Gaining internet leads is one of the biggest benefits to having an online presence for your business. There are many ways to go about gaining leads, one of which is Google AdWords. But don’t think that you have to pay for a service such as AdWords to gather valuable leads. There are many ways that leads can be gained organically.
While AdWords obviously has some benefit, it isn’t the only way to draw potential clients to your website. If you aren’t familiar, AdWords is a service provided by Google that allows businesses to display ads on search engine results pages focused on specific keywords. A business can set a budget and only pay when visitors click on their ads. Since it is a pay per click campaign, the risk is somewhat low in comparison to other online advertising methods.
However, there are other approaches to online advertising that a business can do on it’s own that can return similar results. The major difference between the two options would be the time and effort that go into it. By following search engine optimization (SEO) guidelines, your business can begin to rank in the top of search engine results for the same keywords you would target through an AdWords campaign.
Ranking in the organic results takes time, but it is definitely worth the effort. While some online users aren’t able to determine the difference between paid and organic listings, those who can often prefer an organic result. The thought behind this is that organic results rank high because of hard work, popularity, usefulness, etc., while paid results were placed as the first listing simply because the business paid to be there. Many users feel organic results are a bit more trustworthy.
Getting your business to move higher and higher on the search engine results page can be done by following a few simple guidelines. First of all, place a large amount of focus on keywords. Do your research and determine what keywords your target buyers will use in their online search, and use those words throughout every bit of content you push out. SEO best practices suggest placing keywords throughout your copy (although do so sparingly), in your URLs whenever possible, in meta tags, and in blog article headlines.
Aside from focusing on keywords, you will need to keep your pages updated frequently with informative, useful content. The more often you update, the better. Fresh content is valued both by search engines and consumers. The more your viewers come to rely on you to publish new, valuable content on a regular basis, the more they come to view you as an incredibly appreciated resource.
You should also take advantage of all of your social media sites. Customers enjoy interacting with businesses they frequent via social media. The more you interact and engage with them, the more they will begin to feel as if they have a close personal relationship with your business – which leads to a feeling of loyalty. As we all know, loyalty is something to be highly valued in a business situation.
While there are many, many things you can do to help your website rank highly in search engine results, these few pointers will get you started. If you want an in depth look into all that you can do for on page SEO for your business, check out this 2014 SEO Playbook.
The more traffic you gain from search engines, the more leads you will return for your business, simple as that. How you get those leads is up to you. Paying for AdWords may be the quick fix, but you will never regret putting in the work to get the organic results you want.
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