How to use SEO to Find New Customers

There are a couple of ways to grow your business. You can find new customers and service them, and you can continue to service the customers you have so they keep coming back and referring others to you. You want to do both. A business will grow better with a good mix of both new and returning customers. You know how to take care of your current customers to create loyalty and keep them coming back, but sometimes it's hard to find new customers without spending a lot on ads. Did you know you can use SEO to find new customers? You can, and like all things SEO, it's free. So, stay with me to learn how to use SEO to find new customers.  

How does SEO work?

You're probably wondering how the heck this all works, so let's start at the beginning. How does SEO work to help your business grow? When you do SEO (search engine optimization) on your website or blog, you make it easier for Google to understand what your pages are about. And by doing that, Google is more likely to show your website or blog to people searching for you. 

How to use SEO to find new customers

When you use SEO as a marketing & content strategy, you create content that your ideal customer is searching for, and then you optimize that content so that it's easier to find on Google. 

What do you mean by creating content your ideal customer is searching for?

When you use SEO with your Content Strategy, you start by researching keywords and choosing the best option for you, and then you create content that supports that term and answers your potential customer's questions. The search volume tells us that people are searching for this type of information, so we know there's a chance we can reach new customers. And when we use SEO and Content Marketing together, we choose keywords that you can rank for, which means when you create that content & optimize it, new potential customers are more likely to find it on Google. Check out this post to learn how to find content ideas your Ideal Customer wants you to write about.

What if I create content they're searching for but don't do the SEO part?

I see this a lot, and unfortunately, you don't get the results you wanted. The hard truth is that if you don't optimize the content, you create, you will not get the results you would if it were optimized. If you're going to create content, you need to optimize it to get the most value. Learn how to get started with SEO in this post. 

What if I create content but don't worry about my keyword research?

Again, you may get some results, but nothing like you'll get if you follow the steps and do both SEO and Content Strategy together. If you write your content without keyword research, you may inadvertently choose a term with much less search traffic than another similar word. I saw this with a client recently. She had a keyword she'd selected for a page, but when I did the keyword research, I found another one with 4x the search volume, representing many potential leads. She quickly changed the page's name, and we optimized the word with a higher search volume.

The other issue you can run into if you don't do your keyword research is choosing a keyword that you can't rank for. You can do everything right – keyword research, write excellent copy, optimize that copy, etc., and still get no results because you chose the wrong keyword. You have to choose one that your website can rank for. I teach this in-depth in my training program because it's so important to your SEO success. 

If you want to learn how to get as many keywords to rank as possible, this is the post for you. 

What do I do to get more new customers from SEO?

Let's break this down into a few easy steps for you. You're going to want to think of SEO and Content Marketing or Content Strategy as one larger strategy because you need both to get the results you need.

• Start by brainstorming topics for your blog post or website page.
• Once you have a list of topic ideas, then you'll want to do some keyword research and look for the keyword with the highest search volume that you can rank for (a good way to do this is to go to Google, type in the keyword you're considering using & see who ranks on Page 1 now. How similar are they to your website?)
• Create a title for your blog post or website page using your keyword.
• Write your SEO-friendly copy. Focus on providing value to your reader, not how many times you use your keyword.
• Optimize your copy. Create a Title Tag and Meta Description for your page. 

That's it; those are the 5 easy steps that will have you on the way to finding new customers with SEO. You have to create copy that answers their questions and optimize it for Google. Do both parts, and you'll be on your way. 

How does SEO help my copy get found by new customers?

When you optimize your copy for a specific keyword, you're helping Google understand that your page is about that particular keyword. When Google knows that your page is about a keyword, they're more likely to show it to someone who's searching. As your page moves up in the search results (gets to page 1 and then to the top of page 1), you get more traffic because people click on the listings on page 1; less than 1% of all searchers go on to page 2.