Content Creation Guide for Lead Generation

SEO Lead Generation Through Modern Content Marketing

Generating leads for your business is a feat that isn’t always easy to accomplish. But, that doesn’t mean it isn’t doable. With high-quality content, you can meet the needs of even the pickiest users to gain their trust.

Sure, the technical side of SEO is crucial in lead generation, but it isn’t everything. Content is the solid foundation of content marketing, even though it’s often underrated.

Businesses and marketers who fail to recognise the value of content in their strategy are missing out on countless opportunities to make their enterprise pop out in an oversaturated market.

But that’s about to change.

At the conclusion of this blog, you should be able to tell why modern content marketing and SEO lead generation are necessary for any business to stay ahead of its competition.

How Does Content Marketing Generate Leads?

When your content is written with the target audience’s needs in mind, you answer the questions of each individual audience in that group. This continued and consistent behaviour will eventually develop the people in these groups as leads for your business.

There are several channels and platforms you can explore and utilise to help you with your SEO lead generation. Now, SEO lead generation may be confusing to you, especially if you’ve read articles about the differences of lead generation vs SEO. So, to clarify what makes them distinct concepts, read on.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving the quantity and the quality of website traffic that is driven to a specific website from search engines. This usually refers to the organic or unpaid directed traffic.

Lead generation is a marketing concept that refers to any tactics or strategies employed to attract potential customers to your business. This includes increasing and sustaining their interests with the ultimate goal of converting them into actual customers.

SEO lead generation, which combines the two ideas above, refers to the process of attracting potential customers to buy your products or sign up for services by increasing the number of website visitors from various online search engines like Bing or Google.

How to generate SEO leads?

There are several steps you can take to generate high-quality leads using your content. They’re discussed in detail below:

1. Extensive and Comprehensive Market Research

   2 in 3 shoppers in Australia do more product research when online shopping. A survey by the Australian Retailers Association revealed that most of the Australian market (67%) research more on a product before buying it online instead of buying it in-store. These people check out product reviews repeatedly to check the product or service quality and whether they appear as advertised.

   What does this mean for you?

   This means that shoppers are becoming more meticulous when it comes to getting the value of their money. This also means that you can’t just use the same approach that other SEO lead generation companies use because your target market could have tens or even hundreds of varying buyer personas that you have to try to satisfy.

   Remember, you need to know your customers’ needs before you can fill those needs.

   Finding the right commercial keywords will help you understand what your target audience is interested to learn more about. What’s more, they can tell you that your prospects are interested in actually making a purchase and not just looking around.

   Creating content that attracts the right prospects (not just any prospect) results in high lead generation, and that’s what you should aim for.

   When you stay several steps ahead of potential customers’ buyer journey and have the answers to their questions before they’ve had the chance to ask, you become a dependable resource for them.

   Dependence based on reliability will eventually lead to loyalty. Over time, as these people start trusting you more and more, you will see that this relationship has a higher chance of translating to sales and revenue.
   

2. Make Sure Your Landing Pages Are High-Converting

   No two landing pages are ever the same, especially when it comes to lead generation capabilities. Even the best marketers will admit that there will always be landing pages that perform less than others and aren’t maximising leads that turn into conversions.

   Before you optimise your landing page, you need to have a deep understanding of WHY you’re using that specific page and why you’re creating one in the first place. Once you have the logic pinned down, you can then move on to making sure your landing page or pages are better than others.

   The anatomy of a high-converting landing page includes the following elements:

   • Aesthetics (users should be able to tell from the get-go that you know exactly what you’re doing)
   • Usability (navigation should be easy, and searching the page for specific details shouldn’t take too long)
   • A creative headline that makes sense and is easy to understand
   • Highlight of benefits and advantages in an easy-to-read form like numbered or bulleted lists
   • Visual appeal that also works as trust signals, such as a personal photo of the business owner or team members
   • Social proofs like testimonials and call-to-actions like forms

3. (Responsibly) Create a Lead Bait

   One of the most common SEO lead generation techniques is creating a lead bait. A lead bait is something free that will encourage your website visitors to get in touch with you or divulge their personal information to you.
   To generate more high-quality SEO leads, your lead bait content must be able to do two things:

   1. Encourage the website visitor to share their contact information with you voluntarily.
   2. Filter out poor-quality leads that have no value to your business.

   Knowing how to write content that works as a great lead bait is a crucial skill in marketing and something that you should try mastering. The better you get at it, the more significant impact it can have on your SEO lead generation strategies.

