While it is easy to get started with lead generation efforts, actually generating results and finding those qualified leads for your SEO business is a completely different matter altogether. What we want this coming year is for you to be able to become adept in SEO lead generation by rapidly improving your strategies and perhaps undoing some mistakes in implementation in the past.

You know, life is like that: we grow, we learn, we sometimes find out that we’ve been doing some really bad mistakes for the longest time. That’s why we’ve come up with our master list of top 20 mistakes sin SEO lead generation for this coming year so you can start the year off right. Nothing feels quite like a year that starts off with a BANG – and it’s starting right now!

1. Forgetting the most important outcome in the process.

What was the last thing in your funnel, campaign, or process that transformed traffic to actual leads? This is the most important outcome that we are talking about. By focusing on the pivot, or the point where customer resistance was lowest and lead generation became possible, you are shaping your lead-gen efforts like a pro.

Let’s apply this to an actual campaign. If your number one, most desirable outcome during a campaign is for a website visitor to schedule an appointment or a call, you have to ask yourself: how do you influence website traffic to accept that this is the most logical, convenient and best recourse after going through all your text, images, and videos? All that material, including your email marketing blasts, need to provide that motivation to make that desirable outcome, so you can generate a lead. We think that this is something that people miss a lot when they are designing lead-gen campaigns.

There are actually so many ways to enhance the passage of traffic toward lead generation. For example, you can add features like a prominent call button that people can press when they are on their phones, so they can call you directly from the landing page. Different types of tracking and analytics can also help improve your understanding of customer behavior when they find your website. Because how else will you know that something is working unless you are tracking user behavior?

2. Misreading metrics

In reality, the value of metrics depends on what you are trying to get your customers to do. Taking off from our previous example, if your main goal was to get more people to press the call button on the landing page to generate direct calls to your business, then changes that you have done to your page that create this outcome should be considered beneficial. All other metrics become secondary, based on the goal and the context of the objectives that you have set for a particular campaign or landing page.

3. Too many obstacles preventing customers from exhibiting ideal behavior while on your website.

In the current era, customer behavior is everything. Even Google is doubling down and exerting extra effort to understand the nuances of search language and what people do when performing searches. The standard first page now looks nothing like what we have been used to for years.

In addition to the carousel and exponential boom of tabs from Images to Shopping, it’s also no surprise that Google is adding more lines for questions with direct answers, videos with high social validation, etc. Search engines are becoming portable digital butlers, and Google is trying to be one step ahead of the needs of the market.

Where do these changes put business websites? While Google wants to deliver the most relevant results to users, the websites of those qualified to serve the public need to practice the best UX and implement efficient UI, too. Once traffic lands on your website, some other complications can cause negative campaign results, such as:

– Putting the form below the fold
– There is informational overload on the landing page, which can easily confuse readers
– There is structural overload on the landing page, which makes it hard to read
– The landing page was not tested for user-friendliness
– The redirects are preventing the user from actually enjoying the use of your website
– CTAs are poorly designed or written
– The ads and landing page have a confusing copy, and the users get mixed messages

4. Hard-selling and eventually losing prospective leads

While it would be an absolute blessing to be able to convert right off the bat, the truth of the matter is that asking your customers for too much commitment from the first visit is going to be a tall order. The forcefulness of the message and the resulting pressure on the customer to buy can also wreck your chances of generating leads that are only too happy to have found your SEO business.

The solution to this problem is nurturing your leads instead of repetitive bombardment. When we think of nurturing, what comes to mind? There’s care, genuineness, and most importantly, trust involved. Think of how you can get them on board without pressuring them too much. Think along the lines of email marketing, getting them to get free downloads, or at least chat with your chatbot on the website.

5. Ineffective planning of conversion points

A landing page should include more than just one main conversion point to improve the chances of lead generation. Different customers have different motivations for seeking an SEO company, and they also have different pain points.

While you may have spent a huge amount of time designing your conversion point, is it really enough for all your customers? Would it have weight for possibly more than 50% of them? The only real way to find out is to understand how customers are actually reacting to what you have ready on your landing page. Try different ways to reach your customers and make sure that you are tracking user behavior whenever you present another conversion point on your landing page/s.

6. Not focusing on getting people to click

This general warning applies to all types of digital marketing materials and efforts. You see, it is quite easy to dress something up and say that your new material or presentation is going to blow people out of the water. However, are they really getting that star vibe from your new copy or graphics?

Are they really finding more motivation to get their websites overhauled, and get you to become their SEO expert? These are the hard questions that many business owners avoid because they’re so hard to answer truthfully unless you are willing to come to terms with some errors in how campaigns are actually designed.

The biggest downside that we’ve seen in many websites is that business owners start off with their offers and feel that this effort is enough to convince potential customers that there is sufficient value in the presentation to warrant an email or call. Of course, you can always test to find out if something is actually working, but you also have to get into the right mindset that the first thing that people need is value, followed by the process of how they are going to get that value in the first place.

7. Failing to be consistent

Once you are able to determine what needs to be changed with your campaigns, the next step is to establish consistency. Consistency involves the following: your content, landing pages, ads, and offers. Basically, you will be taking the core offer or hook and build your digital empire around that, to drive home the message. You need to be consistent so that people will become even more familiar with what your business is about.