Don't underestimate the power of SEO leads. This is also known as search engine optimized leads. These are your laser targeted or hot leads that can view you as the expert authority in your niche.
The problem is people struggle over the technical aspect of getting them, and they settle for lukewarm or cold leads somewhere else. And leads that aren’t hot or laser targeted delay the results you hope to not only bring people who need them, but it really stumps your growth as a business.
In this article, I define SEO leads and give you the most important steps to make sure you're correctly set up to get SEO leads for your business or your opportunity.
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What are SEO Leads
SEO leads are search engine optimized leads. That means by using a search engine, like Google I can type in a search term on there. For example, if I wrote about and sold golf clubs, "golf clubs" would be a term I'd want to rank high on search engines from its article on my website.
Ranking high on a search term means that after my customer types in "golf clubs" they see a list of results on Google like they normally would. The difference is, if my article ranks high, it would be on the first page. And not only on the first page, but in the top 1-5th position as opposed to being on any other page.
By default, Google shows 10 results per page. You can change that in your search settings from the Google home page. I say that because no one goes past page 2 unless they're doing some kind of research.
Basically, if you're not ranking on page one of Google, preferably within the first 5 positions then your article or video isn't getting the maximum amount of SEO leads it could be getting.
How Long Does it Take For SEO Leads to Rank
Unlike paid leads, SEO leads could take a couple of months before maturing in ranking. But once it starts to rank in top positions the wait will be worth the while I promise.
"But wait!" "What does mature in ranking mean?!" "... And are you saying my articles can reach page one?"
There are a few things that play a role in determining how fast your articles rank and at what position they settle at, with little variation.
The main culprits are:
- The competition of everyone else trying to rank for your keyword phrase
- Your content or on-page SEO with things like your title, sub-headings, and content
- In-bound links of people that back link to you.
Because of these factors alone it's pretty much impossible to give you a definitive answer on how fast your article can rank. This isn't even taking into consideration the unpredictive nature of search engine algorithms.
With that said, in my experience of ranking less competitive keyword articles (Keyword difficulty less than 20), assuming my on-page SEO is on point, I've seen it stabilize at its peak after just 30 days. My more average (more competitive) keywords take almost double that time, peaking after 3 months without it moving up or down too much after that.
What You'll Need to Start Generating SEO Leads
If it’s an article you want to rank for, you'll need a WordPress website. And I use WordPress because it's the most recognized, most used, most effective for SEO Lead generation, and you don't need to know HTML.
Keep in mind that WordPress is a tool. You still need to work it a bit to get it set up and optimized.
Luckily, there are a ton of SEO plugins that make generating SEO leads easier.
Furthermore, in my training hub linked I walk you step-by-step in how to set up your own WordPress site. With the right hosting company, you can do this with only a few clicks.
If you want to rank on YouTube, which is a video search engine you won’t need anything but YouTube itself to upload your videos. That and a little on-page optimization.
Once your website is set up you need to make sure you're set up to generate SEO leads correctly. I'll show you how in just three steps.
- Start Brainstorming your business or opportunity's keywords
- Use a keyword tool to start researching those keywords (In step 1)
- Complete your on-page optimization
Start Brainstorming Your Business or Opportunity's Keywords
To help you begin the brainstorm process I've listed out a few questions that answers will hopefully lead you to keyword terms you will use to start generating SEO leads.
- What is your service or business?
- Are there common pain points or issues that people have in your niche? If so what are they.
- What are people looking to achieve?
- Can you determine the features of your product and services?
- How do you solve their problem?
- And with what technique?
The goal here is to come up with as many keyword terms as possible around the answers to those questions. And anywhere between 2 and 4 words in length is good for each phrase.
You'll want to sign up for Ahrefs's trial to inspect your own website and the keywords if you are currently ranking for anything
If you want to buy a keyword tool, then I recommend kwfinder.com because it's cheaper and easier to use and understand.
But if you want to go even cheaper, Google has a free keyword planner you can use, but you'll need a Google Adwords account to use it, which isn't difficult to sign up for one.
Now, you're going to find some of your competitors along the way while doing this kind of research so make sure you’re taking notes on how and where they rank.
Use a Keyword Tool to Start Researching Those Keywords
The second thing you can do is start taking your keyword tool, which ever one you picked and start plugging in your keyword phrases. This will show you how well they currently rank.
This can all be done while using your free trial if using Ahrefs or KWfinder. After your trial you can cancel or keep the program. It's up to you. ...But for those just starting out or who don't have the budget these tools may seem expensive.
