How to Generate Qualified SEO Leads to Your Business

A concern that keeps on bothering most internet marketing gurus in the SEO industry is getting more SEO leads.

While we work hard to get traffic, we realize that high traffic doesn’t always move the needle if it fails to generate a return on investment.

Leads are the lifeblood of every business.

Perhaps you already realize by now that your contracts with clients don’t last forever. Whether a client has achieved their SEO goals or not, you need to keep bringing in new prospects.

That is how your agency survives.

If you’ve been struggling with getting more leads to your SEO agency for quite some time now, my guide will put an end to your dilemma. The truth is, you don’t always need paid strategies and complicated methods to acquire potential customers.

Heed my pieces of advice below.

1. Define a strong value proposition.

SEO businesses are multiplying everywhere like weeds. You’re not competing against one, but millions out there. Unless you’re aiming for audiences in your locality, you need to work hard to stand out.

Have you thought about how you are different or unique from the rest? Surely, you wouldn’t want someone to make the impression that your company is just like any other SEO company.

Consider asking yourself these questions to separate yourself from competitors:

Question 1: Who is my target audience?

You need to remember that not everybody who comes across your business is going to be your client. Trying to appeal to everyone to get more SEO leads is a big mistake.

Get your audience’s demographic and psychographic information through interviews, surveys, and checking your site analytics.

Question 2: What is my one strength that I can use as an advantage?

A good example of an SEO consultant with a strong value proposition is Marie Haynes. If you visit her website, you will notice that her services revolve around penalty diagnosis and removal.

Instead of marketing herself as an all-around expert, she focuses on one thing she’s great at.

Question 3: Why would anyone care?

Not only should you feature your main services, but you also need to explain their value. In what way will your SEO leads benefit from them?

Know what your rivals offer and their key benefits as well.

2. Create content like a pro.

Publish content that garners engagement and ranks well, and your audience will be convinced that you can do the same for them.

First of all, know what you want to accomplish through your content. Consider its intent. Is it to raise brand awareness? To educate readers on the best marketing tips or trends?

Apply these effective strategies to create winning content:

Tip 1: Research your primary keyword and check the topics that show up on Google.

Writing content that caters to your readers’ interests starts with keyword research. Here’s a guide to help you choose keywords to target.

As you come up with a keyword, type it into Google’s search bar to check the kind of blog posts that show up. You need to look for information that will match the content you create. This will help you find a unique angle or oppose an idea.

Tip 2: Aim for long-form content – over 1,500 words.

Long form content is content that goes beyond 1,500 words. How does this get you more SEO leads?

With longer blog posts, you’re able to cover topics in greater detail. You can incorporate stories that hook your audience, not just plain facts that might bore them along the way.

This is also your chance to provide more value to your readers. Share lots of actionable strategies so your posts become more shareable and linkable. Incorporate LSI keywords.

Tip 3: Align your content with your business.

Great content doesn’t generate SEO leads if it isn’t connected to your business. Of course, you would like people to know how your services help them.

You can demonstrate how your services work through case studies and how-to posts.

For example, if you’re focused on penalty diagnosis and removal like Marie Haynes, you could create a post on how to remove bad inbound links.

3. Participate in Quora discussions.

Quora is a free questions and answers website.

You can demonstrate your knowledge using Quora by finding questions about SEO that you can answer. Make sure that these questions are related to your interests, so you can attract the right people.

For you to make the most out of Quora, complete your profile. Below is the screenshot of Neil Patel’s profile on Quora:

As soon as you sign up, you’ll be able to edit your profile. Include all the details about yourself and your SEO agency. Place your title, description, and a link to your website.

Next, find the right questions to answer. Type into Quora’s search bar relevant topics. Quora will show you a list of discussions you can join.

The example above shows that I searched for threads on the topic “seo tools.” When I join these discussions, I should provide a straightforward answer and add links and images to support my ideas.

4. Optimize a page for a keyword.

Do you want to increase your search rankings? You must choose a keyword that drives targeted traffic and optimizes a page for that keyword.

Let’s say you’re from California and aiming to get SEO leads there. Your main keyword is “california seo agency.” Include this keyword in your page title, meta description, URL, image file name, and H1 tag.

Also, search for variations of your main keyword that you can sprinkle throughout your page. This lets you avoid keyword stuffing. At the same time, Google will understand what your content is all about.

Scroll to the bottom of Google’s search results after typing your main keyword. Get related keywords from “Searches related to.”

As usual, go for a word count above 1,500 to entice potential SEO clients to stay longer and read what you have to offer.

5. Give away an audit tool for free.

There’s nothing that delights your target audience more than free stuff. Since you’re attracting leads in the SEO industry, you’ll want to give something that’s extremely useful.

