If your website isn't generating any business it's easy to point the finger at poor search engine optimisation (SEO), and you might be right, your site's SEO might be awful. If you're not sure what SEO actually is, and you're not alone, try our SEO explained page for a super quick and fun overview.
Stating The Obvious
Appearing in Google® for searches relevant to your business can generate opportunities or leads. That's stating the obvious. In fact, in my view optimising a website to appear in relevant search results is all about lead generation. The pages on your website should be created and fine tuned to attract new leads, plain and simple.
Incidentally, if you're not sure how many leads you need to generate to hit your business goals, try our lead generation calculator. It may well help you develop your online marketing strategy.
Understand User Intent
Getting SEO right starts with understanding user intent. By this I mean, what problem is a user trying to solve by carrying out a search, what answers are they looking for?
For example, if I've decided to buy a particular product, let's say a pair of Bose QuietComfort 25 headphones, I might use a search like "cheap Bose QuietComfort". I do this because I know what I want and I'm simply looking for the best price.
If however, I've never heard of these and my problem is more about which high-end headphones to buy, my search is more likely to be something like, "best noise cancelling headphones". User intent is quite different with these two searches.
Understanding User Intent
To understand user intent you need to understand users, and by this I mean your potential customers. To do this you need to develop buyer personas. Our friends at Hubspot® have written a detailed how to guide for creating buyer personas.
In essence a buyer persona is a narrative that describes someone who might consume your products or services. Creating them helps you develop an understanding of who you are selling to, what their problems are and the type of content they like to consume.
For example, we've got a buyer persona that describes a typical marketing manager at a medium sized business. It details who they are, their day to day challenges, the social networks they are likely to frequent, the type of content they consume (blogs, videos, white papers etc) and so on.
Remember, people doing searches are busy, they are usually trying to trying achieve something and they are looking for information they can trust. You're one of these people, doesn't this describe you?
Back To SEO
OK, we started out by saying SEO is actually about lead generation. Hopefully that's now making a bit more sense. We've also, hopefully, got the message across that to generate leads from Google you need to understand your potential customers and the problems they are likely to be trying to solve.
SEO starts with keyword research, an activity that attempts to understand what your potential customers are searching for. Clearly, to do this well you need to understand who your potential customers are and their challenges. Making sense?
Your SEO Checklist For Generating Leads
- Create buyer personas
- Understand their challenges
- Understand what they search for and where
- Create content that helps them
