The path to more organic (not paid) leads consists of two main pieces, 1) your website, and 2) your Google Business Profile (GBP). With some elbow grease, technical revisions, and a little bit of patience, the combination of the two can deliver a steady flow of leads. Read on to learn more.
Your Website
Your website should be great at converting visitors into leads, but we know from experience that most websites aren’t doing this very well. Here are some things you can do to improve your conversion rate.
Clear CTAs
Make sure the visitor can see a clear Call-to-Action (CTA) on every page of the site. These usually consist of a banner or a big headline and a button. Something like “Ready to start on your project, [request a quote]”
Lead Forms
The most basic of lead forms would be a contact form located on your contact us page or near the bottom of your homepage. Contact forms are better than nothing at all, but they are the targets of most spam submissions. In addition to your general contact forms, we recommend having at least one page dedicated to a Request a Quote, Request an Estimate, or Schedule an Appointment, whatever fits your business and processes best. These forms will collect the general contact info, but it also gives you more details about their project, timelines, etc.
Email Deliverability
Test your forms and make sure that you know where the email submissions are being sent to and that you are receiving them 100% of the time. Oftentimes hosting companies will prevent your website from sending emails and require a bit of technical setup on the backend to connect your site with an email server for sending the form submissions. This is especially true for WordPress hosting. There is a great article here on how to set up an SMTP relay at …
Chat Widget
We call this the welcome mat of lead generation. It’s the first thing a visitor gets alerted to when visiting your website and can be a great way to try to answer any questions they have as soon as they land on your website, all in exchange for their contact information, of course.
Your GBP Profile
With your GBP profile, the most important thing is making sure the information is complete, accurate, and is kept up-to-date. Here are some of the key areas to focus on.
Cover Photo & Logo
Make sure to put something professional up as your cover photo. It’s best to use original photos rather than stock. Uploading your logo should be one of the first things you do. Make sure it looks good in the round format it is forced into. A square image works better than a long rectangle format.
Consistent NAP
NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone. Google wants to see that your contact information matches exactly what is on your website and in other directories across the web.
Hours of Operation
This is the first place you should update your hours if they ever change. Make sure to post special hours for holidays or vacations you might be taking.
Service Areas
Aside from your address, Google uses your defined service areas to serve your profile in the results to users searching from within those service areas.
Services
List as many of your services here as possible and add descriptions. Proofread your names and descriptions and try to use consistent capitalization throughout your profile so everything looks professional.
Products
If you don’t sell products, that’s okay. List your services out as individual products here as well. Don’t worry about including prices if that’s not something you like to advertise.
Photos/Videos
Having more photos than your competitors is always a good thing. It’s also good that you post quality photos and videos on a regular basis. Make sure to include clear photos of the various services you offer. Google’s Vision AI analyzes all of the photos you upload, recognizes what you’re displaying, and tags them in the background. This will help you come up in relevant searches.
Reviews
Here again, having more than the competitor is important, but also having a higher rating is equally important. Setup a review funnel and make sure to follow-up with customers via email after jobs are completed to ask for reviews. This will ensure you continue to have reviews coming in. Google likes to see a consistent flow of reviews, but they also want to see that you’re consistently responding to all reviews including the negative ones. Don’t forget that the customer is always right ;), and you need to remain professional and helpful in your responses. For negative reviews, try to include contact information to take the conversation offline.
Appointment URL
Make sure to include the URL of one of the lead forms from your website here. If not an appointment scheduling page, a request a quote/estimate or something similar will do the job.
Q&A
Your visitors can ask questions about your services or other things here, but it’s best to take a proactive approach and plugin your own questions and answers that you’ve heard from customers over the years. These will be helpful to viewers and will also help you rank.
Other Cool Features
Take a look at setting up Messaging if you will be able to check and respond to them using the Google Maps app on your phone. Also, enable the Request a Quote feature to make it even easier for visitors to request more information.
Final Words
Even if you have more leads coming in than you can handle, you must remember how important it is to respond to the leads as quickly as possible. It is best if you can respond to a phone call, message or email within five minutes.
If you’d like to learn more or have any questions about anything discussed above, please take a minute to book a “Leaking Leads” strategy call.
Want to Do-It-Yourself?
If you’re the DIY type and have time to work this stuff out, then by all means, enter your details below and grab yourself our GBP optimization checklist to help get you started.
