How does SEO affect lead generation for IT companies?
SEO optimization is an important part of digital marketing and a powerful lead generation tool. However, not every owner of an IT company knows how to use the site to produce the desired customer from the search engines, so today, we’ll try to figure it out.
What is SEO?
SEO is the process of improving the visibility and traffic of your website through organic or free search results. The practice of enhancing your web pages is to improve your search results ranking. The ultimate goal of SEO is to increase the visibility of websites so that you can reach the right people with the search engines.
Good SEO:
- improves the visibility and ranking of the site in search engines;
- increases traffic to the resource from search engines;
- makes your product or service reliable in the eyes of the user.
Those in TOP Google always have clients. That’s why ad units are placed first in the search engine results; then, there are so-called organic search results. There are a total of 10 of them. Some statistics:
- only 9% of users look through the first search engine results page to the end;
- 65% choose links from organic search results;
- 19% of users go to the links from the Google Ads;
- only 0.44% of users go to the second page of the SERP.
It means that the higher your site’s position in the search results, the more traffic you get. Therefore, the better optimized your site for search engines and the higher your position, the more relevant visitors you will have.
Analysts from Backlinko and ClickFlow Finds examined CTR 874,929 pages and more than five million search queries to determine what factors have the most impact on the organic CTR. They found out that, of course, the highest organic traffic gives the first Google search page.
There is a sharp decline in CTR starting from the second page.
Analysis of the first page showed that the first link in Google search results has an average CTR of 31.7%. Moreover, the chance that the user will click on it is ten times higher than that for the 10th search result.
Therefore, here are some ways in which you can effectively use SEO to aid your lead generation efforts:
- Conduct an audit of your website
- Study your keywords
- Update existing content on the page
- Compare the performance of your competitors
- Create an ongoing content strategy
- Create a strategy for increasing the reverse link
What is lead generation?
Lead generation focuses on making your consumers interested in your product or service with the ultimate aim of sale. This is an important process for both B2B and B2C companies.
What does lead generation do? Its task is to:
- support healthy business growth;
- attract qualified potential clients;
- facilitate the connection of the consumer to the customer.
In other words, the generation of potential customers (or lead generation) is the process of formation of interest in your business to create a list of potential customers.
At this point, you might be wondering what the connection is between the two strategies.
First, it’s necessary to explain that SEO and lead generation are not the same thing. SEO-optimization site is focused on increasing web traffic and, while lead generation aims to increase the number of customers/potential customers for your business. However, SEO can contribute to the efforts of current campaigns by raising awareness of your company with the help of organic traffic to a website.
Why is SEO perfect for lead generation?
Let’s assume that a company is looking for a outsource software development contractor. The responsible company manager is not sure where to find a reliable provider. Hence, Google terms “software development outsourcing” or “software engineering outsource.”
Then they come across a blog called “Best Software Development Outsourcing Companies.”
They go to the blog and find out which of the companies are the best in different countries, who and by what criteria is better to choose, find the relevant expertise on the website page, and contacts them.
The second scenario: the manager finds a similar article with a link to your site on one of the authoritative publications. After reviewing the content, they go to your site, familiarize themselves with services and expertise, and contact you if it seems interesting to them.
Thus, backlinks from trusted sources, combined with keyword-optimized content on your company’s website, help the manager make a decision.
How does SEO help lead generation?
In a nutshell, this is how it works.
- SEO helps you evaluate the business-related keywords you need to target.
- Potential customers will find your content through organic search results.
- If the content suits the needs of your target audience, you can convert an average visitor to a potential customer and ultimately make a sale.
SEO will act as a funnel that attracts the flow of potential customers to your website. As a result, it will make your website one of the best lead generation tools out there.
Previously, most companies used cold sales. With the arrival of digital marketing, cold selling has become less effective.
In contrast, SEO (inbound marketing tactic) helps customers find you.
Here are some interesting lead generation and SEO statistics you need to know:
- 57% of B2B marketers say that SEO brings more potential customers than any other marketing initiative (source – Junto).
- Potential SEO clients have a closing ratio of 14.6% (source – HubSpot).
- If done right, SEO can deliver a conversion rate of 14.6% (source – 99 firms).
In general, if you are looking for an effective strategy to attract more potential clients, then lead generation and SEO promotion is the strategy you can’t ignore.
Finally, you can use SEO tactics yourself, using tips from our blog to refresh the lead generation strategy.
Remember: SEO is a competitive marketing strategy used by many B2B and B2C companies.
If you are looking for an experienced partner to guide your potential customers through the sales funnel, bizZzdev can help you. We are working with SEO and lead generation for IT companies in total for more than six years and know precisely how to help your business get new leads.
