After all the hard work it takes to establish a successful marketing agency, many of us hit a wall when trying to acquire SEO leads. This is an international challenge–whether you’re in America, Canada, or China, there are always countless digital agencies fighting for their share of success. Competition within the SEO industry can be incredibly fierce!
The great thing is, you don’t have to be a master of SEO to generate leads for your business. With some simple yet effective strategies, you’ll soon be reaping organic search engine optimization rewards. Adopting these techniques won’t take long once you get started!
What will you learn with this guide?
If you’re searching for a way to close more clients through SEO, this guide is designed just for you! Here’s what we’ll cover:
- How to find SEO leads and attract clients
- Things to do before you reach out to qualified SEO leads
- Best practices for connecting with leads
- SEO lead generation tools
After this guide, you will have become a master at producing SEO leads and transforming them into paying customers.
What’s an SEO Lead?
An SEO lead is a potential customer of your SEO services who have expressed interest in what you have to offer. What kind of services might this include? Some possible examples are:
- Local SEO
- On-page optimization
- Site audits
- Link-building
Your SEO agency can be discovered by prospects through search engine results, paid advertisements, and word-of-mouth. Alternatively, you have to directly contact future customers to make them aware of your services, Social media marketing can come in handy here.
How to Find SEO Leads
For any digital agency to acquire SEO leads, they must utilize either outbound or inbound marketing. Outbound entails the manual strategies used by an agency to reach those past their existing customer base.
Unlike outbound marketing, inbound marketing is designed to generate content, resources, and tools that draw potential customers to you.
Here are things that outbound SEO lead generation deals with:
- Using social media to do manual outreach.
- Going to SEO or web design meetups.
- Reaching out to poorly optimized websites online.
- Purchasing leads or finding email addresses of SEO professionals.
Inbound SEO lead generation examples include:
- Word of mouth.
- Blog publishing.
- Coming up with an authoritative SEO community.
- Having a website for lead generation.
- Serving ads to a target audience with a PPC campaign.
Let us guide you through each step by revealing all the necessary details to help uncover SEO leads and boost your agency. We’ll provide clear, precise instructions, so there’s no room for misinterpretation or doubt.
Decide on Your SEO Niche & Service Offering
Before exploring ways of obtaining SEO leads, you must have a concrete understanding of your specific niche and the services you are offering.
This is an essential yet indispensable move in the SEO lead generation process, as it will help you create and carry out effective strategies as we advance.
You need to do more than say that you are an SEO agency offering SEO services to businesses.
SEO is an expansive field with many subsections, including keyword research, link-building, local SEO, YouTube SEO, and technical SEO. As a business owner in the industry, you must decide what type of services your agency offers before advancing.
When deciding on an SEO agency, it’s wise to think of the types of businesses and industries you want them to work with. Many agencies are specialized in specific fields like law firms or dental practices. Knowing what type of industry your agency is experienced in can help you make a successful choice!
To get started, identify the primary SEO service you want and what sector or industry your services will target.
Fret not about running out of clients or prospects. In the world of SEO, nearly every business needs help to thrive; therefore, you’ll find yourself with many qualified leads waiting for you.
Outbound SEO Lead Generation
If you’re searching for SEO leads who are unfamiliar with your brand and have not encountered your business yet, outbound lead generation is the best approach. When finding these kinds of prospects, you’ll need to take a proactive stance since they won’t just come looking for you – hence the term “outbound.”
Using social media to do manual outreach.
One of the best ways to obtain SEO leads is to join applicable LinkedIn and Facebook groups related to website enhancement, business expansion, and SEO. It’s essential that you actively partake in these groups by sharing your knowledge with others.
As you participate in these groups, it’s essential to remember that most of them forbid members from blatantly promoting their services or products (e.g., “Need SEO optimization? We’re here to help”).
Take advantage of opportunities to share your SEO experience when engaging with other members. Talk about the successful results you or your colleagues have achieved for past clients! You’ll be sure to make an impression and impress others, which can help further your career goals.
As time passes, you will undoubtedly gain members who reach out for your assistance or opinion, and at that point, you can promote to them in hopes of converting them into paying customers.
Going to SEO or web design meetups.
Networking at relevant meetups is a powerful way for agencies to find business. Make sure you get chatting with the people there and check if they’re looking for SEO services.
It is essential to tailor your pitch for each individual you meet here. If a specific attendee needs to select their SEO vendor quickly and has an urgent timeline, don’t hesitate to provide them with more information about your agency.
However, it’s not wise to present a highly technical SEO explanation if the person you’re speaking with has yet to master how search engine optimization works; this could make them disinterested.
