It is important for you to understand why SEO is important for generating leads before delving into how.

• An average amount of $5,000 is being spent by majority of businesses on SEO alone.
• 4 in 5 clients make use of search engines to find local information alone.
• The number of times mobile searches for “where to find, where to buy and where to get” has increased in the past year.
• 76% of people search on their smartphones for businesses nearby and visit it within a day. 28% of theses searches ends up with a purchase.
• People who take relevant actions on their smart phones before making a purchase is as high as 79%.
• The field of SEO is rapidly increasing from desktop search to mobile search.
• Google owns 81.12% of the total search engine market shares.
• Over 40% of revenue is gotten through organic traffic.

Also, its been discovered by PageFair that the ad blocker tool has risen by 30% in the last year alone and rising. With millions of devices using the ad blocker tool, it is safe to say that relying on paid traffic alone is no longer advisable. It is important to optimize the use of search engines for lead generation.

GETTING TO KNOW YOUR SEARCH ENGINES

There are three popular major search engines to review: Google, Bing and Yahoo. Google clearly takes the lead on the highest search engine usage but it is important to note that different users have their preference when using search engines. For the most part, the techniques applied to Google can also be applicable with other search engines. Let dive straight into the search engines shall we;

GOOGLE

Google is the most popular and highly used search engine being used today. Hence, optimizing the use of Google is advisable for generating leads. The challenging thing about using Google is that most of your competitors are also aware of Googles reputation, so competition for ranking spot is fierce.

Google uses various algorithms to evaluate websites and rank them and this algorithm changes a lot. This is why it is good to stay updated on the changing trends of the algorithm and how you can optimize it.

Google has a variety of tools to help businesses to analyse and optimize their sites. Some of these tools are Google Zeitgeist, Google Adwords, Google Lens and Google Trends. Also, Google has options for web search, image search, news, videos, blogs, discussions and so on.  

YAHOO

Provided that Yahoo’s search use has dropped to 11.4%, it is not a bad idea to generate leads from here. You can leverage the fact that the competition on Yahoo is less than that of any other search engine. Yahoo also provides users with free emails, stock information, fantasy sports league and so on to keep their users engaged.

Yahoo’s search interface isn’t as sophisticated as Google. It bases its SEO ranking factors on the use of multi-channels like social media and various devices. The Yahoo layout is very different from Google’s in arrangement. Ads here are shown on the top right or top left of the page and keywords are shown on the right side of the page.

BING

Owned by Microsoft is a fairly new search engine compared to other search engines. Just like Yahoo, it is not as sophisticated as Google search engine and it has a lot to work up to. Perhaps its not compared to Google but, it boosts a search traffic of up to 18% and this is impressive compared to Yahoo.

It is not a bad idea to focus your lead generation on this search engine. Just like Yahoo, the number of competitors here are minimal compared to Google.

Bing’s search interface has the search results on the left with the keywords on the right. Ads are displayed below the keywords. You can decide which search engine to focus your lead generation on. You can also decide to use all three to optimize your brand reach and increase organic traffic.

Read Also: How To Write “About Us” Page That Converts For Your Website

HOW TO OPTIMIZE SEARCH ENGINES TO GENERATE LEADS

For a small business to rank very high on a search engine, it will need three very important things:

1. A website that is search engine friendly,
2. Engaging contents, and
3. Backlinks to the website.

Having had all these, a business can go further by employing these tactics below that are effective and sure to boost leads.

Have An SEO Plan

Before you delve into implementing SEO into your marketing campaigns, it is important to lay out a plan on how to go about it. You will need to:

Familiarize Yourself With Your Clients

Just like all marketing, recognizing and knowing who you want to attract is the first step. This is better as it gives a clear view of where to focus your efforts. You can find your target clients by categorizing them into groups. Groups like:

• Age bracket and group
• Challenges
• Demographs (location)
• Preferred source of information
• Interests and behaviours.

When you have completed this information, it will be easier for you to optimize your contents to attract your target clients.

Also Read: Simple Guide To Google Ads

Have a Clear Picture of the Kind of Leads You Are Aiming For

Having a clear picture of what counts as a lead generation in your marketing strategies is also important. It helps you to keep track of your SEO lead generation success. For example, your lead generation could be:

• A free trial sign up
• A sign-up form to covert a visitor to an email subscriber
• Download an e-book for free
• Click allow to get notifications for free.

Recognize the Target Keywords Used

You can do a research on keywords you need to include in your contents to optimize your SEO. You should also try to understand what users want when they search for a particular item. You can research keywords through:

• Google Search Console; you can see what people are already searching for on google
• Using Google trends to evaluate how much people are searching for a particular item
• Using Google Analytics to identify the keywords driving lead traffic to your brand
• Evaluate how each content ranks and improving your campaigns around that. Check out this post on how to rank a webpage here

Evaluate and Observe Rankings

You will need to get an idea of where your website ranks on a search engine. You can use this to measure your lead traffic generation strategies.

You can do this by placing a search for your target keywords on a search engine like Google for example. Do this with your browser in incognito or private mode because google gives you results based on your account.

If you do not do this, Google would not give you your website as a search result. Having done this, you should be able to see where your website shows up in the search results. You get to see if your website is ranking high or not.

