The Secrets to Increasing Your Lead Gen with Local SEO

---

Lead generation is important for any business to grow. Businesses can generate leads from various sources.

They include email marketing, advertising, referral programs, and SEO. Such activities aim to create greater business awareness and achieve higher sales.

With more people now looking for products and services online. 

Businesses need to have a great local SEO strategy in place. SEO helps businesses improve online visibility and get more traffic. People who visit the website can turn into customers and increase business revenue. 

What Is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is the process of making businesses appear attractive to potential consumers. It includes marketing a company in a way that gets the attention of people. 

By definition, a lead is anyone who shows interest in the products and services of a particular company. Companies can easily collect data to know the amount of user interest in their products. 

Companies can use different marketing strategies to convert existing leads and generate more leads. 

Social media, search engine optimization, and link building are some activities that companies can use for lead generation. 

Local SEO Tips To Increase Lead Generation

---

Let's look at 10 local SEO tips to boost lead generation. 

1. Use Location-Specific Keywords

Local and small businesses need to use location-specific keywords on their website. This will help them optimize and increase their presence to generate leads. 

Different bulk keyword generator tools can help companies get the right keywords. All they need to do is enter the products/ services and the area name they offer. For example, they can enter the tool's product name and service area if they run a burger joint in London. 

This would get them all the keywords they must target. 

Keywords like best burger joint in London, burger in London, a burger restaurant in London are some keywords that will appear. This will tell you exactly what people in your area are searching for. 

Bulk Keyword Generator Tools 

• Ahrefs: Get keywords based on industry type, know keyword difficulty score, and what locals are searching for. Below screenshot shows the location-specific keywords generated for the focus keyword “salon in new york”

• SEMrush: SEMrush offers local keywords and lots of variations of similar phrases. 
• Higher visibility: Higher visibility offers keyword recommendations based on business category and location. 

2. Learn From Competitors

Small and local businesses that do not have a lot of expertise in SEO can learn from competitors. By doing this, they can know which keywords are ranking and different sources of traffic. This can help significantly with lead generations. Businesses can prepare the exact strategy to target and convert users by researching their competitors. 

Tools To Research Competitors

• Talkwalker:It provides real-time competitor analysis for several performance metrics. 

Look at the screenshot below showing how it offers a competitor's comparison. 

• Adbeat: It provides key insights into local businesses' ad strategies to generate leads.
• Buzzsumo: It provides key content insights like top-ranking content of a website, best formats, and trend analysis. 

3. Write SEO-Based Content

Businesses need to write SEO-based content as it ranks higher. Also, they must include relevant and attractive images. 

Content that is easy to read makes users stay longer on the page. Thus, increasing the chances of sales. Search engines want blogs that include subheadings and are easy to understand. 

Also, meta description and meta title are necessary for content to rank. Other SEO best practices include adding links, including the call to action, using lists, tags, bullet points, etc. 

Tools To Format Content For High SEO Score 

• Seobility: It helps find web page errors and correct them as per SEO best practices. Also, it lets you compare with top ranking pages, keywords, etc., to help achieve higher SEO scores. 

• Seoreviewtools: It displays the content's SEO score and how it will appear on Google. 
• Smallseotools: It helps you check SEO issues with web pages and provides solutions to fix them.

4. Google My Business Listing

Google My Business GMB listing helps local businesses create their identity. It also helps them manage their online presence on the search engine, Google maps, and other platforms. Also, businesses with GMB listings appear legitimate and get more location visits. Thus, they are more effective in generating higher traffic and more leads. 

How To Improve GMB Listing Profile

• Add working hours 

• Manage reviews
• Add photos
• Verify business location 

Read: Step-by-step Setup Guide for Google My Business Set up

5. Boost Website Speed

Businesses with good website loading speed receive more traffic. Visitors do not abandon web pages that open immediately after clicking. Any business can only convert a successful lead if users can browse the website seamlessly. Suppose a website doesn't load fast, then all the marketing initiatives to get leads become redundant. 

Tools To Boost Website Speed

• Pagespeed insights: It offers the current page speed score and suggestions to improve it. Take a look at the below screenshot of insights provided for a sample page speed test. 

• GTMetrix: It helps check how long it takes to load a website and suggests steps to boost it. 
• Pingdom: It helps deliver a comprehensive experience to users by improving all website speed metrics. 

6. NAPW Information In Directories

NAPW stands for name, address, password, and website. Local businesses need to upload it to different directories to target interested visitors. Local businesses cannot miss the opportunity to convert visitors into leads. They need NAPW management tools to ensure that the information is consistent everywhere. 

