Quality leads are the lifeblood of Web design companies, and without them, there is no chance to build a sustainable business doing what you love the most. But how can you get quality Web design leads? Where are your customers?
Or better yet: do your customers know how to find you?
We’re going to tackle these vital questions today, as well as the factors that prevent businesses from generating the leads that they need to be profitable.
The Big Challenge
If you move past all the noise and clutter, there really is just one big challenge that you need to overcome as a business attempting to generate more quality leads: actually getting founds.
In a recent survey carried out by Hubspot, it has been discovered that the best performing marketers are the ones that have invested heavily in the following:
1. Improving traffic generation through organic traffic.
2. Relevant and engaging in blogging.
3. Amplifying the reach of existing content.
If you already visualize the effort, you are basically tasked with two things: creating relevant and engaging content and getting as many people as possible to see your content.
Quality lead generation happens afterward. But there are catches: there are always catches with lead gen. Almost 50% of all Google searches are seeking local information, and a staggering 88% of the people who perform the searches use their mobile devices to contact the businesses that they find, theoretically to buy a product/service, or ask for more information.
What we are actually seeing here is the immense power of organic search to generate leads almost instantly.
But then again, your business has to be visible on Google before the magic can take place. If your competition is more visible, they’re going to get the business, period.
TAKEAWAY: High visibility is your # 1 priority this year and beyond.
How to improve content visibility?
If you have been struggling to bring your content to the right kinds of readers, try these techniques:
1. Shift to better keywords
The era of targeting keywords just because the keyword volume is tantalizing is over.
Keyword volume should be considered just one of the many factors that get people to click and read content.
Since half of all searches are local, it’s imperative that you shift to keywords that are likely used by people when they want to buy your product or service.
Forget about high competition keywords where a hundred thousand other marketers are vying for a spot. Go local, and think logically when realigning your keyword targets.
2. Master on-page optimization
There is no shortcut for on-page optimization. Among the things that you have to take care of during the audit are:
– Make sure that the title tags contain both the focus keyword and the gist what the content is about.
Take note that the title tag (on the HTML code) can be different from the actual title or headline of a blog or article. If you feel that you need to tweak the title tag a little to make it more appealing to readers, do it.
– The focus keyword should also be present in a natural volume in the metadescription.
While metadescriptions can theoretically go on and on, Google only displays a maximum of 160 characters. Metadescriptions are important because people can’t see your content yet; all they have is the title tag and metadescription.
– Google has repeated for years that the search engine is particularly interested in the URL name of pages. Say no to weird and randomly generated URLs. Instead, add the focus keyword on the URL and make it just as descriptive as the title tag.
– The H1 tag should contain your focus keyword plus any appropriate modifiers.
– Image optimization is key to getting your images up on the Google Images tab. Consider this type of structure: <img src=”Premium-web-design.png” alt=”Premium Web Design for Everyone” title=”Premium Web Design Services Ontario/>
You can tweak the structure of the titling as you see fit, but as you can see, our recommended structure is as specific as it gets, and is bound to be picked up quickly be search engines because the titles are not garbled or random. Again, specificity with your HTML data will get your website places, fast.
– H2 and H3 tags are excellent for lending coherence and structure to your content – they allow Google to make sense of the context of what is written, and if the right factors align, these can boost your rankings almost immediately. Use tools like Yoast SEO to check the quality of your H1, H2, and H3 tags.
TAKEAWAY: Fix all HTML tags and make sure that they correspond to the focus keywords and other factors that affect local search. Google has to know exactly who your content is aimed at, and what your content is about.
3. Focus on off-site optimization, too.
To date, Google uses over 200 signals or factors to evaluate whether a page deserves a top spot on the search results, or not.
One of the top factors that affect the rankings is how many authoritative websites are actually linking back to your page/content.
This factor, along with others, cross the boundary of on-page optimization and spills to the zone of off-page optimization. Here’s a checklist of the most important audits:
– First of all, don’t buy links from black hat or even white hat companies. Basically, you are exposing your website to a lot of risk because you don’t know exactly where they will be generating the links.
Google has long penalized link farms and content farms, and these spell bad news for everyone, generally speaking.
