Many business owners mistakenly think that their website is a sales tool, so they spend a lot of money on a great-looking website and are disappointed by a lack of sales. We have spoken to thousands of businesses over the last decade, and we hear the same frustrations over and over about their company websites.
Do these quotes sound familiar?
- “My website is ranking far below our competitors, yet we are better/older/cheaper than they are.”
- “We used to get some interest from the website, but we haven’t gotten a request in months.”
- “We spent $2,000 on SEO and got nothing…we’ve given up on the web.”
- “People who want our services will just call us. We don’t want business from the web.”
- “We know all of our potential clients. We don’t need web help.”
I’ll bet you have said something similar to these quotes at least once in the past quarter.
If your website were a sales tool, checks with the memo line “from website” would magically arrive in your office every day. Unfortunately, that’s not happening. Unless you operate a fully functional e-commerce web solution, your website won’t generate sales.
Today is the day to start thinking about your website as a lead generation tool and not a nuisance.
How Can SEO Help My Business Grow?
Think of SEO as a kind of funnel that filters customers (who are looking for the services or products you provide) straight to your web pages. This is where those sweet high-quality SEO leads will come from!
By targeting key phrases that a potential customer is searching for, you are able to guarantee that they will find their way to your web page amongst millions of search results, creating organic traffic to your website.
Effective use of SEO will bring you business like you have never seen before. You will have so many leads that you will not know what to do with them. This may sound like an exaggeration, but our team has seen growth happen this quickly with our SEO clients.
What Exactly Is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the process of optimizing your website using a variety of tactics to bring in organic, unpaid traffic. Effective utilization of SEO will increase your odds of ranking highly on any search engine’s results page.
Google is the most widely-used search engine in the world, and people searching on Google are highly likely to click on one of the first three (non-paid) results that appear. This is what makes SEO so important. If done correctly, it can position your web pages in those first three spots for specific search terms.
However, properly optimizing all the different web pages that make up your website can be a daunting and difficult task. Luckily for you, RSM Marketing offers top-notch SEO services! Our clients bring in significantly more leads thanks to our ability to get them a higher search ranking on Google.
Our team of experts will bring your SEO to the next level, getting your business into the top search results on Google. You will immediately notice a significant increase in the number of leads coming through your door. Don’t believe us? We have the data to back it up.
You can definitely contact us today to learn more about how we can help your business grow because your business is our business. However, if you just want to learn a little bit more about how SEO works and how you can benefit from it, then read on.
How to Properly Utilize SEO
Step One: Know Yourself and Your Audience
Make sure that you and your team have a clear understanding of what exactly drives your company. What is your mission? What products and services do you want to sell to consumers? If you don’t even know what your business is all about, then how are your clients supposed to feel?
It is important to know what your potential customers are searching for on Google when they are looking for whatever it is that your business provides.
Step Two: Identify Key Phrases
The primary way you use SEO to get a higher ranking on Google is by targeting specific keywords or phrases that relate to your business. For example, if you own a massage practice in the Kansas City area, then a key phrase you may want to target could be “massage practice in kc” or “massage therapy in kc”.
If someone is looking to get a massage in Kansas City, these are phrases that they are likely to be searching for in Google. You want to make sure that they will find you when they search for these terms.
Step Three: Fill Your Website with Content
In Google’s eyes, more is always better. You are much more likely to rank high on Google if your website has a wealth of meaningful content. Plus, the more content you have, the more likely people are to happen upon your site.
One of the best ways to keep a steady stream of content flowing on your site is to blog consistently. Blogging is a surefire way to bring more traffic to your site. This is where those keywords we talked about earlier come into play.
Let’s give an example. Say you or someone else has written a blog for your oil company called “The Effects of COVID-19 on the Oil Industry” (blogging is an excellent way to keep your website relevant, too). If you want this blog article to get significant traffic, you’re going to have to utilize keywords that relate to the article.
Something along the lines of “covid 19 affect on oil industry”. Make sure the key phrase is included somewhere in the title of your article. If you notice, the key phrase we chose is almost exactly the same as our example article.
You will also want to include the key phrase within the first one hundred words of the blog article, as well as several more times throughout the rest of the article. Remember, this is very important. We are optimizing our article so that Google prioritizes it over similar search results.
This is perhaps the most important step. Keep that content flowing, keep it relevant, and make sure it utilizes keywords that relate to your business.
Step Four: Retaining Visitors and Making Conversions
So, now you have a blog article, and a potential customer has clicked on it. It is important to make sure that they stay on your website. You don’t want them to read the article and then leave.
As you may have noticed, throughout this article we have included several links to other web pages. Guiding a visitor to other areas of your website in an effort to turn them into a client is paramount. If you have written an article about a particular product that you sell, link them over to the product page.
Make it easy for them to give you money. Remember, they likely happened upon your website looking for a particular product or service. Give them a streamlined experience, so that it is easy for them to get what they want. The first rule of business: if their wallet is open, empty it.
By linking around to other pages on your website, it gives people an incentive to explore.
This all comes to a head with your call to action. A Call-to-Action (CTA) button is the most important link on any given web page. This is the link that brings people to the very crux of your business. It should stand out and make people want to click on it.
This is how you will generate leads. Make sure the CTA button brings them straight to the page where the business is done, whether it’s a contact page, a product page, or a place to sign up for an appointment.
SEO is the best way to generate leads in today’s market. With the growing popularity of and reliance on digital marketing, ignoring SEO is a surefire way to have your business end in failure. Businesses that utilize SEO lead generation effectively will thrive in a competitive market, whereas those who do not will be crushed.
Hopefully, this article has given you a clearer understanding of what SEO is and how it can be used to take your business to the next level. If you are interested in learning more about SEO, read this blog post we wrote about optimizing blog posts for search engines!
