How SEO Can Help a Company Generate Leads for Their Business
Discover recession-proof survival marketing strategies against pending 2022-2023 economic downturn, or quite possibly a crash. Learn lead generation benefits of SEO friendly website for small businesses to attract more quality customers, and what it means to be search engine “friendly”.
How does a recession affect marketing? According to Markletic.com:
“An impact of a recession on marketing is the decline in consumer confidence. Companies will be doing more due diligence on investments. Especially if you are selling technologies. The decline in consumer confidence can be countered by improving your value-based marketing strategy.“
How does one improve ‘your value-based marketing strategy’? Before answering that consider this question…
What companies tend to do better in a recession and are considered recession proof? Investopedia.com names these five recession-proof business industries…
- Consumer Staple Companies – No matter what happens in the economy, people still need certain household items on a recurring basis. Toothpaste, soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, dish soap, toilet paper, and paper towels. Since these products are always in demand, they’re considered consumer staples.
- Grocery Stores and Discount Retailers – Consumer staples have to be purchased somewhere, and many of those purchases happen at grocery stores or large retail chains with locations around the world.
- Alcoholic Beverage Manufacturing – Beer, wine, and distilled beverages are high-margin products that are in demand. In recent years, a small group of companies has acquired many of the largest beer and spirit brands around the globe.
- Cosmetics – Despite a down economy, people tend to continue spending on cosmetics and beauty products, a phenomenon that has been dubbed the lipstick effect. The theory underlying the lipstick effect is that during economic downturns, consumers trade in big splurges on things like travel for smaller luxuries.
- Death and Funeral Services – As the popular saying goes, the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes.
I don’t see real estate, ecommerce, service based businesses, dental offices, or lawyers on this list. If you’re not one of these businesses, then it’s not a question of IF but WHEN a recession will leave your company vulnerable to losing ground to your closest competitors. You must be prepared to improve ‘your value-based marketing strategy’ starting today. Here’s a clue…
And consider this…
Search engine optimization can be A LOT of work (typically takes 4-6 months to create traction), takes a lot of time and money to consistently churn out good content in different forms (news, blogs, podcast, etc.), and the question of where to distribute content to get the most eyeballs needs to be answered. What if I were to tell you that we get you one whole year of content marketing AND distribution setup WITHOUT lifting a finger? CLICK HERE to see if this could be a fit for your company.
Now, let’s talk about FIVE things you can do, in the meantime, to get ahead of a recession and improve ‘your value-based marketing strategy’.
Researching SEO friendly sites, according to statistics, search engine optimization accounts for almost 53% of the traceable website visitors. That implies that SEO remains the leading online marketing strategy. The other online marketing strategies like pay-per-click advertising and video marketing account for only 47% of the website visitors.
Additionally, the average click-through rate for the first page of the organic search results on desktop and mobile devices is 32% and 26.9%, respectively. This further implies that your web pages must be SEO friendly to rank on Google search results and increase the lead generation to your website.
Funneling prospects to your company website may result in higher conversions and hence more sales revenue. This article discusses the various ways you can use SEO to generate leads for your business.
#1: Design A Company Website
Any online business starts with a good website. The website acts as an online store or a direct platform without which a business cannot operate online. You should create one for your business before you even think of going online. A good website should contain all the information concerning the company like their product offering, areas of operation, working hours, business contacts, etc.
Also, it should have a simple interface to enhance the user experience. This is referred to as UI/UX – User Interface, User Experience. That is not all. The website should have fresh and quality content to update the loyal customers and the prospects of the latest changes in the company’s products and services. You can learn more on how to design an SEO-optimized website here.
#2: Do Keyword Research
Keywords form an essential aspect of SEO. When a searcher enters a keyword on a search engine, the search engine algorithms navigate numerous pages in the lookout for the content that contains keywords that are similar or related to the searcher’s intend. They will then rank the available pages depending on the content quality and their relevance.
If the keywords in your pages are identical or close to the ones entered by the searcher, the chances are high that the crawlers will rank you on the top of SERPs. appearing on
SERPs will generate more leads to the company website.
However, this can only work if your website has fast loading speed, quality backlinks, and content that adds value to the reader.
The best way to achieve keyword optimization for your web pages is to use the keyword research tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, UberSuggest, and Google keyword planner. Though the tools are not equally effective, some keyword tools like Semrush will update you on the keyword’s monthly search volume and whether the keywords’ popularity is growing or diminishing.
#3: Optimize Your Website Speed: Vital SEO Friendly Strategy
Let’s start with the basics. Google and other search engines aim to improve the user experience. If your website has a slow loading speed, it will waste the searchers’ time, and the crawlers won’t rank the website well. The vice versa is true for fast loading pages.
You can improve the speed of your slow loading website by:
- Using a reputable web hosting provider,
- Optimizing your website for mobile (very smart seo friendly tactic),
- Eliminating unnecessary plugins and scripts,
- Deleting spam comments and broken links, and
- Using plugins like WP Fastest Cache to optimize scripts, etc.
You can also use website analytics tools like Pingdom to identify defects in your website and then use the tool’s suggestions to improve your site.
A fast loading page will attract the visitors’ interest to your site, thus increasing the chances of getting return visitors/ clients.
#4: Start SEO Friendly Link Building
Link building is the practice of acquiring links from other sites to yours. The main idea behind link building is to target traffic from other authority sites to your site directly. Having too many inbound links from authority sites promotes the online presence of your company.
In other words, it convinces the search engine crawlers of how credible your website is. And, since the Google algorithms use inbound links as the number one ranking factor, the chances are high that they will position your website among the top search results.
Appearing on the top of SERPs would increase the influx of targeted audience to your website. And as the business enthusiasts say, the target audience is more likely to convert than the general traffic.
There are various white-hat link-building techniques you can use to achieve quality backlinks, including guest posting, doing niche edits, or use this guide to come up with more valuable backlinks for your site.
#5: Support And Manage Customer Reviews
There is power behind the seemingly useless reviews you see in your website’s comment section. Reviews can act as a source of your business information. You can also use them to learn about your customer needs and adjust accordingly. Further, positive reviews show the credibility of your business to the online community.
Another perk about website reviews is that they also signal Google and other search engines that your site is trustworthy and authoritative, hence qualifying for higher ranks. It will be easy to attract leads to the business with a better ranking and then convert them.
That said, you should check the customer comments regularly and respond to them however how bad they are. While responding to the comments, try to maintain high levels of etiquette. Remember, an incredible answer can turn back an angry customer and build your online reputation too.
SEO Friendly Conclusion
Generating leads through SEO has never been easy, given the ever-changing search engine algorithms. However, utilizing the above strategies can help your company’s website rank and direct leads to your business. This will ultimately result in increased sales.
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