No matter how much money you spend on them, there is always a risk that these websites will be identified as no good by Google, and if they sink, your website is sinking along with them.
– Use tools like Link Explorer to find out what kinds of websites or pages are already linking back to your website. The MOZ tool is a good place to start, and the more you know about who is referring organic traffic to your pages, the better.
– Using a link scanner, check where high quality links are coming from and try to get more links from these sources. The same principle applies when you are scanning high quality inbound links to your competitors’ websites. Who is giving your competition a high level of competitiveness and authority? Perhaps it’s possible to get the same inbound links from these high authority websites.
– Explore the possibility of spreading your brand’s message through social media. Social media offers businesses a new system of spreading brand awareness and generate new leads.
Create a presence in the most popular and relevant social media platforms and make sure that you publish relevant content regularly. We cannot emphasize this enough: the content that is going up on your social media platforms should be engaging, authoritative, and relevant to your users. And unless you have knowledge of what makes your market tick, you won’t be able to determine what your customers need the most, information-wise.
TAKEAWAY: High quality inbound links, or nothing. Buying links will kill your website’s reputation, for sure.
4. Explore Web push notifications
Web push notifications are small, bite-sized messages or notifications that are sent directly by websites to the mobile devices of users who have visited their online property sometime in the past.
These notifications are comparable to mobile app push notifications, only they are sent by websites instead of mobile apps. The best thing about Web push notifications is they can be received by users regardless of the device they’re using. So whether they’re on their Mac, PC, or phone, you can deliver bite-sized messages to them through your website.
Web push notifications are permission-based so the chances of being flagged or reported as spam is minimal. With this new system, it is possible to:
– Improve your opt-in rates
– Increase CTR
– Improve overall user experience through the delivery of targeted content
This channel for digital marketing remains viable because an average of 42% of global online time is still accomplished through the desktop computer, and this is still a substantial amount of users at any time of the day. There’s the cost factor to think about, too. Creating a mobile app for your brand can easily cost your business, and distributing the app is another thing altogether.
There is no guarantee that people would actually download your app and if they will download, retention is the problem.
People only keep apps that they think are truly useful, because apps bog down mobile systems easily. It’s easy to configure your website to accept opt-ins for push notifications. Once you have set that up, here are our guidelines for writing kickass copy for push notifications: ‘
1. Be absolutely clear about what you want to communicate to your users. Because the push notifications aren’t really something that people expect, you have an even short period to impress them and get them to click the notification, which would then open the preloaded URL.
2. Being concise is a power when writing copy as short as this. We’re talking about writing crisp messages that are only 40-120 characters in length. Focus on the value that you are offering with the message. Think like the customer: what would make you interested even if you are busy with day to day obligations?
3. Classical psychology works well with writing this type of copy. If you are promoting a product or service, focusing on scarcity just might make your users click. So if you are selling something on your website at a discounted price, it’s best to add the time dimension: “50% OFF, 24 hours only.”
4. Don’t forget to add a dash of social validation to make people want to be part of the elite who have benefited from grabbing what you are offering. The statistic has to be beleiveable, relevant, and should answer an urgent problem: “Over 100 companies have boosted their profits <50% in 30 days with our Web design solutions.”
TAKEAWAY: Be strategic when sending Web push notifications and avoid overusing this high-engagement channel.
Preparing Your Content
Everything we have talked about has revolved so far around distributing content. At the heart of the campaign to generate more leads is beautiful, engaging, and intelligently designed content. Here’s how to create exactly that.
1. Quality beats quantity today, more than ever at any point in history. Ten years ago, people were churning out junk by the thousands. People don’t need more junk on the Web browsers. It’s do or die time: you need to create the best content of your life, and with the user experience in mind, or forget about getting organic traffic.
2. There has to be an overall strategy governing content creation, and this strategy has to be tied to site optimization in general. Ideally, your SEO team should be working with your content team as frequently as possible. The SEO side will take care of the focus keywords and the general slant of the needed content, and the content team takes care of the rest. Break this continuity and your content is going to suffer.
3. Think of value always. What is the genuine, honest to goodness value of the content that you are publishing? Why would users want to read your content? How close is it to their hearts and needs?
Let us know in the comments what else you think can improve lead generation for Web design companies!
