Another way to generate leads is to comment in blogs, forums, and online communities. By being active and relevant online communities and leaving comments on blogs and forums, you can create a network of links back to your site. While many of these incoming links are discounted by search engines, they do create hundreds of pathways for potential clients to find your website.
People are always asking me if they should use pay per click advertising along with SEO, when they are already doing well in search engine rankings. In a word, yes. There are a few different reasons why this is a good idea for any business.
First, if you're using pay per click advertising while you are already doing well in the search engine rankings, your site receives extra space on those results pages. By taking up more space on these pages, you get more traffic - and of course, more conversions. It's simple enough - while you do have to pay for it, it more than pays for itself. The second reason to use pay per click ads and SEO is that search engine optimization lets you rank highly for certain keywords and key phrases. However, it's hard to get a good ranking for several different keywords or phrases at once. Pay per click advertising allows you to specify the phrases which will be used. You have a lot more flexibility and can generate more traffic and profits.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, you are well aware that a blog is a type of online journal. Maintaining a blog has a few advantages, one of the biggest is that you can use this virtual soapbox to establish yourself as an expert in your niche and build your brand. A lot of bloggers have managed to leverage this platform into becoming dominant players in their field. It takes some hard work and you'll need a long term strategy to succeed at this, but blogging can be very powerful at generating leads and income for your business.
Using your blog for long tail SEO is also an effective tactic. Long Tail SEO is the use of a larger number of keywords and key phrases which are commonly used by people searching for the sort of product or service which you have to offer. A lot of website owners don't know that the keywords that they use for their business are not necessarily the ones that all of their potential customers may be using. For example, if you are a plumber in Melbourne, you probably have optimised your site for a key phrase along the lines of "plumber Melbourne". This is a good idea and I'd do so myself. However, there are an awful lot of people searching with phrases like "cheap plumber Toorak" or "fix broken tap" among others. If you have a blog, you can post entries regularly focused on different keywords and key phrases depending on the specific topic you are writing abut in your post.
Suppose you have a plumbing business in Melbourne. There are a lot of people searching Google for "plumbers Melbourne" and I would also concentrate on this keyword first. However, a lot of these people are looking for "cheap plumbers Toorak" , "fix broken tap" and other terms. With a blog, you can post regularly using different keywords depending on your subject.
What does this all mean? It means that your site will begin to climb up the search engine rankings for many different search terms, giving you a lot of added traffic. Over time this traffic can really add up. Assuming you have a blog, how do you create all of this content you'll need? There are a few ways to do this:
1. Hire Someone To Write It For You. There are many places where you can find freelance writers to come up with your content, including Guru.com and Elance.com. If your aim is to become influential in your niche, you may have to rework the content which these writers produce for you. You can also be very specific in what your criteria for the work they produce for you are.
2. Recycle content. You can re-use content like brochure copy, articles from newsletters and the like. You'll basically be leveraging this content to get broader exposure.
Website owners should not neglect the lead generation potential offered by blogging -if you have a clear vision for where you want to go with your business and the dedication to stick with the business to build success, you can get a lot of traffic to your site this way. You can go to becomeablogger.com for more information on getting started I blogging, there is a series of instructional videos available here. Another good resource is entrepreneurs-journey.com by Yaro Starak; one of Australia's, if not the world's, most famous experts on blogging as a business tool.