The proportion of businesses with a website has grown dramatically over the last decade. In 2021, the majority of companies have a website associated with their brand. However, there’s a big difference between just having a website and having a real, effective web presence.
Unfortunately, most businesses aren’t making the most of their website. They treat it as an afterthought and use it as a static digital brochure rather than a vehicle to drive new opportunities and increase revenue. By neglecting their website, these businesses are losing out on business, sales, and industry exposure.
In this article, we’re going to explain how you can use your website to generate inbound leads, nurture those leads, and drive more conversions for your sales team.
How To Use Your Website To Generate Leads
When used correctly, your website can be a lead generation magnet. Generating leads starts with traffic, so you need to set up your website in a way that brings in as much organic, relevant traffic as possible. Creating traffic requires focusing on SEO (search engine optimization).
If you get your SEO right, you’ll have a better chance of ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs) when your customers search questions relevant to your business. When your website ranks highly, you are more likely to generate inbound traffic and leads.
Follow these recommendations to create an effective SEO-focused website that gets thousands of unique page views every month.
Nail Your UX Design
When embarking on a new website project, start by thinking carefully about your site structure and navigation. The way you organize the pages on your site and how they relate to each other can profoundly affect SEO.
Google uses your site structure for clues about what your business does and where the most critical pages are on your site. Internal links and navigation menus help search engine spiders navigate through your website and determine your authority on a given subject or industry.
One effective SEO method for site structure is the topic-cluster model, in which your broad, detailed content pages (pillar pages) interlink to smaller cluster pages on related sub-topics. Following the topic-cluster model helps boost your topical authority and gives you a better chance of ranking highly for keywords in your niche, thus driving more traffic.
A well-planned site structure is important for SEO, but it’s also important for the user experience. Clear, easily navigated sites make it easier for your audience to find your key sales pages. As a result, potential clients can find your site and convert into business leads.
Fill Your Website With Content
The biggest reason websites fail to drive new opportunities is lack of content. Experienced marketers know that users visit websites for content, and they design their sites with a content-first approach.
Throwing up a brochure-style site with one static homepage isn’t good enough to drive leads. If you want to direct traffic to your site, start by filling it with essential website pages. Depending on your business, essential pages might include an about page, a pricing page, or various informative pages detailing the services you offer.
Though informative website pages are essential for your site, the bulk of your traffic usually comes from blog content. To round out your website and bring in more leads, create a blog section and do careful keyword research to identify what your target customers are searching for. Then, you can create rich, long-form content that responds to the questions your client base searches.
Optimize Your Website Content for Search Results
If you’re trying to optimize your content for search results, create pages and posts that rank highly on the search engine results pages (SERPs) for your customers’ high-volume search terms (keywords). Websites that respond to heavily searched terms drive the most traffic.
To give your posts and pages the best chances of ranking for keywords, you need to nail your on-page SEO by tailoring your web content to common searches. When optimizing your content, there are a few steps you can take, such as:
- Including your head keyword (and related keywords) in your heading, subheadings, and throughout the content
- Always including a meta title and meta description that use your primary keyword
- Adding images and image alt-text that reference your target keyword
- Incorporating your head keyword in the URL slug
- Writing high-quality long-form content that satisfies user intent
Don’t Forget About Page Experience Metrics
When creating a website that generates new business for your company, focus on off-page SEO in addition to your on-page SEO strategies. Recent Google algorithm updates have started placing more importance on “page-experience metrics.” These metrics include page-loading speeds, mobile friendliness, and easy site navigation, which all affect your ranking potential.
The faster your page loads and the easier it is for users to navigate, the greater your ranking potential. To achieve a higher ranking, ensure that your website is responsive and looks good on mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.
To see how well your site functions, you can check page speed using developer tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. If you think you’re falling short of the mark, you can use a few improvement methods, including minifying your code, compressing your image file sizes, and switching your hosting solution.
How To Use Your Website To Drive Sales
Your website should be your best salesperson. If it isn’t, you’re not making the most out of it. Luckily, there are a few steps you can take to improve your website and drive sales.
Create High-Converting Landing Pages
If you’ve incorporated lead-generating strategies into your site, it should already be driving leads for you every month. The next step is to convert those leads into sales. One of the best ways to do so is by creating high-converting landing pages.
A landing page is a standalone page on your site that’s designed to do one thing and one thing only: convince your customers to act. Landing pages are laser-targeted for specific conversion goals and typically have bold “call to action” phrases and minimal site navigation to push your prospects toward becoming customers.
You can use landing pages to drive sales, convince your potential customers to make a sales call, sign up to your mailing list, or take other conversion actions that your business needs. Once you optimize your landing pages, you can internally link to those pages from blog posts and pages on your site that get the most inbound traffic.
Marketing and Sales Automation for Lead Nurturing
Most leads aren’t ready to buy your product as soon as they land on your site; they need to go through a lead nurturing process first. Your website can aid the lead nurturing process through various marketing and sales automation processes.
For example, you can integrate email marketing software within your website and set up automated email drip campaigns. You can then use a lead magnet on your website to convince your site visitors to sign up for your mailing list. From there, you can send frequent emails with discounts and deals straight to their inbox to drive sales.
Chatbots
There’s been explosive growth in website chatbot adoption in recent years, and for good reason. AI-powered bots can act as 24/7 sales representatives by answering your customer queries for you, qualifying leads, and fielding calls for your sales team.
If you’re not already using a chatbot on your website, consider adding this functionality.
Transform Your Website Into a Lead Generation Machine
If done right, your website can be an excellent alternate lead generation source and extension of your sales team. However, creating a lead generation website is a complicated process. Most businesses fail to make the most of their website because they just don’t have the time to put into it.
If you’re ready to transform your website into an extension of your sales team, Abstrakt can help. As an established lead generation company, we have a wealth of experience in website design, development, and inbound lead generation. Let Abstrakt shoulder the burden for you—get in touch today to find out how we can help get the most out of your website.
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