many of the SEO tasks you would normally do manually.
For example, you can use Surfer’s SEO Audit tool to check how well your content is optimized for search engines compared to your competitors’ content.
15. Run a technical SEO audit
A good way to get quick wins with your SEO lead generation is to conduct a website SEO audit. A website SEO audit will:
- Identify broken pages that need to be fixed
- Find slow-loading pages
- Show you which pages are not indexed by search engines yet
- Let you know if there are any critical errors with your website
- Give you internal link structure suggestions
And more.
Fixing these technical SEO issues on your website can be a great way to give your website rankings a boost in search engines.
16. Show personal experience
It’s a good strategy to show personal experience in your content if you want to get more leads from search engines.
Personal experience in your content shows readers you know what you’re talking about and helps build trust with people.
As a bonus, adding personal experience to your content will help differentiate it as unique in a world full of AI-generated content. According to Google’s recent helpful content updates, this is also a ranking factor.
17. Send search engine traffic to a sales funnel
One of the best ways to get leads from your SEO traffic is to send leads to a sales funnel. For example, if your goal is to get more appointments, then it’s a good idea to send traffic from your content to an appointment funnel.
In our tests, we’ve found that having a sales funnel instead of a contact page can increase the amount of leads you get on your website by 20% or more.
You can send people to your sales funnel with the following strategies:
- Have text call-to-actions throughout your blog
- Use image banners to send people to your sales funnel
- Use an exit-intent pop-up to maximize the amount of leads you generate
The more links you have on your content going to your sales funnel, the more leads you can generate with SEO.
18. Retarget website visitors
A good strategy to get more leads from your SEO traffic is to retarget people who visit your blog.
Most of the SEO traffic you get from a search engine does not convert into leads. So retargeting traffic from search engines can help you generate more leads at a relatively low cost.
Traffic from search engines typically converts well because it is highly targeted traffic from people who already know you exist.
Some advertising platforms where you can retarget people include:
- Facebook ads
- TikTok ads
- Adroll
I recommend using a combination of all three of these ad platforms for the best results.
19. Focus on search intent
If you want to increase the number of leads from your SEO lead generation strategy, always consider a user’s search intent.
Search intent is when you answer the question or search query someone was using a search engine for.
For example, if someone searches for ‘how to get high quality leads‘ chances are they want to learn various strategies to improve their lead generation results. So a listicle article will likely work best.
You can analyze the search engine results pages to determine a search query’s intent and see what kind of content is already ranking in the first positions.
Once you have identified the articles ranking on the first page of the search engines, you can ensure your article is as good as or better than what’s already ranking first.
Conclusion
With the right strategies, getting SEO leads from your website is possible. Results won’t happen overnight, but if you implement the tips in this article, you’ll gradually start to see better results each month.
Want to learn more about SEO lead generation?
I provide done-for-you SEO lead generation services, as well as one-to-one lead generation training if you prefer to do everything yourself with an expert’s help.
Ashley Davis (or ‘Ash’ for short) is the CEO & Founder of Skyline Social. For over 15 years, Ash has been helping business owners with lead generation. Ash specializes in helping businesses get high-quality leads, appointments and clients each month with automated digital marketing strategies. Learn more about the author here.