How can you make contact with prospects who aren’t quite ready to invest?
Be simple. Provide prospective clients with a custom SEO report on their Website, with applicable suggestions to skyrocket their search rankings. All you need is an email address and you can get started,
Ultimately, nurturing your lead and providing them with additional value is essential in order to remain top of mind when they are ready to make a purchase.
Reaching out to poorly optimized websites online
If most of your clients come from the restaurant industry, you could be missing out on SEO leads specific to this market. Picture how much easier achieving a successful ROI would become if you were able to capitalize on these valuable opportunities!
To easily identify potential clients, a simple Google search will do the trick. You need to scroll down to page 10, and you’ll find many websites that need design help or optimization services that your agency can offer. Many of these sites are sure to be in dire need of assistance.
Afterward, you can contact the applicable companies and showcase your agency’s services to them.
Purchasing leads or emails from a database
If you desperately need SEO leads, it may be tempting to purchase them from a database; however, this should only happen as a last resort.
Agencies often would rather generate their leads than buy them, but if you choose to purchase leads for your business, be sure to check these details:
- Purchase leads from a reputable vendor, and
- Buy leads that are from a reliable source. There’s no need to buy 5,000 email addresses that would mean spamming cold emails).
Above all, guarantee the dependability of your leads by procuring them from a credible vendor that assures a given level of precision.
Here are some examples:
- LeadCandy claims that only a maximum of 5% of the verified emails will be non-deliverable. In case your bounce rate surpasses this value, they offer to refund any credits charged for those emails.
- UpLead is one of our favorite tools because its immediate verification process checks email addresses before releasing data to clients.
For the optimal outcome, purchasing leads from a reliable source and with meticulous precision is essential. Pick a vendor that provides you with various filters so you can narrow down on specific prospects who are most likely to convert. With this strategy in mind, success will surely follow.
For instance, with UpLead’s expansive database of over 30 million contacts and 50 varying criteria—which can include everything from industry to employees to location—users are able to refine their results like never before. Sales revenue is yet another feature they have the ability to filter down on as well.
This makes it effortless for you to assemble laser-focused lists and connect with leads that are the perfect match for your company.
Discover Opportunities with Job sites.
Companies often source the best SEOs via job sites and LinkedIn, ensuring their recruiters locate the most suitable candidate for their needs.
Whenever you encounter businesses looking to increase their search engine rankings, don’t miss out on this opportunity to market your SEO services and emphasize the benefits of hiring an agency compared to recruiting a full-time employee.
If a company is actively advertising for an SEO professional, it’s likely that they are prepared to invest in someone to help them with search engine optimization long-term. Such organizations make excellent leads regarding SEO opportunities.
Inbound SEO Lead Generation
Unlike outbound lead generation, inbound leads are sourced from prospects who actively seek your services–making it much more likely for these contacts to convert at a higher rate. After all, you don’t have to spend time convincing them that they need your assistance; rather, they already know and understand the value of what you can offer.
With inbound SEO leads, this makes it easy for both parties involved: customers get what they’re looking for without needing additional convincing. At the same time, businesses grow their customer base with minimal effort.
List yourself in Digital Agency Directories.
Generating more SEO leads for your agency is possible by appearing in pertinent digital directories, from Digital Agency Network to Clutch and Top Digital Agency.
Not only is listing your business free (generally) on these websites, but the customers who visit are actively searching for an appropriate marketing partner. Maximize your potential with this simple yet effective technique.
With a heightened sense of motivation, leads are easier to turn into customers. To maximize your agency’s visibility and reach online, be sure to create profiles on directory sites as well as use platforms such as Craigslist, Yelp, and Yellow Pages.
Relying on Word of Mouth and Referrals
Word of mouth and customer referrals are the most effective forms of inbound marketing. All these leads come to you with a high motivation to find an agency that can provide them with SEO services, making it easier for you to convert them into customers. This highlights why this method is so powerful and should be incorporated into any business marketing strategy.
If customers are delighted with your services and refer you to their contacts, it’s a sure indication of their confidence in your ability to produce quality outcomes.
How do you get existing clients to recommend you? It’s simple – make sure that each customer receives outstanding service from start to finish! This will prompt them to naturally spread the news about you without much effort.
Once you’ve established a strong reputation with your clients by providing outstanding results, then start asking them for referrals to help expand and grow your SEO agency. Additionally, reward customers who send referral sign-ups with discounts on services – it’s an incentive to keep people coming back.
Attract Leads by publishing quality blog content.
If you want to attract potential customers via SEO, we strongly suggest you dedicate time and effort to producing blog content. With outbound marketing techniques being unreliable in the long term, it’s essential to commit to an effective inbound strategy that can continuously yield results.