A free SEO website audit tool can be the perfect solution. Why? Potential clients are interested to discover problems on their website that might affect their rankings.

Areas that your tool may cover include site speed, mobile optimization, keywords, and links.

Once they diagnose on-site issues through your tool, they may contact you to fix those website SEO problems.

Require your visitors to enter their email address before they can use your tool. Having their contact information allows you to continually communicate the value of your free audit tool and how your services can help.

This will eventually pave the way for a sale.

6. Leverage the power of guest posting.

Guest posting is a fantastic tactic for lead generation. Let’s go beyond link building and instead use guest blogging to build authority and reach your target SEO clients.

As an SEO consultant, you know that writing engaging content and getting it published on other websites is time-consuming. With that, you need to be sure that every piece of content you write achieves your primary goal of lead generation.

So, what should be your guest posting strategy?

Look for a website that can get you qualified traffic.

Assuming that you already chose a topic, your next move would be to find potential targets where you can guest post on. Brian Dean of Backlinko searches for the right sites by using the search query keyword “write for us.”

Since your targets are blogs with readers who are likely to become SEO leads, use the keyword “SEO”:

Qualify the sites by looking at their metrics.

Use Ahrefs and SEMrush to check a guest posting site’s backlink profile and know if a site can pass to your authority and traffic.

Then you can pitch the site owner about your topic. Be sure to state how you can provide value through your guest post. Include samples of your published articles on SEO.

Link to your landing page or lead magnet.

Do you have a landing page or downloadable content (like an ebook or checklist) that requires people to enter their email address?

Include a link to these resources within the body of your guest post. Another way would be to introduce your lead magnet or landing page as your call-to-action.

Put in mind that your lead magnet should be related to your content to drive readers to take action.

7. Add live chat to your website.

People who visit websites have specific questions in mind that can be answered in real time through live chat. Instead of allowing visitors to walk away, grab the chance to convert them into SEO leads.

Here are reasons why adding live chat to your SEO agency website works:

• Taps into a potential client’s pain points – Live chat addresses your visitor’s frustration or need without them having to navigate your site further.
• Captures email addresses – In times when you’re not available to answer people’s queries, your live chat turns into a lead capture form. People can leave their messages for you to answer later on.
• Boosts your competitive advantage – A lot of SEO agencies don’t have a live chat. While people are still on your website, real-time support entices people to choose your SEO services over a competitor’s.

Use live chat to provide a personal touch to your visitor’s experience. Don’t sound robotic and be as helpful as possible.

Since you won’t always be around to answer questions, hire people with marketing and sales experience.

8. Practice comment marketing.

Not many SEOs leverage the power of comments to get more attention to their services. Comment marketing is a great SEO strategy, though not everyone uses it because of its past reputation for being a spammy link building scheme.

Similar to guest posting, you need first to find the right websites to comment on.

You’ll want to write comments on relevant sites that already have a ton of comments. Sites with engagement ensure you that your comments will be read.

I suggest you run a quick Google search using keywords that bring up blog posts related to your SEO services. Go for the ones that belong to Google’s top 10 search results.

Don’t comment unless you read the post and comments that previous readers left. You need to stay on-topic and avoid repeating what the author and other commenters already said.

Most comments you find these days are repetitive. Better yet, add some more information that potential SEO leads might be interested in. If a someone asks a question, be the one to answer it.

Comment not only once on a site, but several times a month to maximize your opportunity to generate SEO leads.

But what about buying SEO leads?

Perhaps you’re wondering whether it’s okay to purchase leads instead of generating them yourself. To be honest, there are advantages and drawbacks to buying leads which you really need to consider.

Why you should buy:

Face it. If you’re a new SEO agency, it will take time and effort to attract potential clients. When you buy leads, you’re basically saving resources in the collection process. Instead, you spend more time on selling.

Reasons not to buy:

There are SEOs who think that this is a bad idea because many people don’t like getting emails from companies they haven’t heard of. You’re not really sure whether the leads you bought are interested in your offers.

Every sale starts with relationship building and buying leads bypasses that step. Lastly, it’s possible that companies that sold leads to you also sold the same leads to other SEO agencies.

My personal opinion

I think that generating qualified SEO leads yourself is the way to go. However, if you choose to buy leads, make sure that they’re exclusive. Meaning, the company that sells the leads must only sell them to you.

Learn how the company collected the leads and whether these leads are relevant to your business, high in quality, and new.

Conclusion

Your SEO agency will continue to flourish if more leads come in. Aside from maintaining the clients you already have, constantly work towards getting new ones.

No one lead generation strategy fits your business. This is why you need to apply the methods to this post. I hope you learned from them and will start applying them today to ensure growth.