How do you make prospective customers knock at your door, eager to get what you have to offer?

That’s one of the most asked questions among business owners regardless of their size or industry.

Two popular tactics to get people to find and reach out to businesses are SEO and lead generation.

But acquiring and nurturing leads is no easy task.

That’s where having access to great resources comes into play.

One such example is the Yeah-Local blog.

Not only that they provide fresh and new perspective on old-as-time topics, but their findings are based on tests and experiments.

Here are some of their best tips on Local SEO, lead generation, link-building, reviews, and SEO, broken down into smaller sections.

Local SEO

• Pick the Best Keywords. It should go without saying that using the right keywords on your web pages is crucial for an efficient SEO strategy. Try to put yourself in your prospective customer’s shoes and think what they would search for and how would they phrase their needs when researching for the products or services you provide? How do your customers and potential customers describe your product? They might not use the more technical terminology you do. So, that has to come across on your web content. Because, while you may know your product and industry by very technical terms, your customers are not using those terms when they search for your products online. Getting into your customers’ heads is pretty much the best thing you could do, but it requires some sharp intuition and a tad bit of help. Use tools such as Google Keyword Planner to research keywords and find those that are relevant to your audience and your business.

• Create High-Quality Content. Big-time turn on for your customers since empty words are out of style already. Turn again to the “get inside your customers’ heads” trick, and you might just discover what it is that they’re dying to hear/read/watch. Create content that specifically addresses the most poignant, relevant information your prospective clients are interested in and cut anything other than that.

• Create a Page for Each Location. Yes, you do want to make sure your different business locations are targeted differently. Make sure to create a different page for each one of your locations by using targeted title tags and specific content and description.

For some more great tips around Local SEO, be sure to read this great article here.

Link Building

• Have a Great Strategy in Place. One thing that always comes in great support of your SEO efforts is link building. Google used the Penguin algorithm to prevent black-hat SEO techniques. Black-hat SEO (aka people with bad-quality sites trying to “game” Google’s algorithm to get their content to the top via search algorithm exploits) can get their sites with controversial links pointing to them, or those coming from questionable sites penalized. At the same time, Google’s Penguin algorithm rewarded websites with high-quality link profiles. Recovering from a Penguin penalty was difficult and took a long time, but the new update introduced various significant changes, such as real-time updates. If your business is trying to get better visibility online, it needs good-quality links from reputable sites. How you are going to get those links is strategy you’ll need to work on.

• Make it Relevant. It needs to go without saying that your link building strategy should be relevant to your industry and the types of products and services that you provide. External links pointing to a website have got to be relevant to the content and add value to your articles and to the users who click on them. It does require much more resources and insight, but it is the only way to make it right. Not to mention, if your link building is done poorly and is aggressively spammy, you might get some full on penalties from Google – and you surely do not want that.

• Play It Safe. No good can be done unless it is done safely. Safe backlinking requires using guest posts, foundational links and building other high-quality, relevant and significant backlinks from trusted sources. Backlinking is surely a science in and of itself, so you will need to pay careful attention to aspects such as the anchor texts to use, the number of links to provide, choosing relevant, powerful referring websites, etc.

Keep reading some more great insights on link building by checking out this article.

Getting Reviews

• Provide Your Customers with Great Service. Nothing impresses a client more than receiving amazing services for the prices (s)he is paying. Standing out from your competitors based on simply providing great services is the number one way to get amazing reviews and a stellar reputation. Show your customers that you care about them by giving them gifts on special occasions, sending birthday cards, checking up on them to see how satisfied they are with your services/products, and so on. These are small gestures that can take your small business a long way. Customers remember especially how you and your products made them feel. If they have a positive association with your brand, they will be more likely to rave about your business and publish great reviews.

• Ask for Reviews. This practice can make the difference between you and your competitors providing equally great services. You may provide an amazing service, better than anyone else out there, but if potential customers don’t hear about your current customers’ experience, how will they hear about it? Reviews from customers show potential customers what it’s like to be a customer. You need to get reviews, but because customers do not often think to write reviews unprompted, you’ll need to ask. Sure, you might feel uncomfortable always asking people to review your products and business, but the effort is worth it. You’d be surprised to see how many people would love to give you a good review – remember, customers feel more drawn to writing reviews after having had a negative experience than after having a great one. So kindly get your satisfied customers into the “review funnel.”
• Make Adding Reviews Easy. Not everyone might think of writing a review, so you want to get as many on board as possible. The only secret here is making it as easy and smooth as possible. Send them an email that includes a link to the review site, a kind request to help out everybody out there get the best tips from their purchasing experience. List all the aspects you would want them to review about: quality of the products/services, waiting times, customer support, if they would recommend you to others, and so on.