   But, don’t just limit your approach to website lead baits. Harness the power of email for generating leads, as well. The great thing about email is that it’s not just available to desktop users anymore. It’s a lot like social media marketing minus the distractions.

   It helps to grow your subscribers list first. You need to take things slow and nurture your digital relationship with your prospects. Eventually, once trust is built, and your target audience becomes more familiar with your brand, your email subscribers will naturally convert into customers.

   So, where does content come in?

   When creating lead magnets, you need to make sure that your content focuses heavily on what your target market is looking for. Make yourself a ready option for a need they already have and are slowly considering satisfying.

   Writing a copy designed to make the target audience respond positively is an important skill that will help you generate leads with a high potential of converting.

   
   
   Lead generation through SEO content creation isn’t limited to emails and website forms. Here are other ways to create lead-generating content:

   1. Create Case Studies

      Case studies aren’t the same uninspiring and boring literary pieces that they were years ago. Nowadays, they’re the perfect tool for businesses to showcase their skills and competencies in what they do.

      Case studies allow companies to demonstrate actual and proven results, which can help customers in the consideration stage to lean toward their products and services. A well-written case study that’s complete with facts and figures is a company’s gateway to conversion.

   2. Write White Papers and eBooks

      eBooks are short digital books about industry-specific topics. Your website visitors can use them as a resource for deciding whether they want to work with you. White pages are sales and marketing documents created to entice potential customers to learn more about the processes surrounding your products and services.
      
      Both options aren’t the easiest to create, but they can significantly improve lead generation.  Because these types of content are longer than typical blogs or articles, it’s crucial to keep your readers engaged. Make sure your layout is easy on the eyes for better retention.
      
      Humans are designed to respond to images better than simple texts, so make sure to use charts and symbols in lieu of words if possible.
      
      Remember, your content can come in a relaxed form and still be informational and professional. Don’t use a chatty and overfamiliar tone because not all potential customers appreciate that.

   3. Design an Online Course

      This e-learning model is a proven way of generating more refined and high-quality leads, and here’s why. Taking an online course takes time and resources. Unless a person has a genuine interest in what the course is about, you can’t really expect them to stay online.
      Following this logic, a person who will take the course is already a high-quality lead. The sign up alone takes the guesswork out of the process.

      Perhaps the only issue with this is that it takes a lot of work. But that’s understandable since the results you can expect to get here are better than other strategies.

      You also need to make sure that your online course is not just a reiteration of other courses. Make sure you’re offering something new and different, so the people who will take them won’t end up disappointed.

      Promoting the course after you’ve finished designing it poses a new set of challenges that you can easily overcome by mastering what your target audience wants.

   

4. Data-Driven Content Creation
   

   What is lead-generating content marketing?

   Simply put, it’s the process of creating content that you package into lead magnets or high-value resources you can give away for free in exchange for your target market’s contact information.

   Why does it have to be data-driven?

   The answer is simple. All content marketing campaigns perform better when they have a solid foundation made of data-driven content. But how exactly do you do that?

   Identify what your users want by observing what they’re currently interested in. This should give you a glimpse of the things they like. Remember that content relevance is subjective, and you have to make the necessary adjustments to accommodate what your users want.

   Google Analytics is the best tool to use for this specific strategy. From the dashboard, click on the Behavior tab, then go to the Site Content and check out All pages. The data in there should give you an idea of which content your visitors like best.

   If your other social media platforms are active, you can also just create a poll and ask them directly about their preferred content. This tactic will also allow you to filter users.

5. Use Appropriate Content Promotion Techniques

   If you’re working with a digital agency, your package may already include SEO lead generation services. If not, don’t worry. You can just study how lead generation for SEO companies works and come up with your own strategies. Of course, nothing beats working with an experienced digital marketing agency but if it isn’t an option yet, then learning on your own should suffice.
   
   
   
   Ideally, you should first focus on local SEO lead generation especially if you’re selling products and only service a small area.

   Consider upgrading your content. Upgrading the content is a fun and exciting option for the user. If, say, a reader is halfway through a blog post, they will be offered to download the content they’re reading in a different format like a report or a downloadable pdf that’s easier to share or even print.

   Since this lead bait targets people who are already on your site and actively consuming your content, you increase your chances of converting these website visitors into subscribers and eventually actual customers.

