It’s simple: If you have a website with content, it can be optimized for search engines. So, now that you’re a Social Media expert, lets delve deeper into how to market your content and optimize it for maximum “findability” on the web. Search engines have the job of constantly improving their algorithms to better serve their users with the most relevant and quality information possible. Businesses have the job of making their content interesting, clear and constructed in such a way as to prove it’s authority over other pieces of information. It’s a competition. No longer are you competing for the most eye catching magazine ad, amusing commercial or most valuable direct marketing list—you are competing for top search engine placement. Sure, I think it’s still the sum of all these parts (I love a well designed ad or memorable commercial!) but most outbound efforts are based only on the power of your brand’s identity and not on the possibility of leads finding you before they even know they need you! This is called organic search and if done correctly it can be an extremely powerful lead generation tool with minimal financial investment.

4 Steps: Optimize Your Site for Lead Generation

1. INBOUND LINKS Search engines use two primary factors in determining ranking for a given web page: relevance and authority. Relevance pertains to how closely the search terms match the keywords on your page. Authority is the measure of how important that page is in the eyes of the search engine—this authority, is a combination of your page’s ranking and the authority ranking of the pages that link to it. Devote some time to building inbound links to your site by setting up a company blog, and consider guest-blogging on other high-authority blogs to gain greater exposure and generate inbound links. This is called “off-page SEO,” and if done well is essentially free advertising for your business.
2. KEYWORDS In addition to creating great content, you should also be sure to construct this content to include the important keywords for you business and topic, this is called “on-page SEO.” Pick a few primary keywords and be sure to include them in the page URL, main title, sub-headline and the body. Don’t overdo it however, and remember the human element—if you overload your content with too many keywords you run the risk of sounding robotic and readers may mistrust you. Another good tactic to include in your efforts, is to link to other high-authority sites within your content and make the highlighted link text be some of your main keywords. The highlighted text with an embedded link is called anchor text, and search engines give more weight to this text compared to other body text. Note my own use of this here.
3. CONTENT The easiest way to get on- and off-page SEO is to create original content that educates and offers increased value to your visitors. Use a strong value proposition and avoid tired corporate speak. Most visitors aren’t ready to buy on their first visit, so it’s important to have a plan to nurture leads at all phases of engagement. Offer them pieces (newsletter, white paper, e-book, video, ect.) that will help educate them on your industry in general—you’ll not only make them a more informed customer, you’ll also set yourself up as a quality resource for them to visit again in the future.
4. CONVERSION Use clear calls-to-action, and utilize landing pages where you can capture some key information using a simple form so that you can follow up in the future. Be sure to make your call-to-action clear and “above the fold“. Landing pages should be very simple, ask only for the least amount of information necessary—such as, name and email—and remove the site’s main navigation to ensure that your visitor stays focused on the task at hand (giving you their contact info!) and is not distracted by going somewhere else on your site.