13 Ways to Generate More Leads on Your Website

Websites used to primarily be online brochures. Many websites still are. And they aren’t even attractive to look at. What a waste!

Your website should be one of your most effective lead generating tools.

 

If you aren’t generating leads with your website, then you’re basically leaving money on the table. It’s comparable to having a store with no salespeople, so that when shoppers come in and want to buy something…they have no way to do so!

We’ve created a list of 13 ways for you to capture more leads on your website. Some of them might require the help of a designer or developer.  If you’ve got some design and web development skills, or if your website is built with WordPress, you can try making the changes on your own.

We’ve divided the list into 3 parts: SEO, Design and Content.

 

SEO

seo

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your content visible to search engines. Search engines look for various signals to determine what your content is about and whether it’s worth showing to search users. It’s up to the content creator to insert the right signals for search engines to process.

In this report we’ll be focusing on On-Page SEO — which include the things you can to your existing content right now to make it search engine friendly. The more people who find your site via search, the more visitors you’ll drive to your website and the more chances you’ll have of converting them into leads.

If you’re using WordPress for your website, there’s a great free plugin called Yoast-SEO that makes the On-Page SEO process much less complicated.

#1. Title Tags

Every piece of content you post on your website has 2 titles. One title is what you see displayed on the page. The other is contained in a piece of code or tag and is for search engines to process. It is one of the primary signals the search engine uses to determine what your page is about. It is also what is displayed in the search results.

The title that is displayed must grab your reader’s attention and convince them to continue reading. The search engine title (or title tag) needs to contain your keywords and be constructed in a way that makes it easily searchable. The title tag should describe what the page is about. It should answer a question that your target customer is searching for.

Let’s use your homepage as an example. Open up your homepage on your browser. Now hover over the browser tab. You should see your title tag. What does it say? If you’re like many website owners your homepage title tag might say, “home”, “welcome” or the name of your company. In fact, it might seem sensible to have your company name in your title tag, since it is your company website.

Now think about what potential leads are searching for. Are they typing in your company’s name into Google search? If they are then they’ll find you even if your name isn’t in your title tag. In any case, if they already know your name then they might not be the new lead you’re after.

What you should have in your title tag is a phrase that describes what you do or sell and that uses keywords you’ve identified as words people use to find your type of product or service. Google typically displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag, so it’s best to keep your phrase within that length. If you have the space you could include your company name, or part of it, as a branding element.

You can always modify your title tag and optimize it based on ongoing testing and research.

Your title tag is located in the <head> section at the top of your html page code. If you don’t know where that is or how to change it, you’ll need a developer.

Remember, you should optimize the title tag on every page and post on your website (not just your homepage).

If you’d like to dive a little deeper into this subject, here are 2 great articles and tools:

http://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool

http://searchengineland.com/advanced-seo-learning-experiments-using-googles-title-tag-changes-example-189850

 

#2. Title Tags

These are the short blurbs that appear beneath your title on search engine result pages (SERPs) that tell the searchers a bit about your page and convince them to click on your title and head over to your site. Although meta descriptions do not directly influence search engine rankings, they are important for getting your page link clicked on by the searcher. In addition, any keywords used in the search will be highlighted in your description on the SERP.

Think of your meta descriptions as teaser copy, whose purpose is to pique the reader’s interest enough to make them want to read more (on your website). Your homepage meta description should clearly describe what you offer and why the searcher should want to use you.

 

 

#3. Keyword Usage

In SEO, keywords are the words and phrases that users type into search engines to find what they’re looking for. For example, if you’re looking to purchase airline tickets you might type “airline tickets”. You might also include your destination – “airline tickets to boston”. Or maybe, “cheap airline tickets to boston”. Each individual word is a keyword, and each individual phrase is a keyword phrase. Before creating your content you should identify the keywords you are targeting to reach your potential customer.

Then use your keyword in your content, which shouldn’t be difficult since it does represent your main focus. But don’t overuse it (known as stuffing) or just stick it in out of context. That can cause the search engine to view you as a spammer (bad, very bad).

Read more about keyword research here.