Keep in mind, if you produce an exceptional blog post today, it can drive traffic and generate leads month after month—even years down the road! With this understanding in heart, start creating your content development plan.
Here are a few ideas worth considering:
- Use your Website to publish and host blog posts
- Consider doing guest blog posts on marketing and SEO sites
- Design feature-rich infographics and publish them on your social media channels
- Build and promote a lead magnet
- YouTube videos
- Webinar series
- Start a podcast with personalities from the digital marketing and SEO industry
Do Quora or Reddit Q&A
How can creating blog posts help with SEO leads? It’s easy – when your content ranks for the right keywords, it will attract more targeted traffic to your Website. That way, you’ll increase the chances of getting quality SEO leads.
Brainstorm content ideas that can provide solutions to the issues your ideal buyers are most likely facing in their businesses.
Start and build up an Authoritative SEO Community.
If you’re searching for ways to obtain SEO leads, then creating your authoritative group may be the perfect solution. Whether it’s in the form of a Facebook group or email newsletter, this strategy will require some time before you get new leads coming through.
Your goal should be to create an active space that business owners can find useful – one with updated news on SEO, along with practical tips and strategies to help them succeed.
By starting such groups, you have the unique opportunity to promote your blog posts and collaborate with guests from other related fields, such as social media management and customer support.
Hold a Webinar
Hosting a webinar is an incredible chance to showcase your SEO expertise. Moreover, you can demonstrate case studies of past customers whose success you were able to support.
Don’t just cover the basics of SEO in your webinars: think about what issues and obstacles are keeping your target audience from achieving their goals, and create a solution-driven webinar that addresses those problems head-on.
Your Website can Generate Leads.
An SEO agency can use its Website to generate leads and boost sales. By creating content-rich blog posts, you attract visitors that are particularly interested in your services. To further optimize this process, be sure to employ the best practices of SEO on service pages for optimal results.
Target a Specific Audience with a PPC Ad Campaign
Generate more SEO leads by investing in a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign designed to reach your exact target audience.
You can customize the ads to display only when users searching for particular keywords are located within an ideal location of your choice. This type of marketing will surely bring you qualified and high-quality leads that will benefit your business in many ways.
PPC campaigns can swiftly yield positive outcomes when administered correctly, but if the wrong targeting strategies and keyword matches are implemented, it can prove costly. If you understand how CPC marketing works and can target potential customers economically, then this approach is highly effective in generating SEO leads each month.
Launch a Podcast
For SEO agency founders and managers, podcasts are a potent tool for sharing information about SEO and business. Podcasts require a fraction of the effort to produce compared to webinars, allowing you to release content more frequently without needing additional time or resources.
Generate SEO Leads with Blog Posts with these tips.
If you’re striving to gain the most from your blogging and content marketing efforts, you must invest time in creating compelling, valuable material.
To ensure maximum leads generated by your blog and content strategy here are some tips:
Use Call To Action (CTAs) at the end of your blog
If you have ambitions to generate leads through search engine optimization (SEO) and your blog posts, it is essential that you add a pertinent call-to-action (CTA) after each post. Here are some CTAs with which you might be familiar:
- Sign up for the newsletter
- Request a quote
- Sign up for an SEO site audit
- Sign up for a consultation for SEO services
Be as precise and targeted with your CTA as possible to ensure maximum efficacy. For example, instead of merely prompting someone to “Sign up for an SEO consultation,” you could reframe it by saying: “Start Ranking Higher on Google Today With Our Free SEO Consultation.”
Here are some examples:
- Sign up for a free SEO consultation and save $399!
- Sign up for a free 60-minute SEO consultation.
Context is important. Use it.
Offer free, detailed guides with PDFs
It is clear that long-form content grabs and holds our attention much more than short, generic articles.
That being said, let’s stop wasting time on 500-word pieces that are shallow and lack any natural substance. Instead, build up your writing repertoire with “Ultimate Guide” pieces that provide readers with the depth they crave.
Did you know that there’s a brilliant way to generate leads with your articles? You can offer readers the option of downloading a free PDF version and collecting their email addresses in the process. Don’t forget to include your standard CTA for maximum impact.
Quality and quantity are important.
It’s paramount to create worthwhile, valuable content that is truly high-caliber. However, quality and quantity should go hand in hand. Therefore, you have to ensure both aspects are addressed when producing your material.
If you don’t post frequently and regularly, it will be hard to acquire considerable leads from your blog (even when the content is phenomenal).
How often should you blog and post content? The answer is as much as possible.
