This is a 2 part series written in conjunction with Aktify. Part 2: How To Revive Dead Leads To Increase Business Growth
Growing one’s business and leads are two of the top goals of every businessperson. Lead growth and business growth go hand-in-hand. You won’t get one without the other.
Many business owners, particularly start-ups think business and lead growth begin with the salespeople making phone calls. This view of building a business is outdated and unsuccessful. While the good old telemarketing phone calls are still around, most communication happens online. Computers and smartphones grant people 24/7 access to information and each other. If your sales team isn’t complimenting their phone calling with online communication via email, social media and SEO, you won’t be growing your business or number of leads well any time soon.
The acronym SEO in the last sentence may have caught your attention. What does search engine optimization have to do with leads and growing one’s business? In short, a whole lot. With the readily accessibility to the Internet, users expect to find information and answers to their questions immediately.
Websites provide the content containing this information users are hurriedly looking for. However, there are millions of websites out there on the Internet and not all of them appear in search results. Only the ones deemed most relevant and credible appear. After all a user is in a hurry to get specific information so they don’t want to waste their time reading irrelevant website content.
This is where SEO, or search engine optimization, comes in.
Behind every search query typed in by a user, a Google SEO or search engine robot indexes and collects data from every website published on the web. Spiders crawl websites looking for keywords that match or are related to the words used in a user’s search query. The search engine robot uses a formula to then rank certain webpages in the search results that are seen by the user.
In search engine marketing, ranking is important. Every internet marketing company strives to get their own website and the websites of their clients to the coveted #1 search result position.
Why is ranking important? Well, going back to the previous points of 24/7 Internet access and people’s expectations for immediate answers and information, the first handful of search results will be read while those on the following pages will likely be ignored. After all, who is going to click through multiple websites when their time is precious and short?
It is only through implementing a good online marketing with SEO optimization of one’s website that there is a greater chance of your website receiving one of these top rankings and thereby increased website visitors and possible leads and customers.
SEO not only brings more traffic to your website, but it also attracts quality leads who are interested in your brand, product or service.
If search engine optimization is a foreign concept for you, it can be overwhelming as to know where to start and what to do. Here are some simple SEO tactics you can start to implement in order to catch the attention of search engine robots and gain a higher, more visible search results ranking:
- Utilize Keywords
An excellent starting point for an SEO strategy is the implementation of keywords. When you set up an account with Google Search Console, you can access a handy keyword tool where you can find which industry or niche specific keywords, keyword phrases and keyword groupings to target and implement throughout the content on your website. When determining which keywords to target, look for ones with lower search volume, but high monthly searches. Those with lower search volumes mean they aren’t as competitive so your company has a better chance of ranking for them. You may be tempted to go after broad, short keywords and phrases, but so will everyone else. When you decide to target long-tailed keywords (keywords or keyword phrases that contain more words that are also more specific), your website’s chances of getting ranked increase and the people who find and visit your site will be more likely to be interested in your product or service.
- Write Good Meta Descriptions
The meta description is the one or two line blurb that appears under the clickable web page heading. It gives a brief description of what that specific page is about. Meta descriptions are to be short and concise. They are also prime places to insert some of your targeted keywords. When writing meta descriptions, think of the web user and the questions he or she may be asking when they are conducting a search. Let your meta description be your answer to one of their questions.
- Make Your Website Mobile Responsive
More people now browse the Internet on their smartphones than on a desktop or laptop computer. You likely have noticed the difference in screen size between a smartphone and a computer. Websites that aren’t mobile responsive will fit the screen size of a desktop or laptop computer, but won’t shrink to fit the small screen of a smartphone. The result is an ugly, hard to navigate website when a user uses his or her smartphone. Search engines, like Google don’t like unhappy Internet users and since mobile responsiveness is a big deal for user experience that it is now a ranking factor in its search ranking algorithm. By having a website that is mobile friendly you not only satisfy search engines and possibly get a boost in search results rankings, but you’ll also give your site visitors a pleasant experience.
