Somewhat off guard... That’s all I can say about how I felt when someone asked me the other day, “does SEO produce quality leads?” My response was, “of course.” But then I started thinking... How do I know that SEO generates quality leads? And in the normal course of human thought I started to doubt myself, do some soul searching and then kicked up the research... And my answer after all that? Still a yes.

Quality Leads... What makes one?

Quantity is not quality. Lets get that out of the way first. More leads is not better. I’d rather have one solid lead that converts than a hundred that distract me and never buy a thing... But what really makes a quality lead?

• A quality lead is a person truly interested in what you have to sell
• A quality lead resembles your current ‘best’ customer
• A quality lead doesn’t need nurturing or to be sold, they know who you are and want to buy from you

Am I dreaming? A bit - but it helps me focus. Before you ask yourself if SEO produces the leads you want, you need to know what quality means.

So does SEO produce quality leads?

Get to the point already. So I weeded through a bunch of statistics and came to the conclusion that the answer is yes, based on conversion. However, PPC (depending on who you reference) came out slightly higher. PPC, SEO, followed by Social Media. I don’t think this would come as any surprise given that people who click on PPC ads are generally already motivated buyers.

Am I advocating for PPC? No. PPC, SEO and Social Media all play a role in lead generation online. None should be viewed as the exclusive answer. And given that SEO and Social Media don’t ‘cost’, its hard on an ROI basis to argue. You need to think about them all together. Especially given that PPC can be used to test keywords for SEO and Social Media (via participation) can boost SEO efforts through link building.

Quality Leads - Upping conversion via SEO

Ok. So the conclusion is, on a conversion basis, SEO produces quality leads. But there is more to the story. A quality lead lost is worthless. So how do you up the conversion factor?

The landing page. Story after story, test after test, statistic after statistic showed the conversion rate for PPC, SEO and Social Media was significantly impacted by the landing page. Once you capture the quality lead, the goal still remains to create a sale.

The better the landing page, the higher the conversion. And what makes a quality landing page? In short:

• Simple. Distraction Free. Focus the lead on the task at hand, buying.
• Sales Oriented. Put the ‘product’ front and center. One click to buy.
• Relevant. In other words it related to the keyword or headline that caused them to click through.

So get to it. Start generating (and closing) quality leads using SEO.