There's no doubt about it - as a business owner, you need to be doing everything you can to attract new customers. You know you're wasting so much time and effort, as well as energy because you're trying to get customers to chase you. Just like shouting from the rooftops, it's exhausting in the end. Besides that, you have a business that's entirely dependent on paid traffic, which is risky.
But that's not the option to get things done. It's a great way to do this through SEO, optimizing your website and content for Google search. By ranking higher in search results, you'll bring more traffic your way and convert more of those visitors into customers.
Organic SEO expert Gert Mellak will share his stand on SEO from this podcast episode of Superfast Business with James Shramko. So read on to learn more!
Getting New Customers with SEO
Table of Contents
Why do you need SEO to get more traffic?
One best way to attract new customers is through SEO. By optimizing your website and content for search engines, you can attract more people looking for what you have to offer. And best of all, SEO is a cost-effective way to reach potential customers.
So if you're looking for ways to expand your business, consider using SEO to bring in more traffic and leads.
James agreed how SEO helps them navigate to position number one for a phrase that picks them up. With the help of SEOLeverage™️, users are coming into their site to look for answers to their queries.
Is it possible to get more people without a strategy?
How often do they already have people coming to them on tap, or is that what they're trying to achieve?
According to Gert, several of their clients have had great success with Facebook, Google ads, and YouTube ads. But, they claim obviously there are high ad costs. Perhaps, ad spending can quickly spin out of control.
Some people have to stop investing in advertising since they haven't been able to generate a real return on investment in the last quarter. While Facebook advertising is quite straightforward at times, they come with their own set of issues. Your Facebook account may be suspended, or something may influence how your ads are shown, or your audience may experience ad issues.
At this point, many customers turn to SEO. James agreed that they're prepared to invest for the long haul, so they invest upfront. But the benefit of that is that they have a high-profit margin business now.
How to get better results with SEO
What sort of barriers do you think are there for clients when they think of SEO to pay upfront?
There is more complexity involved in people's minds than it actually is. Gert added that they're doubtful if they should start with SEO efforts. So, how does all of this SEO stuff work?
Build a competitive team
In order to stay on top of the competition, you need to have a team that can dedicate resources to your project. Ideally, you have at least an assistant or a writer or someone who can maintain your website and work for hand in hand with you.
With Gert's team, they sometimes handle the entire execution for clients. But they still need a person who can approve content, the one who can give them information. A call once in a while is vital to get some feedback. Furthermore, they need someone who can essentially work with them and where they can either guide their process to work their SEO.
Set aside the doubts
There are actually a lot of doubts involved in what it means to run an SEO campaign. It will take time to build up a momentum where you then see things are moving.
"What's missing for most businesses is that they're not actually keeping an eye on it."
Gert Mellak
But what's missing for most businesses is that they're not actually keeping an eye on it. They're not even thinking about it. Perhaps it's so powerful that it could replace their other traffic campaigns.
Then you'll see that Google is picking up faster on new content, as well as see internal linking working out. And this is where your motivation kicks in, where you'll get excited to see those leads and sales coming in.
Consistency matters
Seo is not just one content and one title tag. It's a whole series of things, as well as efforts.
"Consistency is the key for higher search engine results."
Gert Mellak
See it as similar to fitness status. When you go to a gym, the personal trainer makes your first assessment. They're not going to tell you that you should eat a carrot every day. But they definitely give you a lot of what you need to do everything right to reach your fitness goals.
That's also what SEO should be. Get things in motion, build the proper structure and get your site to load quickly. Then, you'll have some links coming back to your site. Take note that if you make small changes, it can dramatically impact your website ranking.
Know your target audience
Gert and his team have a specific onboarding process they have refined or used in real-time. This is where they spend a lot of time getting to know a customer's business from the client's perspective. So ultimately, they are in search marketing, which means they need to understand how their target audience searches.
For example, if you're a law firm, they need to know how your future clients are searching queries. Where they could come across your content and decide to opt-in or download something, everybody on your team should know precisely what such a target client is like. Also, what they search for, how they ask questions on the search engine.
“ Extensive research and a couple of calls with every new client are essential.”
Gert Mellak
In a nutshell, Gert says that extensive research and a couple of calls with every new client are essential. The first call is about ensuring that 100% understand who their clients are trying to target.
On the other hand, the second call understands what they're trying to achieve. Also, how Gert thinks his SEO strategy should be to reach those people in search.
Once done, they can have an overall strategic umbrella over the whole SEO strategy. And then, they started the approach called Erica Framework. This guarantees strategic execution to improve your website's SEO. Also, protect your website from Google penalties and updates.
What do you need if you don't see any results from your current SEO efforts?
As James said, it's not a one-shot thing as well as it's not all in one area focus. People focus on content alone or a link-building program only. He sees how people do this, perhaps when they misunderstand what SEO is.
"Just like a garden, you have to keep maintaining your website's SEO."
Gert Mellak
Just like a garden, you have to keep maintaining your website's SEO. Once you see the momentum going, you can absolutely see an increase in ranking.
Gert cited that many resources and money are actually being wasted with his clients. If he asked what they did in the past for SEO, many of them pointed to the WordPress plugin they used.
SEO is a strategic focus, as Gert added. However, it doesn't mean that every single article is going to rank high on your website. It's worth noting that articles have different purposes. Some articles have the goal of documenting that there's a podcast episode. Other articles aim to bring in the right audience to turn into leads by downloading an ebook or pdf. And more blog posts have the purpose of sitting there for better social media engagement.
But what should be intended to search for? What's really important is to find out which ones are those individual articles. In this way, it drives the right people in. It's easy to filter those articles out that actually drive those conversions.
"Identify what's important for conversions and have someone who monitors consistently."
Gert Mellak
So identify what's essential for conversions and have someone who monitors consistently. Also, point you to those URLs that make a difference in your business.
Measuring the success of your SEO efforts
Once you see that you start ranking for not only ranking for specific terms that are interesting for your industry, it will be rewarding. Some rankings bring in traffic that requests a proposal and wants to get in touch with you. Other traffic books in a call with you or actually make a sale.
Start to make an audit, and make sure you have a solid technical foundation. There are no roadblocks for Google to index and understand how the site is structured. Besides that, make sure that you have the data tracking in place.
"Jumping like 30% in conversions by putting extra buttons and leveraging the content."
Gert Mellak
Lastly, understand what kind of traffic brings certain kinds of results. You can jump like 30% in conversions by putting extra buttons and leveraging the content. That's why Gert suggests putting lead magnets and opt-ins to drive more of the right traffic to ebooks.
Have questions or need help getting started? Shoot us an email here. We'd love to chat with you about your business and how we can help increase your website traffic and sales.
