Generate More Leads Through the Sales Funnel Using SEO

Generate more leads through the sales funnel using SEO (search engine optimization)! SEO is key to gain access to the customers looking to buy your product or service. It’s a way to build organic visitors over time and is considered the most trusted source of traffic. Users trust search engines and achieving a top spot in search engine rankings signals to searchers that your site is a credible source. The higher you rank in results pages, the more clicks and traffic your site will generate. Don’t underestimate the power of a search engine and the results it can drive to help fill the sales funnel.

These SEO stats showcase the strength behind using the right words to engage with your audience:

1. 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
2. 3% of all website traffic comes from organic search.
3. 96% of global traffic comes from Google search, Google Images, and Google Maps.
4. SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media.
5. 7% of search queries contain four words or more.

Finding the right words and phrases consumers are searching for, the type of content they are looking to read and knowing where the conversation is happening is important. And, knowing what content to serve up and to whom at each stage of the sales funnel, will help you to narrow down terms, phrases, and keywords consumers are searching.

What is a SERP and why are they important to SEO?

Search engine result pages also known as SERP are web pages served up by search engines like Google when these keywords and terms are searched. SERPs tend to include organic search results, paid Google Ads results, Featured Snippets, Knowledge Graphs and video results. Depending on your digital strategy, and if you have an integrated approach, your business may never appear in the top web pages that are served up. In fact, your business may not appear until two or three web pages into the search.

SEO Best Practices

There are a multitude of things a business can do to integrate SEO into their marketing strategy. But there are a few best practices to elevate the chances of your business being discovered and served up to the top of the web page results. Implement these 7 best SEO practices to ensure higher website ranking success:

1. Word Discovery: Discover the words, keywords and phrases your audience is searching for. You can either do this using SEO tools like SEMRush, or you can hire an SEO Specialist to help you with this discovery. Don’t get caught in the alphabet soup of words without some direction on how to implement it. Although finding keywords is an important first step in your efforts to optimize searches in your favour, it can take several months before a business website moves up in the rankings. A keyword strategy is great for organic growth, but results will amplify more quickly when combined with a paid strategy like social media PPC (pay per click) and Google Adword campaigns.
2. Website Content: Once you’ve completed the keyword discovery, it’s time to add these words  through-out your website. Not only do you want to sprinkle them a few times through-out your site, ensure you mention your keywords at the top of your web pages as Google puts more weight on words at the top of a web page.
3. Titles and Descriptions: Take the time to put titles and descriptions on content placed on your site. This includes image descriptions. Avoiding duplicate content on your site and it will rank higher. This includes not duplicating title tags, meta description tags, eCommerce product pages, Landing pages, Image alt text and Category pages. For e-commerce sites, this is a ton of work, but worth the effort and will prove beneficial with increased traffic and sales.
4. Title Tags: Title tags on-page for SEO is essential. Google has even said it’s important to use high-quality titles on your web pages. The best way to do this is to put your keywords right in your title tag as search engines pay close attention to these titles.
5. Website Speed: The site’s loading speed plays into the SEO equation. Google puts an emphasis on your ranking based on how quickly the site loads. The quicker the site loads the better it will be ranked. What affects the speed of a site? Images that are not compressed is a big one and can make up the bulk of a page’s size and loading speed. WordPress themes can also slow things down if they are not optimized for speed. Use lazy loading images, as this can increase your speed by 50%.
6. Blog Content: Newly created content is one of the best ways to raise website rankings organically. The keyword discovery will feed into the blog topics that are most searched. Create new content often. The more you post, the more eyeballs you’ll receive, the more you’ll want to post. And don’t forget to use unique titles and descriptions as pointed out above.
7. Google/PPC Campaigns: It’s no surprise when you include paid lead strategies as part of the SEO mix, the faster the leads will flow, and bring greater results. Google AdWords, Display, Remarketing and PPC campaigns are most successful when done in tandem. Don’t miss the opportunity to do A/B testing, to see what offer or message pulls better and drives more leads. Remember, the keyword discovery at the start will feed into your PPC campaign strategies, providing an added boost to your media spend.

There are literally hundreds of SEO tactics to raise a website ranking on Google and other search engines like Bing to generate more qualified leads for your sales funnel. Both paid and organic strategies are important when driving traffic and brand awareness for your products/services. An integrated marketing strategy requires planning and guidance. Enlist the help of digital experts to provide you with the best advice for your specific business goals.