What is search engine optimization (SEO)? It’s a strategy to use the terms your ideal potential customers are searching for online. SEO is the strategic placement of keywords in an article or website copy to ensure customers can easily find your content online.
A person who reads your company blog is 74% more likely to become a paying customer versus someone who hasn’t read your company blog.
Your website needs traffic to increase your company’s sales, because your ideal clients are increasingly making buying decisions online. So to stay competitive and keep your brand top of mind, your company needs SEO.
What Is Search Engine Optimization Exactly?
Search engine optimization uses keywords, which are placed in your content’s body, headings, meta data, and sub-headings. SEO keywords are carefully chosen to target your ideal customers, bringing them to your site, because they’re the search terms your clients are using.
For example, if you’re running a café that specializes in organic coffee, your ideal clients may be searching for keywords like organic coffee, natural coffee, organic coffee beans, local coffee roaster, what’s the benefit of organic coffee, and so on.
As you post more articles with keywords targeting organic coffee enthusiasts, more of your ideal potential clients will visit your site, because your company’s website will rank higher on Google for these topics. But Google is ever-evolving, and the search algorithms are becoming much more advanced.
Topic clusters are now a necessary part of SEO, which gets you ranking higher on Google. The structure of topic clusters easily shows Google crawlers how much of an expert you on a particular core topic. The clusters are arranged around a pillar article, which is a detailed blog written on the core topic.
Various blogs on related subtopics are then written, all linking back to the pillar article. The interlinks not only make it easier for Google to navigate your website, but it also makes it easier for site visitors to click through and learn more about your extensive knowledge on certain topics.
For example, if your core topic was local coffee roaster, then related subtopics could include:
Toronto coffee roaster
- Distillery District coffee
- Downtown Toronto organic coffee
- Organic coffee in the GTA
- Benefits of shopping local
How Does SEO Content Increase Your Leads?
Now that we’ve answered the question: what is search engine optimization, we can look at how that results in more leads. SEO helps you attract more ideal potential clients to your company’s website through the quality and quantity of content. As a result, your sales team will have lots more leads to work with, which are generated continuously by the content on your website.
In fact, those ideal clients are high-quality leads because the words and phrases they’re searching for online directed them to your company’s site. They are already interested!
The better your SEO strategy and the more visible your company is on the Internet, the more potential clients will come to your site, so consider expanding your content to social media sites as well.
SEO eliminates the need for cold calls as well because your ideal customers are coming to you by their own online search.
When potential clients visit your site, your sales team will be able to collect data on what they are looking for, what they want to know more about, and who they are using inbound marketing software. The metrics will help your sales team follow up with leads and nurture them through the buyer’s journey.
SEO strategies start your sales team off with high-quality leads from the get-go, meaning converting these leads into sales is even easier.
Learn More Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website
References:
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/why-search-engine-marketing-is-necessary