   Don’t be afraid to give away more free content. You’re not only limited to PDFs or reports. You can also provide your website visitors with the following:

   • Discount Codes and Vouchers
   • Membership Access
   • Podcasts
   • Videos
   • Webinars
   • Software Licenses
   • WordPress Themes (or Templates)
   • Plugins

   Of course, you shouldn’t fully depend on these upgrades. It’s essential that you also give these out as add-ons that back up your high-quality content. In the first place, you won’t be able to give them out if the readers don’t stay on the page long enough for you to have the opportunity to push forward these freebies.

6. Perform Social Media Outreach

   Using SEO for lead generation and direct marketing isn’t the only way to generate high-quality leads. Your content can also be used when doing a social media outreach.
   

   What Is a Social Media Outreach?

   It’s a process where a company utilises all available social networks to raise brand awareness and build an online presence and reputation. Some of the popular social networks for branding and marketing include:

   • Facebook
   • Twitter
   • Instagram
   • YouTube
   • WeChat
   • LinkedIn
   • Pinterest
   • Snapchat

   The channels used depend a lot on the industry where the company belongs to. Creating content that’s industry appropriate will give readers and potential customers an idea about your branding, what your tone is, and whether it’s a business they’d be interested in.

   Complement Your Lead-Generating Strategies With Search Traffic Increasing Tactics

   As previously mentioned, SEO lead generation combines SEO and lead generation to attract potential customers by increasing the number of website visitors from various online search engines.

   
   
   Now that you know how to generate leads using your content, we’ll teach you how to double or even triple your search traffic with these techniques:

   1. Perform a Website SEO Audit

   You can’t fix something until you know what’s wrong with it. The same goes for websites. An SEO audit should reveal the underlying issues affecting traffic and sales. Determining pain points and areas of improvement will allow you to reassess goals and take the necessary steps to prevent future efforts from going to waste.

   2. Study Your Users

   To become the ultimate solution to potential clients’ problems, you need to understand their challenges. You have to study them and uncover as much as you can about their needs and wants. Only then can you target those needs by creating content that appeals to them and matches their stage in the buyer’s journey.

   3. Guarantee Mobile Friendliness

   Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm significantly boosts organic search rankings for mobile-friendly websites. In Australia alone, 45.2% of internet traffic was accessed with mobile phones. That means that if you don’t make your website mobile-friendly, you can be potentially losing the same amount of traffic. 

   4. Use Infographics

   The best thing about infographics is how easy they are to understand despite them displaying complex topics. A lot of consumers also prefer them because they take less time to read and enjoy. Several web users abandon sites that don’t even bother to make their content accessible to people with little to no background on the service or products they offer.
   Conveying information in an easily digestible way gives your site visitors the feeling that you are willing to educate them and be part of their learning journey as they explore the benefits you can provide them.

   5. Optimise for RankBrain

   RankBrain is an AI that analyses search results, understands what a certain page is about, and correlates the content with the user queries. It determines which websites have relevant information on them.
   How does this affect you?
   If you create content that has low relevance to a search query, there’s a chance that the AI won’t index your page and won’t show in the results. This means you will miss the opportunity to bring users to your website and any chance of converting them into customers.

   6. Create External Links to High Domain Authority Sites

   When you link your website to high domain authority sites, you also improve your website’s authority. You build a reputation for being a useful and relevant online resource for users. But you can only do this seamlessly if you have content that is usable to your visitors.

   7. Use Your Competitors’ SEO to Your Advantage

   Competitor research is a quick and easy way to know which keywords the competitor is ranking for and how you can use it to churn out more valuable content. Studying the strategies employed by your competition isn’t illegal, and you can even simply visit their website or sign up for their newsletter (with your personal email, of course). This will give you several options to experiment with.

   8. Maximise Use of Keywords in Your SEO Title Tags

   Page titles are ranking signals that play a major role in a user’s decision-making process as they scroll through several search engine results. It’s also the most obvious element that you can use to influence the searcher. 

   9. Use Google Search Console for Monitoring Website Stats

   Google Search Console is a powerful tool that will help you spot potential issues that may affect your website’s ranking. You need to remember to regularly check the following:

   • Crawl Errors Like 404 Pages
   • Submitting New Sitemaps
   • List of Keywords People Are Using to Find You
   • Indexing Your Pages
   • Checking Mobile Usability
   • Performing Core Web Vitals Check
   • URL Performance

   
   These SEO tips, alongside SEO lead-generating strategies, can help you drive traffic and improve conversion rates for your website. If you’re not confident about handling all these strategies, you can always look for an experienced digital marketing agency to help you out.

How Can SEO Services Australia Help Generate Leads for Your Business?

SEO Services Australia knows how to develop a solid content marketing strategy for you that will boost SEO performance. Contact us today for more information.