Research from HubSpot suggests that companies publishing 16 or more blog posts per month are rewarded with a significant increase in leads compared to those who post 0-4 times monthly.
How to Find and Qualify SEO Leads with Research
When you maximize your lead generation efforts, you can expect to compile an extensive list of SEO leads primed for outreach. Nevertheless, before attempting to contact them, be sure to take the necessary time and effort in researching and validating these prospects.
To ensure success in your venture, you should carefully investigate the following:
- Uncovering the corporate hierarchy and key players in command
- The reach of their digital presence, particularly as it relates to search engine optimization performance.
Before anything else, do your research and identify the key players in the company you are applying to.
To access a company’s full picture, you must delve into its digital presence across all corners of the web.
For instance:
- Peruse their Website and assess whether the content is current. Are there any design or user experience issues? Does it abide by SEO best practices? Is it optimized for mobile devices?
- Carefully examine the off-page SEO of your competitors, such as their keyword rankings and backlinks. Compare these metrics to those of your own business to identify any potential opportunities for progress.
Please take a look at their social media and analyze their approach. Are they making regular posts with a uniform tone? Do they have a decent amount of followers, likes, or comments? Also, observe if they reply to people’s queries in the comments section.
Our goal is to gain a comprehensive understanding of our clients’ predicament and the current issues they are dealing with so that we can provide them with meaningful guidance when conversing.
Why is it important to Qualify SEO Leads?
For optimal productivity, it is essential to be strategic when qualifying your SEO leads. To save yourself time and energy, invest in weeding out uninterested prospects from the start, and this will leave you with a more focused pool of potential customers who are more likely to convert down the line.
Before moving forward, take a moment to consider what type of businesses have the resources and willingness to purchase your agency’s services. Ideally, it would help if you were targeting clients that:
- Belong to an industry with a good profit margin to show for it.
- Isn’t a solo entrepreneur.
- Are part of a reputable company with years of experience.
If you’d like to investigate further whether a potential customer is appropriate for your services, use tools such as Spyfu to determine if they are investing in PPC.
If a company has allocated money towards this activity, the budget available for marketing is likely substantial, and they understand its significance.
How to Contact SEO Leads
After you’ve finished thoroughly investigating your SEO leads and their organization, the following move is to communicate with them. In this section, we’ll furnish you with tips on crafting effective emails and techniques for seamlessly reaching out to potential leads.
Go with a casual Subject Line.
To help you outshine the competition, consider keeping your tone casual when writing sales emails. Instead of using a stiff subject line such as “Want to improve your SEO and rank on page one of Google?” try something more inviting like: “Ready to skyrocket up Google’s rankings? Let’s talk!”
If you’re looking to increase your open rate, it’s imperative that your subject line appears as if a human wrote it organically. This rule of thumb holds time and again.
Adding both urgency and curiosity to your subject lines can significantly boost the engagement rate of your emails, so make sure you are leveraging this powerful tool. Personalizing each individual’s message will also help them feel a deeper connection to what your content has to offer.
Make your Leads feel comfortable if they are to take the next step.
To ensure a successful face-to-face meeting with your lead, you should craft the invitation in a manner that makes it convenient for them.
Here’s an example of what not to do: “Let me explain our SEO services to you more thoroughly – can we arrange dates and times which work well for you, specifying where would be most suitable?”
Instead, try something like this: “It would be wonderful if I could have the opportunity to discuss our SEO services with you further – when are you free so that we can meet at whichever location is more amenable?”
Notice the difference? The simpler it is for your SEO customers to commit, the higher likelihood of you persuading them.
Keep your Email Short and Sweet
Statistics prove the secret to getting a response to your emails is keeping them short and sweet. Aim for 50-125 words, as anything more could become overwhelming or offputting to potential leads.
Of course, you want to share some of the advantages of working with you – but don’t go overboard in this initial email. Keep it friendly yet professional, and let the conversation flow naturally from there.
Follow Up with Your SEO Leads the right way.
Many marketers and sales reps dread the idea of following up with customers or leads due to a variety of reasons. Some might find it difficult to remember, others may be afraid of seeming too pushy, and some even believe that follow-ups are futile. However, making timely follow-up attempts is essential to ensuring business success.
Follow-up emails can be more impactful than your initial email. A study on this matter found that the average response rate for first emails is 30%, while fourth and sixth emails acquired a 13% and 27% response rate, respectively.
These figures demonstrate how critical subsequent messages are when attempting to reach somebody.
Given this, do all sales representatives necessarily need to use 2 hours of their day to follow up with SEO customers? Not really.