Now with these tools you're going to look for these three things to make sure you are able to generate high quality SEO leads:
- Low keyword difficulty
- Increasing trends
- High search results.
Search terms with the best results are the ones you are going to use you'll use to create articles with.
When creating the URL make sure your keyword phrase with the best results are included in the URL of your article.
Also, anything under a keyword difficulty of 25 can be ranked in top positions on search engines just by following the steps I’m laying out in this video. Anything higher than a difficulty of 25 and you may need to learn next level strategies such speeding up the acquisition of backlinks linking to your website.
Again, be sure to keep track of the results on a spreadsheet of some sort with all your notes. This will make your job easier whenever you're looking to write your next article or script out your next video.
Complete Your On-Page SEO Optimization
Last but not least, you'll need to perform on-page optimization. We touched on this briefly already, but this is all about how to write your article to ensure you're generating SEO leads.
You'll need to include your keyword phrase in your title and subheadings where it makes sense. Also be sure to have them sprinkled throughout your article's content where it makes sense.
Finally, be sure to use a couple external links to related content.
As far as your keywords go, don't over stuff your article with your keywords. If you do this your article may get flagged by Google’s algorithms. As a result, it could end up ranking poorly.
Is There a Magic Keyword Ratio
If you’re wondering, "is there is a magic keyword ratio to the amount of content you write so that you can rank high in search engines?"
The answer is no.
It differs from page to page and phrase to phrase nowadays. You just need to make sure you write naturally and focus on creating high quality and engaging content.
Off-Page SEO
"Off-page SEO" happens outside your website and articles, but still affect how well your articles rank on search engines. To optimize off page you're really talking about things like relevancy and how popular your page is based on reputable internet sites that link to your website or article. In a sense, through their link back to you (backlinks) they are approving or vouching for the content they are linking too.
Assuming these back links are relevant to your content, receiving as many as you can and from a variety of different sources shows search engines that your content has authority or a sense of credibility. As a result, they will rank your page higher.
Organic or Manually-built Links
You can get different backlinks in a few different ways. We'll focus on organic vs manually-built (asked for) type of links.
Like it sounds, organic or natural links happen whenever someone wants to link their content to someone else's content in order for their reader to engage in more information. For example, if I'm talking about affiliate marketing as one of several ways you can make money online I might want to link to someone else's article where they go into more detail about what affiliate marketing is.
On the other hand, "asked for" type are links are just that. They are article links you may ask your fans or customers to share by linking back to your site from theirs.
Black and Grey Hat SEO Leads to Avoid
Black hat SEO is the use of aggressive SEO strategies that focus on manipulating search engines to rank their content without the use of a human audience or more natural link building process.
In other words, Black hat SEO doesn’t typically obey search engines guidelines.
A couple boarder line (gray hat) referral methods I’d stay away from include:
- Using automated link exchanges and
- Submitting links/blogs to unpopular article directories.
Both these methods have taken advantage of unnatural ways to increase one’s SEO rank (through backlinks) one too many times.
What is still happening today is more and more marketers race to submit poor quality articles and ask for links in an over demanding way. In turn, search engines devalue such backlinks and will count against you, pushing you further away from higher ranking SEO leads.
The problem is certain directories and link exchanges either don’t reject URLs at all or the quality of URLs accepted are poor quality. You want your blog linked to or referred from trusted, authority sites. If everyone and their mother are linking to thousands of crappy sites, even if your site is legit your credibility goes down the drain as far as search engines are concerned.
It’s best to always make sure you are getting the right kind of referral traffic to generate your SEO leads. Regardless of how you get backlinks, you want them to from relevant and trustworthy places.
There are several tools out there today that can help you do this, such as most (if not all) stat counters, Google or Bing analytics, etc.
These tools will help you see things like:
- The originating path of your visitors
- What internet browser they are using
- What pages they look at and for how long
- If/when they are using a mobile device vs desktop
- When they exited and if they return
Summary
By brainstorming your business keywords, finding the ones you can easily rank under a 25 KW difficulty, and then of course making sure your on-page SEO is on point…
If you do those 3 things then you'll not only be able to create SEO leads, but they’ll be laser targeted as most people are searching you out to find what you have to offer and will opt-in to your opportunities.
If you're curious about the opt-in process and want to learn more about how a person goes from reading an article to ending up as a lead on your email list then I definitely recommend you visit my training hub, as that is something I cover in more detail there.
Otherwise, please subscribe to my YouTube channel for more helpful content on helping you build your online business from scratch.