Make sure you keep on reading about valuable insights on online reviews here.

Local Lead Gen

• Research. To start on the right foot, find out who your target audience is and what are they searching for online. Understanding their needs and their online research behavior is the backbone of great lead capturing.

• Paid Online Advertising. Capturing specific leads looking for your precise services or products is one of the biggest pluses of paid online advertising. All you need to drive such highly targeted traffic to your website is a monthly budget and some spot-on keywords. Use keywords that show the buyer’s intent. “Where to buy Nike shoes online” shows that someone is ready to make a purchase as compared to someone who might be in the research phase. As an example “What’s the difference between Nike and Reebok shoes” is a research question. Someone with that search term is probably not ready to buy. Save your budget for the people with intent to purchase first.

• Connect through Social Media. Reaching out to local prospects can happen effectively through an active, catchy social media profile for your business. Make it all about your prospective customers and what they like and build a solid, trustworthy connection with them.

• Build a Targeted Email List. You can generate new leads by inviting your prospects to subscribe to your email list. To make it valuable and worth the time to your customers, always include a nice giveaway to go along with the subscription. Not only can you build your email list like this, but you also build authority and trustworthiness. People are more likely to subscribe if there’s something in it for them. Newsletters are fine, but premium content is better.

• Be There to Help. Nothing makes a prospective customer happier than getting help for a pressing situation they might be in. It makes them happy, and it makes you trustworthy in their eyes. Implement consistent strategies to build online visibility based on helping your customers out with valuable information, such as blogging.

• Optimize Local Listings. Local listings such as Yahoo Local, Google My Business or Bing Local are powerful tools for building that desired connection with local customers. To make them come up higher in search results, you want your listings to be complete and optimized.

For more great tips on getting those local leads, read this full article here.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Make Them Work Together. SEO and good website design go hand-in-hand. Without good on-site SEO, the website won’t be found by customers. Without good design, people won’t stay on your website. And when you make your website SEO optimized, results will flourish. Having a clean, catchy website conveys authority and trust, but on its own it doesn’t always seal the deal SEO-wise. Likewise, simply focusing on SEO while neglecting web design can simply put you on the bottom list among all those who rank high and at the same time do care for the design. If SEO is what tickles your fancy, web design is what makes your customers appreciate your business.

• Start With an SEO Optimized Back-End First. While they both play an important part, it is essential to start off with the SEO dimension and only after that, you can add the design elements. With web design sometimes being all about complicated design codes, you will end up wasting a lot of time into slimming it down for the search engine optimization upgrade.

• Make It Easy. The whole purpose of mixing both SEO and web design is to give your customers a smooth, attractive ride while exploring your website AND get the high ranking you need. Easy navigation for your customers is a clear step into making your traffic relevant and getting those highly wanted conversions. Make sure you invest in a nice, clean web design that focuses on creating a smooth and easy experience for all your prospective clients.

• Be Mobile-Friendly. Having a mobile-friendly website can make or break your high search rankings. With a significant amount of search engine traffic coming from mobile devices, you wouldn’t want to neglect this. Especially because today more than 50% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. If anything, you should at least strive to make it mobile-optimized according to Google’s algorithms. You can check out your mobile-friendliness level here. Remember, your website’s mobile usability can make the difference between actually creating those conversions or simply getting lots of lead-free traffic.

Find out more great insights about how to search-engine optimize your website by reading this great article here.

Conclusion

To sum it all up, getting that SEO campaign up and running smoothly is one smart way to go around your marketing and to turn your website into a lead generating machine.

The Yeah-Local blog is a great resource if you are looking to boost your SEO and lead generation knowledge.

The resources provide some in-depth looks at lead gen and SEO

I also recommend you to join their newsletter since it’s also packed with valuable content.

If you have thoughts about the Yeah-Local blog, please feel free to share it below. What tips have you gotten?

What new did you learn through this article?

I would love to learn about your experience. Please share your feedback below.