With a few easy steps, you can easily automate your follow-up messages without having access to complex marketing automation software. To boost your email outreach, utilize Mailshake or another plug-in tool that links to Gmail.
Don’t Do This When Pitching Your SEO Services to Leads
To ensure success when presenting your agency’s services to potential SEO clients, be sure to avoid making the following mistakes.
1. Don’t overpromise
With SEO ranking factors fluctuating with every passing day, no matter how experienced an SEO agency may be, it’s impossible to guarantee rankings for a company.
Therefore, avoid rashly assuring potential clients that their rankings will reach a specific level within a set timeframe – even if you believe your team has what it takes to fulfill this promise.
You don’t want any members of your company or employees landing in hot water due to overpromising results they can’t deliver.
2. It’s prudent to wait before reaching out
If you want to maximize the chances of forming successful relationships with prospects acquired through SEO, you must reach out as soon as they enter your system.
Don’t miss out on potential opportunities; contact them within 5 minutes of them expressing an interest in your services. Most leads are likely to do business with whoever reaches out first – make sure it’s you.
3. Don’t pander
While being respectful and considerate towards your leads is essential, you don’t want to go overboard in trying to please them. Doing this could leave the impression that you’re not confident of your services or too desperate for their business—which can be a significant deterrent.
Maintain politeness without going beyond what is necessary.
Tools for SEO Lead Generation
If you desire to magnify your SEO lead generation efforts, then several tools and products are available. Utilize them and capitalize on their potential for growth!
SEOptimer
If you’re after additional SEO leads, look no further than the Embeddable Audit Tool from SEOptimer. This convenient tool helps agency owners generate more sales and prospects simply by embedding a form on their sites, and it’s an easy way to gain new clients without having to do any extra work.
When a user fills out the necessary form fields, this tool automatically generates an SEO report, including your company’s branding and colors. These tailored, white-labeled reports are powerful tools for any SEO agency looking to streamline its workflow and optimize its website performance.
This tool will work automatically in the background with no attention from you, and fresh SEO leads will be sent to your inbox every time a new report is created.
Hubspot
Once you ramp up your SEO lead generation, Hubspot’s sales CRM offers a great way to manage and organize those leads. This system enables your sales team to visualize each new lead’s progress through the pipeline and provides tools that automate workflows and create reporting dashboards.
With this tool, managing leads gets more accessible than ever before.
Intercom
Intercom is an on-site messaging tool perfect for website owners and agencies to connect with their visitors. With this platform, it’s possible to craft a chatbot tailored directly to your business needs.
For instance, you can create a custom bot that asks what kinds of services customers are interested in and then guides them toward those respective service pages within the same conversation.
Using Intercom bots, web admins can easily lead website viewers straight into their desired lead generation form.
AdEspresso
Suppose you currently utilize paid marketing initiatives on Facebook, Instagram, or Google. In that case, it is essential that you continually monitor the performance of your campaigns to make sure you get the most from your advertising budget.
AdEspresso is one tool that offers a comprehensive solution that allows users to create, manage and analyze their ads effortlessly – all in one convenient dashboard.
With AdEspresso, testing various ad variations is a breeze. Plus, the built-in white label report generator allows you to easily create presentations that showcase your client’s paid marketing campaigns with ease. This way, there won’t be any confusion when deciding which ads need more attention or should be paused altogether.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are SEO leads, and how can I get them?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) leads are potential customers actively searching for products or services in your industry through search engines like Google or Bing. To get SEO leads, you must ensure that your Website ranks high on the search engine results page (SERP) for the relevant keywords. This can be achieved through tactics like keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, and content creation.
How can I perform adequate keyword research for SEO leads?
Keyword research is a crucial aspect of SEO lead generation. To perform adequate keyword research, start by brainstorming the search terms that your target audience is most likely to use. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMRush, or Moz Keyword Explorer to find relevant keywords and assess their search volume and competition. Focus on long-tail keywords, which are more specific and have a lower competition level.
How can I create content that attracts SEO leads?
Creating high-quality content that meets the search intent of your target audience is essential for attracting SEO leads. To create compelling content, start by identifying your industry’s most relevant topics and keywords. Develop a content plan and create articles, blog posts, or videos that provide valuable information and address the pain points of your target audience. Ensure that your content is well-optimized for search engines, including using relevant keywords, optimizing headings and meta descriptions, and incorporating internal and external links. By creating content that answers the questions and needs of your potential customers, you can attract more SEO leads to your Website.
Conclusion
You now have all the knowledge you need to get SEO leads. Utilize our advice and tips to discover, qualify and connect with high-quality leads! With this information, you’re ready to take your business development efforts up a notch.