 

#4. Image Alt Tags

Every image on your website has an HTML coding tag called an Alt tag that contains text that will be displayed in the event that the image doesn’t show. Since search engines cannot read images, they rely on the Alt tags to determine what the message of the image is. You should fill every Alt tag with descriptive text, preferably containing one of your keywords, to have a better chance of getting found by search engines.

 

#5. Internal Linking

Search engines use programs called spiders to crawl the pages of websites and add them to their indexes. Linking content to other content within the same website helps these spiders  find and index all of your pages.

 

#6. Descriptive URLs

Search engines use URLs to find relevant content. Therefore the URLs, or web addresses, of your web pages should include your keywords and be descriptive of your content. Most content management systems, including WordPress, allow you to edit your URLs, so you can tailor them to your content.

 

Design

how much does blogging cost

Counting pennies

You have just seconds to capture the attention of a visitor to your website. If they don’t like what they see or have trouble seeing it they’ll bounce to the next site (possible your competitors) in a flash. The look and design of your website plays a huge role in gaining the trust of your potential customer and establishing your authority and professionalism.

Think about the last time you visited a website that was poorly designed and looked like it was thrown together by a high school kid at recess. Did you feel confident about giving them your credit card number or doing business with them? Didn’t think so.

On the flip side, over designing your site could make it difficult to use and slow to download.

For our discussion, we’ll assume that you have a reasonably professional website design. Here’s how you can increase your probability of retaining your visitors so that you can eventually convert them into leads:

 

#7. Navigation

Visitors to your site want to find the information they are seeking as quickly as possible. If they can’t find it, or if it takes too long, they’ll find it on someone else’s site. Your website’s navigation bar should be clearly visible. If it’s hard to find or if it blends into the page to the point where it’s difficult to see, you must fix it. The easier you make it for visitors to navigate your site, the longer they’ll stay on it and the more likely they’ll be to become leads.

Your website navigation should contain the 5 or 6 main category pages. Subcategory pages should fall under one of the main categories. For example, assuming that you offer eight different services, you should probably have a general “service” navigation link which would then open the 8 specific service links. Having too many primary navigation links is messy looking and confusing.

 

#8. Pop Up Windows

Do you hate it when you go to a website and immediately get a popup window in your face? Most people do. It’s annoying. In addition, many browsers have popup blockers. If you have something important to say, then say it directly on your page. Pop Ups are a nuisance. The only time they can be used is as a way to ask someone to join your email list as they’re leaving your site. There are plugins like appsumo that provide that feature.

 

#9. Auto Start

Audio or video that starts playing automatically when you open a web page is even more annoying than a pop up window. Just imagine you’re sitting at your desk surrounded by dozens of co-workers quietly at work. You click over to a certain website and suddenly…the silence is shattered by the sound of a video. At this point you couldn’t care less what the voice is saying. All you want to do is make it stop, and the quickest way to do that is to close the page. Bye bye lead.

 

#10 Sliders

A slider rotates images and texts at regular intervals. They’re usually located on the top half of a homepage and rotate through 3 or more slides. Most clients love having them on their websites because they look super cool. The question is: do sliders help generate more leads?

We don’t think so.

  1. Sliders can slow down your page speed. Downloading several images (usually large ones) takes longer than downloading a single image. And as we already mentioned, how fast your site downloads can determine whether your visitor sticks around to learn more about you or leaves to learn more about your competition.
  2. Sliders can distract visitors from doing what you want them to do: learn about your company and fill out a contact form. Do you want your visitor to sit there looking at rotating images, or do you want them to read your content so that they can make the decision to contact you?
  3. Most people don’t wait around to view all of the images on your slider anyway, so why slow down your site and add distraction?
  4. They don’t look good on mobile devices, which is where at least half of your visitors will be viewing your website.

 

Unless you can prove that a slider will not slow down and actually help your retention rates, get rid of it.

A great way to test the speed of your website is with the free Google PageSpeed Insights tool. Just type your URL in the search box and it’ll give you a score for desktop and mobile. It will also give recommend things you can do to improve your score.

 

Content

 blogging

#11. Readable

Make your content easy to read. Use a font size of at least 11pt. And leave plenty of white space around your text. Break your content into short paragraphs, which are easier to read than long blocks of text. If your text is too small and difficult to read, most people won’t.

