Introducing Context (The Bigger Picture)
In order for you to turn your website into your #1 lead magnet, your website needs to be the headquarters of the attention your company receives. Social media accounts are distribution outlets for the original content you create for your customers (through your website), not the other way around. I understand it's easier for you to post on Instagram than it is to post on your own website, and you should change that A.S.A.P.
Instagram and other social media platforms (some, not all) doesn't make the content you post searchable with Google (and other search engines). To make a long story short, that means content goes there to die. Instagram is a big world, but Instagram wants you to pay them to distribute your content to potential sales leads. There is one feed, that means you will pay dearly to be on someone else's feed. You might have thousands of followers and I guarantee you, your posts are not reaching all of your followers organically (organically means not paid).
Getting to the Point
Control your traffic, by controlling the relevancy of your leads, and stop being at the mercy of platforms that don't care about you. Google wants to share information about the products and services you offer, but before Google does it, Google has two requirements with high expectations from your website:
Technical SEO is, by far, the least difficult requirement to satisfy in order to rank higher on Google search results. It's measurable, tangible, and predictable. We have identified 132 issues and turned it into a checklist of items that have proven to make the biggest impact on improving search result rankings, which in turn equates to more customer leads. To get more relevant and qualified leads from your website, fix all of the potential problems on this checklist.
If technical SEO is the least difficult, then why isn't it common knowledge?
Unfortunately, business owners associate technical SEO consulting with the spam phone calls they receive from international call centers asking them to pay to rank #1 on Google. The call spamming has gone on for so long, business owner's automatic reaction is to roll their eyes and to stop listening. They don't associate business leads with proper technical SEO.
Here is a constant and inexcusable issue I see with 99% of websites I audit (I'll highlight only two issues).
These two examples of neglecting important lead generating tools are truly inexcusable. Has success made these businesses lazy? I don't believe so. If the business owners knew how easy this fix is relative to the huge impact it has on their customer lead generation, they would have fixed it ages ago and possibly fired the company to blame for neglecting these issues.
The reasons I singled out Title Tags and Meta Descriptions is because they are what shows up as the main portion of text on the Google SERP (Search Results Page). Lead generation begins here. This is the reason your lead will either click on your website or will they click and be directed to your competitor's website.
Since, Google absolutely hates duplicate content and penalizes heavily for it, never ever allow your webmaster to copy/paste anything anywhere on your website. Google considers best practice to create original content about your product and the services you offer. How your website looks on SERP is critical to predict if your potential lead will enter your sales funnel.
Title tags and meta descriptions are just two items in our 132 point checklist. (to run your website through this 132 point audit, click here)
When done correctly, content marketing is the most difficult aspect of turning your website into your #1 lead generator. Yet, business owners embrace this part much easier than adopting a technical SEO strategy. I don't blame them, content marketing involves the business owner speaking about their expertise, their passion, helping their customers, and as a consequence content marketing is certain to generates leads.
Past success is sure to lead to a slow adoption rate among business owners. If they've been doing great for the last 20 years these business owners won't have the urgency to invest in new internet strategies because what they have been doing for the last 20 years has been working just fine. They don't see the opportunity, they see the investment risk. The interpretation of the information is different. Yes, your business has been successful, but your competitor is not sitting idly by sharing your complacent beliefs.
While the internet and its adoption is maturing, it continues to evolve at a faster rate than business owners admit and their static lead generation strategies will be less successful over time. Just today I received an email from Google updating me (us, in the marketing world) about their progress in migrating away from third party cookie strategies. This is important because it is code for, "hey wake up and adapt. we (Google) are about to change the rules on how you acquire leads very soon. specifically, how you advertise your articles (for example), attract traffic and then use cookies to track them when your lead uses LinkedIn or any other platform".
One of the top factors that signals to Google that your content is special and needs to be shared to more people is user engagement. You've seen those low budget YouTube videos that get millions of views, it's because user engagement and sharing was through the roof. Viewers couldn't get enough and kept watching over and over, commenting, and sharing.
So how can I get more leads and user engagement at the same time? Through a multi-step process, but putting it simply a checklist.
Everyone knows you should have a testimonial section on the home page, but what they haven't thought much about is by creating the testimonial section as a clickable slider as opposed to only an automatic slider. People will want to know who your company has helped in the past, so use their curiosity to force them to click right/left to see more testimonials. Click interactions, hover interactions, and animations (be careful because animations can slow page load speeds) help increase engagement.
Higher engagement = more time on your website = Google interprets this as a positive signal and will reward you with a higher search result ranking = more exposure to potential leads = higher conversions.
This pathway to more sales leads will seem very obvious, but the results are in the details of this strategy. Let's continue.
Sprinkle CTA (call to actions - buttons or text links that guides them to a different page of your website where the action is part of the next step of your sales funnel) throughout your home page and other pages.
For you FAQ page, you could make your audience engage by having them click to see the answer (section expands upon click to reveal the answer).
The idea is to increase the time spent on your website by hacking into your potential lead's constant state of curiosity.
Not every lead is a closeable lead. Include some idea of what your prices are. Websites create the perfect opportunity for customers to qualify themselves. Saving you hours of phone conversations that will not lead to a sale. If you are against stating prices, then how about a price range? Or, better yet; Prices starting at: ... fill in the blank.
What better way to make your audience feel important while at the same time engaging by having a comment section on blogs or other sections. You would get important feedback by listening to your audience.
Now, let's switch gears and dive deeper into the discussion of Title Tags and Meta Description and how they fit in the Content Marketing puzzle of turning your website into your #1 lead generator.
After achieving perfect technical SEO, your next goal is to crush CTR (click-through rate). Writing irresistible Title Tags and Meta Descriptions is guaranteed to do just that.
An example of a mediocre title tag for your FAQ page would be: FAQ Page
An example of a great and irresistible title tag for an FAQ page would be: Top 8 Product Videography Questions
See, it catches your attention and appeals to your curiosity.
Now, let's try this exercise with Meta Descriptions. We'll use the real life example of one of our pages: the Questions/Answer page where we offer Free SEO help to everyone who types in their question. I wrote a brief and accurate description of what the potential lead will find when they reach the page. The only difference is that I made it sound very direct and used a numbered list because numbered list do fantastic in SERP. Here it is, "3 Steps for Free SEO Help: Step 1. Submit Your SEO Question 2. SEO Experts Answer within an Hour. 3. We'll Notify You When Answer is Posted". There is no right or wrong answer. You have to test your work. Challenge yourself to write content your potential sales leads will find irresistible and unique.