- Get Active on Google Business Listings
Google My Business (GMB) is a great way for local businesses to get listed online. With GMB, businesses are listed on Google maps with directions, a summary of the company’s products and services, the company’s address, telephone, hours of operation, pictures, reviews and a link to the company’s website. To take advantage of GMB, one must “claim” their business. The provided business summary section is another prime place for inserting keywords. Here, however, try and implement local keyword phrases like “hair salon in X city.” Reviews are also crucial. Aim to generate as many positive reviews as you can. With people conducting more business transactions online without interacting with the company, reviews are an invaluable way to gauge whether someone should work with a company or make a purchase from a business. Online users making their first purchase from a business will automatically read reviews about the company first.
- Regularly Produce Quality, Optimized Content
While it is great to include keywords in the URLs, titles, meta descriptions and images used on each page of your website, a blog where one regularly publishes fresh, informative content is the sweet spot to implement keywords. Search engines also look for fresh, new content that would provide users with useful information that they are looking for. Blog posts provide users with relevant, informative, interesting content as well as places where you can implement keywords and links. Consistent blogging also shows web users and search engines that you’re a credible and reputable source of information which goes a long way in boosting your website’s search results ranking. Your blogs should be written in a way that is easy to read and understand and be free of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors and contain a call to action or some form of engagement with the reader. When blogging, some things to be aware of include link bait and buying, keyword stuffing and plagiarism. Only insert relevant links from other credible websites into your blog posts, don’t excessively use the same targeted keywords and make sure your blog content is 100% unique and original. Website visitors and search engines will thank you.
- Share Your Wealth of Knowledge Through Guest Posting
With guest posting, you write a blog post which is then published on another website. This is a great way for your blog content to get more exposure and more visits to your website. If your blog post is published on a reputable site within your industry, the credibility and reputation of your own website will get a boost which will catch the attention of search engines who in turn may reward your website with a higher search results ranking. Ideally, guest posting should go two ways where you agree to publish someone else’s blog post on your site in exchange for them posting your blog post on their website. This is the best, and most ethical way to exchange links as well.
- Improve Your Website’s Speed
Web users expect to get what they’re looking for almost immediately. They are not going to sit around and wait a minute or two for a website to load. Instead, they will immediately go to another website. Site speed is also a factor search engine robots use in awarding search results rankings. Some ways to improve the loading speed of your website include allowing caching, compressing the size of images and videos, remove unnecessary plugins and scripts and have a reliable web host.
- Optimize Your Images
While most visitors to your website will have no problem seeing your images, those who are blind as well as search engines will be unable to view them. Search engines are computers and only read text and numbers. Blind visitors can have a description of the image read to them. To make it possible for everyone, including search engines to “see” your website images, an ALT tag is used. These are brief descriptions of a few words telling what the image depicts. It is a good idea to implement keywords in the ALT descriptions. With keyword rich ALT descriptions, your website will appear more relevant to search engines.
Implementing SEO onto your company’s website can greatly grow your business and leads. It can be tedious and take time to see an improvement in search results page listing rank. The algorithm, or formula used by search results robots change frequently so it is important to constantly monitor your website’s SEO tactics and to continually adjust them. While the basic search engine optimization tactics make for a good foundation and are easy to implement, it can be a challenge to keep it up.
SEO isn’t a “one and done” thing. It requires constant maintenance and adjustments over multiple years. For many small and medium sized businesses, this can be more than what they can handle while also trying to manage the day-to-day operations of their businesses. As a result, many choose to hire an experienced, outside digital marketing company to handle and oversee their website’s SEO.
If you’re in this latter group and need help with your website’s SEO, be sure to check us out at SEO.com. We are an SEO company made of experienced internet marketers in the areas of web development, PPC, SEO, social media marketing, remarketing and content marketing.
Contact us today to learn more about our services and how they can help your website’s SEO generate more leads and grow your business. SEO can help grow your business by attracting leads to your website. Once the leads are obtained, the sales team must take them through your sales funnel to convert them into paying customers.