 

#12. Make Lists

Research has proven that readers like lists, especially when they’re reading off of a screen. Short attention spans make it imperative for you to find a way to get you reader to stick around and read. Lists draw reader’s eyes by breaking up content into visibly digestible snippets of information. So break up that long paragraph of pointers or suggestions into a list, and keep your readers engaged.

 

#13. Call to Action

A call to action (CTA) is an instruction to a reader to take a specific action. The action could be downloading an ebook, subscribing to a blog, submitting a contact form or making a phone call. Every page, article or post on your website should contain a call to action. The CTA could be at the beginning, middle or end of the page. It could be in your header, footer or sidebar. You should test to see what location works best.

Your call to action advises the visitor who likes your content what the next step is that he should take. A popular method is to offer a visitor something of value, like an ebook, in exchange for his email address or whatever contact info you ask for. You can also ask him to subscribe to your blog or newsletter in order to receive updates and special offers.

The simplest call to action is to prominently display your phone number and ask the visitor to “call me”. If they do, you’ve done better than generate a lead. You’ve got yourself a hot sales prospect. Since not every visitor is ready to engage in that sales call right off the bat, you need to capture their information and nurture your new lead through your sales funnel until they are ready for a sales call.

Next Step

If you’re looking to generate more leads on your website (who isn’t?), then optimizing your website by implementing the 13 suggestions we’ve explained in this post is definitely a great start. You need to combine great design, coding, content and SEO to turn your website into an effective lead generation tool.

If you need help doing any of this, or all of it, please contact us.

Why Should I Sign Up for Your Newsletter?

Congratulations, you got me to come to your site. I don’t recall how I got there. It might have been via a link you posted on a social media platform, or maybe because your blog post answered the question that I typed into Google search.

However it happened, you deserve a pat on the back. You succeeded in driving traffic to your website, which is the hardest and most highly prized objective that everyone is shooting (praying?) for.

So now I’m on your site reading your blog post. I liked it. It was well written and taught me something new. Now I’m ready to move on, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. But wait, you hit me with a “Sign up for our newsletter” box (or something like that).

Now you’ve got me thinking. Do I want to give you my email address and start a relationship that will add more clutter to my inbox? If you’re someone I’ve heard of before and you’ve built up a reputation for expertise in your field, then I might do it. If you’re not but I really liked your blog, I might bookmark it — but you’re not getting my email. Why should I, when I can just come back and read when I feel like it?

In order to get my email address (and first name?) you need to give me a good reason other than getting your updates or newsletter. You need to offer me something that I value enough to be willing to trade my info for. That can be an ebook, whitepaper, special report — it really doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as it is something that I consider valuable.

Without an offer you’re letting most of your visitors slip away … forever. That’s potential revenue lost. Painful.

Why should you care so much about getting email addresses?

1. You can nurture them into potential sales with an automated email workflow.

2. You can personally reach out to them to try and make a sale.

3. By using a service like FullContant you can get an incredible amount of information about the person behind the email such as their social media profile, the websites they are associated with and their interests. You can then connect with them in different ways to build a relationship which could eventually lead to a sale.

If you already have you’re “sign up for updates” box in place, you don’t need to get rid of it. Some people do actually sign up. But you should definitely add at least one offer that you can present to your visitors in exchange for their email addresses. You can then add those emails to your lead list and automated email workflow — or simply reach out to them directly — to move them through your sales funnel and hopefully to a completed sale.

If you’re interested in learning how we at Onrush do just that, download our free ebook The Digital Marketing Blueprint.

Why Marketing Automation Fails for Many Businesses, and How It Can Work For You

Speak to any company or business owner about marketing automation and they’ll get all excited. Marketing automation usually refers to software that automates marketing tasks, like lead nurturing and email followup.

The benefits of marketing automation are clear (here are just 2 of them):

– it saves your marketing and sales team time they can then use to find and close new business

– it helps nurture leads through their buyer’s journey until they are ready to purchase, providing the sales team with more qualified leads to close.

For most business people the word “automation” equals salvation from tedious and repetitive tasks and routines. It means that they can focus on closing deals instead of a million preparatory tasks.

There are great (and pretty pricey) tools such as Hubspot, Infusionsoft and Marketo that provide companies everything they’ll need to integrate marketing automation into their businesses.

So why do so many business fail at marketing automation?

