All SEO strategies are aimed at one goal: for a brand to be organically found by more people when they are searching for what it has to offer.
Instead of reaching out to potential customers, you lay the path for them to discover you.
But a lot of companies, even doing a good job at getting that visibility on search result pages (SERPs), have trouble converting users into SEO leads.
How can you turn Search Engine Optimization into a converting machine?
In this post, we will show you what you need to do to make this opportunity count.
What are SEO Leads?
SEO is a set of tools, actions, strategies, and content a business puts into action to get top spots on SERPs.
It is a mix of building a structure that is seen as valuable by search engine crawlers and creating the content that uses this structure to convey relevant and engaging information to your audience.
So, SEO leads are the potential buyers that discover and consider your brand by this organic channel of attraction.
They are actively searching for a solution to their problems and, even if not ready for conversion now, are starting to associate alternatives and brands with possible solutions.
The shorter version is to say that SEO leads are the ones that land on your pages after discovering you via search results.
But it is a little more than that.
They are people looking for guidance regarding a determined wish or want, who choose your content as useful for them. A lead more open and engaged than you could get from most other Digital Marketing strategies.
How does SEO Help with Lead Generation?
To understand the importance of SEO for lead generation, we have to take a look at how this process of discovery happens from the lead’s perspective.
That is, what do we usually do when we want to buy something?
The most common habit today is to go straight to Google and search for a product, category, or subject.
Then, we go through some of the results, get better informed about options, specs, particularities, and start considering if/why/when/which to buy.
This thinking process is exactly what SEO tackles.
It predicts how the customer follows that path from discovery to final decision and tries its best to help them along the way — tying authority and usefulness to your brand.
But how does it differ from other lead-generating tactics?
The key is exactly in the word we just used: habit. SEO takes advantage of our natural buying journey.
Instead of reaching out actively, you become available for the audience to find you anytime they need.
It means SEO leads are more prone to conversion when well guided because they already start this path with their guard down.
When looking for useful information about a product or service, they are more eager to share information, engage, interact.
Those are what we call qualified leads, the ones worth investing in.
How do You Get SEO Leads?
An important thing to understand about SEO is that achieving good positions on SERPs doesn’t necessarily mean you will get good leads.
The success of that strategy is a combination of opportunity and meaningfulness. Your content has to find the right person at the right time.
So how do you guarantee that SEO is getting leads for your company? It is a process requiring a lot of planning and groundwork.
Let’s take a look at some imperatives steps needed to attract those potential buyers:
1. Knowing your customer
SEO is all about context.
The content you produce, the keywords you choose, the material you boost and share, all of that needs to be made with your buyer persona in mind.
That means the more you know about them, the easier it is to turn interactions into interest.
Your first step is to go deeper into your ideal buyer’s life — not only age and profession, but how they search and consume information, what they do when they are unsure about buying something, and what drives them to make a decision.
Finding those answers will help you with all the remaining steps listed here, creating content that caters specifically to that person.
2. Laying the path
Now that you know what kind of content you need, it is time to put it into practice.
To get leads from SEO, you have to do the basics and start climbing towards those top spots in search results.
Take a look a look at some of these strategies.
Invest in Content Marketing
To achieve a better ranking, you need to produce more content. There is no way around it.
With SEO leads as a goal, try to find the kind of posts, interactive pieces, and pages that speak directly to your buyer persona’s needs on different steps of their journey.
They will be the foundation of your lead-generating machine.
Invest in on-page SEO
It doesn’t matter if your content is incredible — if it isn’t well-structured, it will probably be snubbed by Google crawlers.
On-page SEO is a set of techniques that make your website and content better suited for ranking on SERPs.
The ideal SEO is a combination of good content and good framework.
Use social media to boost reach
After content is published, it may take time for it to start being recommended as a useful link on Google.
But you can speed up this process and start getting leads right away if you use the power of social media.
Sharing it on your established profiles helps improve visibility and engagement.
Direct traffic and human curation will count for Google to put that link higher on search results.
Build content aimed at a goal
If we are talking about laying a path, it is because the buyer’s journey looks exactly like that.
When building your content, think about what the lead would want to do after interacting with it.
What is the next step, the next doubt, the next consideration. Then use CTAs and other tools to guide them where you want them to go.
3. Breaking barriers
After you put your Content Marketing strategy into action and keep working on it, you will see with time that your brand is gaining relevance and becoming an authority in your area.
That is the spot you want to be in.
But receiving more organic traffic is not enough. To be really successful, a CMO has to create the shortest path possible between interest and conversion.
So start investigating friction points in your journey — where your leads tend to give up the most.
Usually, these will point to problems with user experience, poorly designed pages, and dissonant content.
The more you identify those barriers and solve them, the easier it is to convert from SEO.
4. Being there for them
For sure, most of SEO’s success is determined before the strategy has even started — planning, creating, scheduling.
But even after laying out good content, your persona can still try to reach you at any given point in their journey.
So, be there to grab and retain those leads.
Be active on social media, vary your contact channels, be vigilant as to what they are saying about your brand.
If SEO brings organic leads, being proactive can optimize those numbers. Never just sit and wait.
How to Convert SEO Leads into Clients?
If you have an SEO strategy in action that puts your buyer persona’s needs at the center of the kind of content you produce, you will probably start getting more organic leads with time.
But how do you make them go all the way to conversion?
Let’s finish this article with some tips on how you can go about it:
Qualifying your leads
The main thing you need when dealing with visitors and potential buyers is knowing how to deal with them at each stage of a customer-brand relationship.
There are 3 main lead types:
- Cold leads
Familiar with your brand and your content, but not yet searching for something in particular.
- Warm leads
They know your brand and starting to consider options, although not yet committed to purchasing something.
- Hot leads
Interested in what you have to offer and ready to purchase. Just need a final push for a final decision.
So how you deal with leads depends on how close they are to the conversion.
The best way to approach this is by guiding hot and warm leads and then making it as easy as possible for the hot ones to choose you. The next two tips expand on that.
Automating your contact with them
For cold and warm leads, automation has become a great ally, especially email marketing.
When you are in constant contact with these prospects, you not only keep your brand in their minds but also gather more data about them.
The more you know your lead, the more arguments you have to convince them.
Qualifying cold leads make them warmer. You can use interactions via e-mail and social media to follow up their experiences with content discovered by SEO, bringing them even closer to a purchasing decision.
Improving the finish line
For hot leads, all they need is a little push.
But that is the most challenging part of attracting buyers, as losing them at this point hurts a lot — you’re not only losing a lead but one ready to become a customer.
So our tip at the finish line is to invest the most you can in user experience. Make the process of buying fun and engaging and don’t ask for more than necessary to seal the deal.
In B2B, that usually involves direct contact too, being available for a conversation any time the lead needs.
A satisfying buying process not only helps you convert more leads into clients, but it is also the start of the next step: brand loyalty.
Managing your results
Taking all we have spoken about into consideration will be enough to make your SEO strategy generate leads, and then generate clients.
Now, you just have to keep this approach constant and focused, measuring results and using them to become better and better with time.
At the end of the day, getting more SEO leads is a great goal for CMOs: it means getting more organic traffic with a purpose, laying a path for your audience to discover, consider and choose your brand.
So how about starting your new SEO plan right now? You can start by doing this exclusive SEO Maturity Assessment!
