Search engine optimization of lead generation websites – What to look out for?
Over the past few years, companies that previously used offline marketing channels to a large extent or almost exclusively, and were interested in lead generation, have turned to the digital marketing channel with enthusiasm. The advantage of the online marketing channel is that online advertising can be targeted in a sophisticated way and the results can be measured and analysed.
When we talk about online marketing, we should also think about paid online advertising and “free” search traffic. For most companies, the ability to reach potential customers for free, who click on the company’s website in the organic search results of Google search and land on the website without any advertising costs, is very attractive.
If you want to get quality leads online – whether in the B2B market or in the B2C market – it is important to pay attention to the search engine optimisation of your website, in addition to paid online advertising.
In this blog article, we would like to help you to effectively optimise your lead-generating website, either on your own or with the help of a seo expert.
(You can read about search engine optimisation for online shops in this blog article. )
The limitations of search engine optimisation
It is important to know that search engine optimisation does not bring immediate results. It can take weeks or months – around 3-6 months – for a brand new website to be crawled and indexed by Google, and similarly, you can’t expect an immediate positive effect if you make a change or addition to your website that moves your search engine ranking in a positive direction. So, if you are creating a completely new website, it is worth supporting the new website with paid search advertising in the initial period – because SEO does not bring immediate results, successful search engine optimisation requires quality content, continuous attention and fine-tuning.
Google is constantly working to improve its search algorithm to provide users with more relevant results and higher quality content. These so-called algorithm updates, which are aimed at moving low-quality websites down the search rankings.
So we can’t be completely happy about one SEO success, because the next algorithm update can certainly set back our organic results if one of our SEO efforts is not combined with the maximum possible improvement of the user experience of our website (fast loading, easy usability on any screen and device).
Something else to keep in mind is that no matter how outstanding the search engine optimization of your website is, on Google’s organic search results page, there are 3-4 paid ads above the organic results. So although you may be in the first organic position, you may not be able to grab the attention of the visitors and get the majority of clicks.
It is therefore important not to rely solely on SEO, but also to use paid online advertising where possible. Advertising on your own brand name with a minimum budget is a must-have item in 2022!
Search engine optimisation is based on keyword research
For a new website, we need to do a thorough keyword research at the design stage. This keyword research provides the ammunition for designing the menu structure and sub-pages of the website.
As part of keyword research, we need to look at all relevant search terms, for example:
- general terms for product/service
- own brand searches, own company searches
- competitor product/service search terms
- long tail terms: search for specific product features.
If you want to optimise your existing website for search engine optimisation or to get a higher ranking in Google search, the starting point is to look at Google Analytics data and Google Search Console data, as well as Google Ads data.
If the above data doesn’t get you ahead in your website SEO action plan (because these tools didn’t give you enough data to get started), you may want to consider using SEO software. There are many subscription SEO software available around the world, but we specifically recommend SemRush. It is the most advanced tool currently available, and it’s way ahead of the competition in both functionality and usefulness.
What are the basic settings that affect the search ranking of a website?
You should know that certain basic factors have a big impact on the search engine optimisation of a website. When you create a new website, the content management system (CMS) of the website already determines certain things that you will not be able to change later on, and this can also affect the SEO of your website.
For example, can we include our main keyword in the main url of our website or not? For some website CMSs, the main page can simply be the domain, after which we cannot put an extra url (for example for WordPress CMS).
Search engine optimisation starts by incorporating the main keywords you want to appear for into your website. For example, if we provide a website search engine optimisation service, this could be “website search engine optimisation” or “website seo“. Sticking with this example, search engine optimisation of our website starts with:
- the use of the focus term in the visible descriptive texts of the website (text descriptions)
- the appearance of the term in the visible headings (h1, h2, etc.), page titles (title) of the website
- appearance of the term in the filename, title and alt text of images on the website
- the appearance of the term in the url of the website (e.g. /website-search-engine-optimisation/)
- the appearance of the term in the meta descriptions (title and description) of each sub-page of the website.
Think of all the ways people who need our service can search for it in Google search:
- search by brand (company name, fancy name)
- search by service (e.g. website search engine optimisation, search engine optimised website)
search by other attributes (e.g. lead generation website search engine optimisation, small business website search engine optimisation).
What else should we look out for to ensure proper SEO?
The basic settings described in the previous section are just the tip of the iceberg.
In any market – where competition for top organic search positions is intense – much more is needed to succeed.
If you’re in a market and industry with such strong competition, you’ll most certainly need to have professional SEO software in place.
In addition to the technical and content optimisation of the website itself, you need to be an expert in several other areas to get your website ranked in Google search, such as link building (not link buying!), content marketing, social media marketing.
What can a SEO tool (such as SemRush) do?
It is very important to emphasize that SEO analytics software only performs analysis and audit of our website and provides us with useful data for search engine optimization, but it does not perform SEO tasks for us! They give suggestions, point out technical and content deficiencies, but we have to take the necessary steps to improve them.
A few examples of useful information that can be obtained by using an SEO tool:
- Keyword report: organic positioning for each specific keyword
- Report for given competitors, comparison with our own website
- Website technical audit (more extensive and detailed than Google Search Console)
- Monitoring of social media activity and reach of specified competitors, comparison with our own social media presence
- Backlink audit (analysis of links to our website in terms of quality, quantity and risk)
- Content marketing topic ideas.
More information about SemRush can be found here.
Summary
Search engine optimisation is a complex task for a lead-generating website, and positioning a brand new website high in the search engine in a highly competitive market is a complex task.
Do not expect immediate results from search engine optimisation and be aware of the limitations of SEO (e.g. paid ads at the top of the page, Google algorithm updates, time requirements)!
If you are determined enough, you should definitely use professional SEO software to ensure success!