Once you’ve defined your target industry and services, there are two ways to find prospects: inbound and outbound marketing.
Inbound
Inbound is where prospects come to you instead of you reaching out to them. Let’s run through the most popular inbound marketing channels that generate leads.
Website
Provided you have a website, you can use it to generate leads if you make people aware of your SEO services and encourage them to take action by either calling you, sending you an email, or downloading an incentive.
Look at this landing page that explains and communicates the growth benefits of the company’s SEO services. The page also includes a strong call to action: get an SEO quote today.
Compelling landing page for SEO services
SEO
You already know that organic traffic is the main traffic source for many websites.
Use Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer to identify the relevant keywords your prospects are searching for and assess the potential of that traffic.
Type “SEO” and select your country
Use the Include filter to enter the industry or niche you are targeting, e.g., accountants, contractors
You can see the Keyword Difficulty (KD), search volume, global volume, and Traffic Potential (TP) metrics.
Filtering SEO niches in Keywords Explorer
Now select the “SERP” button to view the traffic to the top pages.
Checking organic traffic of pages whatsapp number list ranking for "seo for contractors"
Next, create a landing page targeting this topic, outlining what you offer and how to get in touch.
PPC
You can drive traffic quickly if you need leads urgently using Google Ads.
You can see this agency’s Google Ad campaigns and the keywords they target using the new paid search feature within Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.
Example of keywords a marketing agency bids on in Google Ads
Groups and communities
My path into SEO was via traditional marketing and web design.
As a member of an Adobe web design forum, I generated leads from other web design agencies that didn’t have an interest in or resources for SEO.
Also, the Ahrefs Insider group regularly runs SEO Speed Dating, where members are free to post jobs or projects they need help with—great for lead generation.