Tools To Manage NAP Information Across Listings

• Moz: Moz helps you check listing accuracy and whether there are duplicate listings. 
• Yext: Yext helps businesses maintain different listings on various directories. It also helps ensure the NAPW information is accurate in all listings.

• Loganix: It provides local citation campaigns to get higher traffic and boosts search engine rankings. 

Read: The Role of NAP in Local SEO

7. Increase social media presence

A strong social media presence can indirectly contribute to SEO. Social media is an effective tool in getting traffic to your website to sell your products and services. 

Some popular social media platforms are LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Brands that invest in social media marketing can use backlinks for SEO on their pages. Google considers such pages while ranking websites. Thus, creating a strong social media presence can facilitate lead generation. 

Tools To Increase And Manage Social Media Presence 

• Sprout Social: It offers a complete dashboard that links with business profiles on various social media pages. See below screenshot of its dashboard with a social media campaign tab, content calendar, scheduled posts, and many more. 

• Hootsuite: It helps businesses learn about new trends and get insights and analytics to drive more traffic. 
• MeetEdgar: It helps companies automate their social media accounts to engage their audience continuously. 

8. Backlink Building 

A backlink is a link that directs traffic from one online source to another. For example, the below screenshot shows the URLs having a link pointing to another site on their page. 

This can be a webpage, landing page, website, or social media profile. Businesses must create sufficient backlinks on popular web pages and channels. They can do this through guest posting, external linking, and landing pages. Also, businesses can partner with influencers and popular creators on social media. They can ask them to give a shoutout to their brand or add their link to popular videos/blogs. 

Tools To Build Backlinks

• Linkody: It is one of the best link-building tools in the market that offers a comprehensive link index for businesses. 
• Group high: Businesses can find content influencers and popular bloggers who can share links with a relevant audience.
• JustReachOut: It offers an extensive PR database to connect with journalists who can promote links to your business.

Read: How Can Local Businesses Build Quality Local Backlinks?

9. Customer Support

Businesses must provide 24/7 support to their existing customers and new visitors. By doing this, they will be answering any queries that they have. Also, they will gain new insights into customer behavior and what visitors want. Understanding consumers is important to lend a personal touch in sales and upselling. Businesses can either use chatbots or employ trained sales agents to achieve this. Thus, they can generate and convert more leads. 

Tools That Provide Customer Support 

• Zendesk: It provides excellent customer support for users as they can connect with businesses anytime. 

Take a look at the below screenshot of their dashboard showing how their tickets appear.

• Freshdesk: It is a helpdesk tool that offers a unified customer timeline so that any agent can easily access consumer history.
• Olark: Olark offers live chat and customer support features that help leverage data from user behavior.

10. Review Management

Local and small businesses must always ask customers to leave a review. Also, they must respond to negative reviews by addressing the issues of particular customers. 

Look at the screenshot below of a negative review left wide open to the public without a response. It creates a negative impression among both the audience and search engines.

Reviews are instrumental in converting visitors into customers. Businesses that have better online reputations have an edge over their competitors. Moreover, visitors prefer businesses that constantly engage with their customers. 

Review Management Tools 

• Broadly: It helps businesses identify happy customers, get positive reviews and promote them on popular platforms. 
• Ormexpert: It provides businesses the option to filter and manage reviews online. 
• Brand 24: It helps businesses discover all their online mentions and helps them manage them. 

Lead Generation And Local SEO FAQs

Q1: What Is SEO Lead Generation?

SEO lead generation is the process of generating customers through SEO. Businesses with good SEO can rank higher in search engines like Google. 

They are visible to people searching for their products and services online. 

Q2: Is SEO Free?

There are plenty of free SEO tools available online. However, if you want to achieve great results, you must choose experts. 

SEO experts know all about how to generate leads. Also, they help you create an excellent online presence. Thus, they improve your business's visibility and revenue. 

Q3: What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO involves improving the online presence of a local business. It includes local keywords, data of local visitors, and local directories. 

Businesses must optimize their website as per these searches. Also, they must keep information consistent and attach physical store images.

Key Takeaways

---

• Find and use local keywords.
• Research about competitors 
• Optimize content as per SEO
• Create Google My Business Listing 
• Improve website speed 
• Keep NAPW information the same 
• Boost social media presence 
• Build and promote backlinks 
• Offer great customer support 
• Manage reviews