Generating leads to keep sales teams busy is a top priority for many businesses. Use this checklist to optimize your website for increasing lead generation.

In today’s small business landscape, many of your potential customers turn to the internet for information and research before making any purchasing decisions. Your website is an important tool for acquiring new customers, fostering current client relationships and generating leads.

What is website lead generation?

Here’s an example: A person looking to sell their home visits a real estate agent’s website to get more information. The homeowner fills out an interest form and the realtor contacts them a few days later — that’s a new business lead. After following up with the interested homeowner, the realtor works to list the home on the market. Through the interest survey, the real estate agency gained a new customer.

Using this checklist, you can also leverage your business’ website to gain new customers. Here are some key elements to consider when optimizing your website for lead generation:

Website SEO optimization tips

Before a visitor can become a lead, they have to find your website first. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. SEO increases your website’s visibility on search engines like Google, driving more traffic to your website and increasing the potential for leads.

There are several factors that determine the strength of your SEO strategy, including:

• Keyword optimization in titles, descriptions, alternative text and URLs
• Page speed
• Spelling and grammar
• Website architecture
   

How do you perform keyword optimization? First, identify keywords for your site using an online tool. Then, use those keywords to guide your web content (and don’t forget to use keywords that are relevant to your target audience). For example, use phrases 

people might search in Google, like “best vegan restaurant” or “tips for starting a garden.”

Some companies choose to create blog content that’s SEO-optimized. This strategy attracts visitors to your website using content that’s relevant to them or meets a specific need. Plus, you can use those blogs to point visitors to other areas of your website or prompt them to take an action step. For example, a salon owner could publish a blog about a new hair dyeing technique, then add a link that directs readers to a page where they can book that service.

Website speed optimization

Attracting customers to your website from a search page is just one step — you also need to make sure they stay on your website. Slow-loading web pages can drive traffic away from your website. In fact, one in four visitors will abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load, and a delay of just 1 second can reduce customer satisfaction by 16%. It may seem obvious, but visitors need to stay on your website in order to become leads, so reducing site speed is critical.

Some of the main factors that impact website speed include file size, code, plugins and your hosting solution. Want to make your site faster? Try these tips:

• Compress your image files to reduce their size
• Avoid using too many redirects (changing an existing URL to a new one) on your website
• Remove unnecessary elements from the site’s code
• Use a content delivery network (CDN) to store your site’s elements in multiple locations around the world, ensuring fast load times everywhere

Website navigation optimization

Now that your website’s visitors are here to stay, they have to find the information they need. Your website’s navigation—the copy, menus and links on the pages—should easily guide users to the information that’s most relevant to them. 

Use your website’s main navigation bar to direct users to your most frequently visited pages, or the pages you’d like them to visit most (for instance, a page that includes a “Contact Us” form). Avoid adding too many pages to the site’s main navigation; if you have a lot of pages, a dropdown menu that sorts pages by categories like “clothes,” “accessories” and “shoes” can help reduce clutter.

Another website navigation optimization tip: Keep the look and feel of each webpage consistent, using the same fonts and colors to help users comfortably navigate your site.

Gated website content lead generation

Search engines may send visitors to your website’s home page or to a blog that’s related to their search query. In other cases, they may be directed to a landing page, a page that’s created specifically for marketing or an advertising campaign. Landing pages are effective for campaigns because they’re designed with one specific website goal in mind: generating leads. They help you cut to the point and give users all the information they need without navigating around your site.

Your business can use landing pages to direct users to download gated website content assets like white papers, e-books, videos or case studies. To access gated website content, users fill out a form with required information like name, email and phone number. It’s a win-win situation: visitors get valuable information about your business, and you gain a new lead from your website.

Remember to nurture website leads

The last critical step of optimizing your website for lead generation is to follow up with the leads you capture. Send a personalized email with more details about your services and open a conversation with your new potential customer.

Through a strong website SEO strategy, clear website navigation and well-crafted lead generation marketing campaigns, your company’s optimized website can be a powerful tool for capturing leads and generating new business opportunities.

Optimizing your website for lead generation is just the beginning. Learn more about how to drive sales at your small business.