The results from the search on the first page is usually the one you want to be among as most users usually engage with results there rather than going further to the next page.  

Research, Edit and Optimize New and Existing Contents for SEO Purposes

Conducting research on your content is key in helping you to get a clear idea of the kind of how your content is performing. Since Google’s algorithm is always changing, keeping up to date with your content relevance is important.

You can improve on your contents by:

Checking For Search Engine Errors

The first thing to do when auditing your contents is to check for SEO errors. Analyse your page links, titles highlight and description for any technical errors.

You should also check if your site is functioning smoothly on mobile devices. You can conduct these analyses using Neil Patel’s SEO Analyzer. Check your web pages loading speed with the Page speed insights tool by Google.

The next step is to find out your top-ranking landing pages. You can get an idea of creating a landing page here. This will give you an idea of what’s working and also give you a high SEO rank for those pages. You can find your top landing pages by using Google Analytics.

To do this, just go to Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages.

Thoroughly checking for SEO errors will enable you to recognize what contents work and what doesn’t for your subsequent page contents and promotions.

Optimize Your Contents

Your contents should contain targeted keywords and phrases that would increase your organic leads. Use titles and meta descriptions that people would see when they decide to click from the search engines.

The title length displayed can vary depending on the mobile devices used by potential clients, so it is best to include your keyword at the start of your title.

Your meta description should be between 120-160 words and very engaging. WordPress has a Yoast SEO tool that helps you to take care of any SEO problems contained in your content.

Read Also: 8 Competitor Market Research List And Tools

Like I have mentioned before, it is important to include your target keywords in your contents. When creating your contents, input the target keywords where it makes sense. You can find keywords by searching for relevant topics on search engines and go down to the bottom of the search results to see related searches/keywords.

You can also make use of tools such as Keywords everywhere to generate more keywords.

Employ The Use Of Links

Links also called Backlinks is an important aspect of SEOs. Using links that leads to other contents on your websites can help to gain more mentions. According to lead generation institute, “The more relevant and detailed the information is, the more you will get backlinked”.

You can make use of some marketing techniques to get more backlinks. Techniques like:

• Speaking at events
• Hosting webinars
• Engaging with high ranking websites
• Being interviewed by publications.

All these can help to attract attention to your pages and increase your backlinks thereby also increasing your page ranking. While this is not comprehensive, they are of importance when it comes to effectiveness.

Turn Organic Traffic Into Leads

After getting traffic to your websites what next?

You have to see how you can turn this traffic into leads. Here are some ways that you can accomplish this;

• Create a Lead Magnet

You can do this by offering visitors something relevance and attractive in exchange for their information such as an email address. You can decide what you want your lead magnet to be. It can be a free e-book download, a discount coupon, a checklist or even a free trial to premium products and service.

• Make use of Call-to-Action

Call-to-action (CTA) can be added to any of your contents. You are doing this to get the contact information of visitors so it is important that you offer CTAs that gives real value. You can use CTAs such as “Contact us” or “Visit our Website” for engagements.

• Provide High Quality Content

Like I mentioned before, you have to create contents that are informative, relevant and interesting in order to make your customers interested enough to actually engage with your site.

SEO Problems Affecting Your Lead Generation

Having a strong SEO plan is a step but executing it is often times challenging if you are not doing it right. From what we have established, SEO is all about making your business seen by potential clients. Therefore, problems with your SEO will affect your lead generation negatively.

Below are some common SEO problems that can affect your lead generation.

• Lack of Structured Content

Your content presentation on your webpage matters. This is especially important as search engines need to be able to recognize and read your site to be able to categorize it. You can check to see if your data is structured correctly by using Google’s structure data testing tool. To know how to use Google analytics tools to fix SEO problems, you can check here.

• Lack of User Intent Consideration

This happens when your contents do not provide relevant information or give value to your users. This is usually caused by poor research on audience intent and pages rank.

This mistake can also affect your current keywords ranking as these keywords might be good but are not relevant to your potential audience. For example, creating contents on “how to” instead of “where to get” is a misplacement of needs and vice versa.

To avoid this problem, proper research has to be conducted to know what keywords target clients are using and recognizing the intent of the clients.

• Using Unattractive Meta Data

Your meta data is the short information a search engine displays under your website about the content. This sometimes determines if a potential client would visit your website to view your content or not.

To have a great meta data, you should ensure that your title is in the page’s focus keyword. Normally, this should be at the beginning of the title. Your company or site name can be included for branding purposes. Your meta data should also be short and precise but interesting enough to pique curiosity.

• Slow Page Load Time

A slow page load time is never attractive. Most times visitors do not wait long enough for slow website to actually view its contents. Search engines also do not rank slow loading sites as this provides a bad user experience.

According to Kissmetrics data by Neil Patel, 40% of users abandon a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. For this reason, Google has joined in on the Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP). You can check your page speed using Google tools:

A common cause of slow loading page is image size. Using the wrong image dimensions can cause a page to load slower than normal. Try having multiple dimensions of the same image for it to be optimized across multiple devices.Finally, small businesses can optimize the use of search engines to generate leads by adopting the strategies laid out above and having in mind that SEO optimization is not only about driving traffic to your website, but improving the conversation rate from visitors to engaging clients.