The goal of any online enterprise is to make money. However, more often than not, businesses without a strategic online marketing plan will have difficulty generating quality leads. One effective solution for increasing leads is to develop a strategic SEO and content marketing plan of action. According to recent research from MarketingSherpa, Organic Search is by far the most effective online marketing tool for increasing traffic and leads. So how can you better use Internet marketing to increase business from your website?

Setup a Blog and Post Regularly

SEO and content marketing can begin with the setup of a blog (preferably WordPress) to bring in specific leads. Focusing on long-tail keyword phrases that are highly searched in your vertical can help bring in readers actively searching for help or comparing products.

For example, a blog post titled “which is the best video card” can prove to be effective in bringing ready-to-purchase users to your website.  Blogging will continue to become increasingly important as it combines the elements of both search engine optimization and social media, and will help you climb up the rankings as you create more posts over the long-term.

Push out Press Releases for Company News

As mentioned on a previous blog post, online PR is becoming an essential marketing component that combines the elements of SEO, content marketing, and ORM into one channel.  For increasing leads, however, online PR can prove to be advantageous for announcing new products and services. Before submitting any old article, make sure you have newsworthy and relevant content to publish; otherwise, your content might get rejected and viewed as an underhanded tactic to build links.

Integrate Google Analytics and Track Campaigns

If you do not currently have Google Analytics setup on your website, stop reading this post and contact your webmaster right now (and then come back to finish the post, of course). You are losing out on an inordinate amount of valuable traffic data that can show you how to better monetize the visitors coming to your site. Through analytics reports, you can better assess which keywords users are searching to come to your site and generate revenue (for e-Commerce sites)

Summing Up

Instead of worrying about link popularity and paid link exchanges (which might prove to be outdated and can drop you 100 pages in the rankings), focus on creating fresh content that appeals to readers and use social media channels to build better relationships with your community. Creating keyword rich copy on a consistent basis might prove to be a Herculean task for a small business owner, so outsourcing the content to experienced professionals will prove to be a more cost-effective solution. A combination of content marketing, search engine optimization, and social media optimization will give you an avenue to drive in leads from search engine optimization efforts.