Some leads, however, become stagnant, or dead. These dead leads, however can be revived through products and services that help with sales funnel management like those by Aktify. SEO combined with platforms to revive dead leads like Aktify can help your business grow by leaps and bounds.
Part 2: How To Revive Dead Leads To Increase Business Growth
Hey Boyd, thanks for this. Asides from google’s keyword planner do you know of any other tool for doing in-depth keyword research?
Hey Charms. A couple worth checking out are Longtail Pro. I did use this for quite a while and it always served me well. The other one I’ve been using lately is Keyword Researched which is excellent for pulling data from Google Suggest. Hope this helps!
Hi Charms,
Yes there are many useful tool are available in market for SEO. You should try keywordtool.io and answerthepulblic.com. Both are great tool for Keyword research in SEO industry.
I’m a big fan of KWfinder. You should check them all out. They all are just a little different, and it took me a while to find one (a free one) that I liked. Play around and see what works best for you!
Making your website mobile friendly is a MUST these days with mobile-first indexing rolling out like crazy! I’ve had a few business owners call me because they used to be on the first page and then plummeted… once I looked into it, it was because they never optimized for Google’s indexing update. It’s a lot harder to get to the top once you’ve been knocked down for not following Google’s suggestions!
Yes Caitlin, I completely agree with you. Even mobile optimized website helps Google to index it high.
Great article to grow the business. Well written.
And the last point should be “and never give up” 🙂
This a really great article about SEO. Thanks Boyd!
You summed up everything so concisely in the article, Boyd. Especially the keyword utilization part was spot on. Keyword research is almost becoming a lost art because nobody wants to focus on that and then expect quick results.
Anyway, thanks for posting this. Definitely worth a share.
GMB helps me a lot!
I was using my business name on GMB, but not too good for me 😀
than I edited it with Exact KW in front of it, and whoalaaaa,,,
And now it appears in Google 3 pack
I feel like so many people forget the “content is king” mantra. Continually producing fresh content and updating your site shows search engines that you are an active brand and providing updated, relevant info.
Thanks for sharing good tips for SEO. Every business, big or small, needs some kind of Internet exposure today. Because that’s where the world is headed. And if your business doesn’t catch up, it is bound to stay behind. And SEO can help in the long run.
ROI of SEO is continually on the decline I think it’s pay to play age.
Hey Boyd,
Nice post!! All the factors like creating quality content, stay active on google business listings, utilize keywords then make good meta descriptions, guest posting, image optimization and mobile responsive design of a website are important to consider while doing SEO of the website.
Thank you.
Nice Article Boyed , What do you think about Social Media marketing and which generate more leads for business SEO or Social Media Marketing? Because Most of the business owner insert on SMM instead of SEO.
Hey Boyd Norwood
thanks for sharing great content. Yes, i follow all those terms. some clients need sort time in leads. then i can highest focus on google my business listing optimization. Then fast leads start. Do you have any other best option for fast leads and in sort time happy clients.
Great article Boyd, pretty straightforward to the benefits of SEO which has been proven time and time again. The traffic and leads that you get, especially in the local niche, is so targeted that just being visible on the top half of 1st page is enough to give business owners what they want.
Good article on growing leads using SEO. Covers some of the basics that are very important these days!
Thank you very much for the good article! the information still applies for some basic 101 SEO-ing!
Hi SEO.com,
Nice post!! All the factors like creating quality content, stay active on google business listings, utilize keywords then make good meta descriptions, guest posting, image optimization and mobile responsive design of a website are important to consider while doing SEO of the website.
Thank you.
Great article! Going to apply some of it for my clients. Personally, I think SEO is still a high ROI marketing for B2B businesses.
Keywords are always important for every business to find out what people are actually searching. Cool content you shared. thx
Nice post!! All the factors like creating quality content, stay active on google business listings, utilize keywords then make good meta descriptions, guest posting, image optimization and mobile responsive design of a website are important to consider while doing SEO of the website.
Thank you.
Thanks for sharing your information. This is a post worth sharing no matter how old it gets. Because SEO is here to stay. Thanks again