The main reason is that they think that the marketing automation tool will actually do their marketing for them. They’ll invest in one of the major tools and spend the time setting it up and integrating it with their website and current system. And then they’ll wait for the magic to happen…and wait…until they get fed up and throw in the towel saying that marketing automation just can’t work for them.

Here’s their mistake. Think of the marketing automation tool as an engine. It can be the best engine in the world, but it won’t do a thing without fuel.

Marketing automation tools make it easy for you to blog, but they don’t write the actual content for you. The tools will make it easy for you to search engine optimize your content, but they can’t create the right titles or use the right keywords for you. They’ll make it easy for you to setup an automated email workflow, but they won’t write the emails.

Content is the fuel that powers the marketing automation engine. Marketing automation software doesn’t create that content for you. Only you can do that (or pay to have it done).

Companies invest a lot of money in building the marketing automation engine, but then either leave it empty or fill it with low grade fuel that makes it sputter instead of roar. You can use the most sophisticated marketing automation software, but if your blog posts suck, no one will want to read them, give you their contact info or view you as an expert in your field. If your social media posts are lame, you won’t get traffic from social media. If your followup emails are badly written, you’ll lose leads instead of nurturing them.

Should businesses invest in marketing automation?

I think most B2B businesses and B2C business with longer sales cycles should definitely invest in marketing automation. But before they invest in a specific marketing automation tool they should budget for content, without which the tool will be useless.

At Onrush we don’t require our clients to purchase one of the pricey marketing automation tools mentioned above. Our plans include building the marketing automation engine and providing the fuel (content). That doesn’t mean that the large marketing automation software providers don’t provide value. But companies that aren’t able or willing to make a large upfront investment in marketing automation software shouldn’t have to. They can still automate their marketing and get the content they need to make it successful at a reasonable price that won’t break their bank.

Your Phone Number and Contact Us Link May Be Losing You Money

One of the most blatant errors I see on business websites is the absence of an easy way to contact the business. Isn’t it the dream of any salesperson to have a new customer or client call or email them directly with an inquiry? No long hours of prospecting or cold calling required. It’s like a deer running to a hunter and saying, “here I am!” I can tell you’re getting excited just thinking about it!

Clearly, having a phone number and/or “contact us” link prominently displayed on every page of a website is a requirement (unless there’s a reason why you specifically don’t want potential customers to contact you). Make it as easy as possible for people to contact you. If they have to search for contact info, they might just bounce to your competitors site. Online attention spans are notoriously short.

Simply having your phone number and contact us link is not good enough from a lead generation standpoint. You will capture the “low hanging fruit” — prospects who are ready to engage in a sales call and make a purchase. But what about the prospects who might not be ready to contact you just yet?

Research shows that buyer’s make 70% to 90% of their buying decision before every speaking with a salesperson. Read this post for more statistics that point to the same conclusion. Buyers engage in a decision making process before finally reaching their decision to buy. A big part of this process is online research. When buyers do contact a salesperson they most likely have already decided that they need your product or service and that you are someone who they are considering buying from or hiring. They’ve most likely researched the product or service and your major competitors. Now they’re ready to discuss specifics and close a deal.

If your prospect has already gone through their decision making process and chosen to contact you, then having your number or email link is good enough. But if that prospect has come to your site for the first time to do their research as part of their process, they’ll most likely leave your site without contacting you. They might return to your site when they are ready to talk, or they might not and go elsewhere instead.

The only way to increase the chances of getting those prospects to return is by creating a relationship with them and then nurturing that relationship until they are ready to buy.

How do you convert that prospect into a lead that you can nurture through the buying cycle?

The first step is to get their information, usually a name and email. How do you get that info? By offering them something of value in exchange for that info. It could be an ebook, whitepaper or whatever you can offer that would convince your prospect to part with some of their contact info. Once you’ve got your lead in your system, you can send them automated emails to help them make their buying decision.

There’s a lot more to discuss regarding how to set up this lead generation and nurturing system, and we’ve created our own ebook called The Digital Marketing Blueprint for companies that are serious about creating their own system.

The main lesson here is that by not having a system in place to capture and nurture leads who do not immediately contact you, you are leaving money on the table. You don’t want to do that. So set up a lead generation system on your website and stop those potential customers from getting away.