You and I want your website to rank well for targeted terms. However, what a lot of people lose focus on, is all the other properties ranking that surround your search terms (branded and non-branded). These other properties, in some cases, are even more important than ranking for your keywords. Why? Well, online consumers are getting more savvy every day. In many cases, a good ranking is not enough. They want verification from third parties. In this post, Ill give some examples and ideas.
11 Modern SEO Strategies for Lead Generation Websites
Branded Search Space
Once someone finds out about your company, they are going to gather information about you before contacting you. This means everything that shows results around your company needs to be positive. This is an element of SEO that is very important, but many SEO companies lose sight over it, as they are focused on non-branded terms.
Social Communities
Each of the social media communities that you are engaged in should also be part of your SEO strategy. Make sure you are targeting these with search engine optimization, they should be ranking page one. Google our company name, and you will see Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Having each of these ranking in our branded search space increase conversion rates. While someone might find us searching a term like “seo company” they will also search Ignite Visibility later and do research.
Yelp
Your Yelp profile is an important part of your SEO strategy. You get a link from it, people check it for reviews and Yelp has awesome rankings for company names and general category keywords. You want to make sure your Yelp is as positive as possible, filled out completely and don’t be afraid to link to it. Yelp ranks for 8.1 million keywords on the first two pages of Google. Make sure you use the power of this site to get your brand ranking as well.
If you are looking for Pizza in San Diego, they are ranked #1.
Quora
Ask a question focused on a keyword in Quora and there is a good chance it will rank in Google. Quora has 800,000 page one rankings. It is a great idea to ask questions surrounding terms. The results you’re getting for your name gain another ranking for your brand that you control.
As we can see, rankings for Quora is exploding! So join them.
Angies List
Angies list is now ranking pretty well. They now have 614,000 page one rankings in Google. Many business can fill out a profile here, get a link and get an additional branded ranking in the search engines.
Industry Specific Review Sites
Industry specific review sites are critical to SEO and developing leads. Try to get listed on as many as possible. The link will help your onsite rankings. Also, in many cases the lists rank really well and even the profiles rank for branded an non-branded terms in many cases. For example. Google doctors in San Diego, the first thing you get is ZocDoc review site. SEO companies should be pushing clients to get on these lists. It helps with referring site leads, general conversion rates, local rankings and more.
Thumbtack
Thumbtack is a Google-backed website that is pretty interesting. You can sign up your business for free and then you need to pay to respond to requests for service. This site ranks really well right now across the board for lead generation based categories. It’s a good idea to be listed on here. The site was penalized recently, but has been coming back very strong.
Glassdoor
Glassdoor is ranking pretty well. They have 1.1 million rankings on the first two pages of Google and are getting more reviews every day. Make sure you maintaining a profile here doing your best to keep is positive.
Guest Posts
When you are writing guest posts you have the opportunity to get them ranked. Take a look at this example.
Here we see, it doesn’t need to be your own website. In some cases, it brings more credibility to your post and even helps your ability to rank if you post on a third party website.
Here we see this Forbes article ranks for 273 terms.
Now, lets talk about this for a second. Why is this article ranking so well? Well, first it is on a very authoritative website. Second, it has over 10,000 backlinks from 318 referring domains over the last 5 years.
Now if you take a look at the anchor text, you can see most is natural, but some looks a little spammy.
Looks like someone might have built some links to this with the term SEO company.
Industry Interviews
If you can do industry interviews and get the posts ranked for keywords (branded and non-branded) that can really help your SEO. For example, someone who wants to use our company Ignite Visibility might do a search on John Lincoln (me). One of the things that comes up is this KUSI interview. I was also interviewed in this Forbes article that now ranks for 7 keywords on the first two pages of Google and has turned into an excellent source of referring site traffic. The article has Tips from SEO Professionals in the title, so you can see the author had rankings in mind.
I hope you enjoyed this post and it gave you some new ideas. Really, the point is that SEO goes way beyond the website, especially when you are focused on led generation. It’s more about your online presence, then getting your site ranked for a few keywords. Consumers need more today.
