A Guide to Creating SEO-Friendly Lead Magnets
Created a helpful, usable lead magnet? Check!
Now, it’s time to advertise your lead magnet so that your target audience will see it. But where?
You have a ton of choices. You can advertise your lead magnet on your website. You can advertise it on social media or your email signature or guest post or business card.
But perhaps the most important place to advertise your lead magnet is via search engines, like Google or Bing. And by advertise, I don’t mean pay for promotion. I’m talking about good ‘ole fashioned search engine optimization (SEO) strategies where you tweak your lead magnet to improve its visibility on the search engines.
So, let’s discuss exactly how to make an SEO-friendly lead magnet.
Why SEO Is Important
Does the term “SEO” confuse you? Sure, you know what it stands for, but you have a fuzzy understanding of how it works. You have an even fuzzier understanding of how it may affect your website and the way people find it.
You’re not alone. SEO can be difficult to understand, especially if you plunge too deep. For this post, we’re staying in the shallow end and just focusing on the basics to help you achieve your desired result: Maximum awareness for your lead magnet.
In a nutshell, here’s why SEO is important:
You have a website. But, at last count, there are almost 2 billion other websites out there. How do the right people find your website?
Via a smart search engine, like Google.
When someone enters a keyword phrase into the Google search box, Google doesn’t just pull up all 2 billion websites. It quickly searches through its database to find the exact webpages that contain the specific keyword phrases that were used in the query.
For a search term like “organic dog treats,” Google searches through 1.94 billion websites to find the 31.7 million results that match the specific keyword phrase entered (and it can do so in an impressive .79 seconds).
Google will then show all 31 million relevant webpages at an allotment of 10 results per page.
[bctt tweet=”Here’s how SEO impacts your lead magnets:” username=”beacon_by”]
Here’s where SEO makes a difference.
It doesn’t matter if you’re on page 15 or page 59,000 — no one will see you unless you’re on page 1 of the search engine results. Approximately 95% of people never click past page 1 of the search engine results.
You want to do whatever it takes to make it into those top 10 results on the first page. SEO will help you get there.
In an effort to give its users rewarding experiences, Google ranks websites on various factors thought to impact the overall user experience. Google doesn’t want to send its users to a website that doesn’t match the user’s query. Google also doesn’t want its users to have a negative experience while on a website that it’s recommended. If this happens, people may stop trusting Google and search elsewhere.
So, to make a great experience for its users, Google takes into account factors such as website loading speed, mobile friendliness, and content optimization when deciding which results go on page 1.
You can influence where your webpage ranks on search engines by optimizing all of those factors. And, when it comes to your lead magnet, you can likewise tweak certain elements on the page to ensure that Google promotes your content on page 1 of its search engine results. Here’s how:
Start With the Right Format
Most lead magnets are packaged as PDFs. PDFs are popular file formats because they’re easy to share online. However, not all PDFs are created equal.
The following should be wrapped in a neon warning: Traditional PDFs are not search engine friendly. Search engine crawlers “read” text, but PDFs are often images of text. Although they’re smart, search engines have a difficult time “reading” images. This means that your PDF file won’t be indexed and most certainly won’t be returned as a result for a search engine query.
To navigate this, most marketers focus on creating a solid, search engine optimized landing page for their lead magnet. By all means, create a landing page, but also use our Smart PDF technology.
Smart PDFs are just like traditional PDFs except they can be viewed easily on multiple devices. Because these Smart PDFs are written with HTML5 (which is a programming language used to create websites), they can also be “read” by and optimized for search engines.
Smart PDFs can be indexed by search engines just like regular webpages. In fact, our Smart PDFs come with their own URLs.
Our Smart PDFs are easy to set up and come with built-in analytics so that you can determine how your content is performing with your target audience, You can also embed rich multimedia into your lead magnet, including video and audio files. These files can be played directly over your PDF file. Plus, since our Smart PDFs are made with HTML5, they load quickly and always look good on mobile devices.
You can easily create your own Smart PDF for free with Beacon. Create your free account here.
Make Use of Keywords
Now, let’s talk about how to optimize your Smart PDF for Google, Bing, and the rest.
Make a list of keywords that describe your lead magnet. Try to come up with the exact phrases that you think your target audience will use. Not sure which keywords your audience may use?
Use a keyword research tool like Wordtracker or Moz Explorer to explore a topic and search for keyword trends and related terms that may rank higher than your current list. A keyword research tool will allow you to better understand your audience.
Be sure to choose long tail keywords (i.e. keyword phrases that contain at least three or four words and are specific). By contrast, short tail keywords are only one or two words and generic.
Once you have keywords for your lead magnet, include them in the following search engine settings of your Smart PDF:
Meta Title: The meta title is the clickable title of your lead magnet that shows up in the search engine results page. The ideal length for the meta title is between 50 to 60 characters. The meta title can be the actual title of your lead magnet. For best SEO practices, include the most relevant long tail keyword phrases in your lead magnet’s title.
Meta Keywords: The meta keywords section is where you’ll describe your lead magnet. Add all of the possible keyword phrases that you’d like your lead magnet to rank for, with the most important long tail keyword phrase listed first.
Meta Description: The meta description is a summary that describes what your page is about. The ideal length for the meta description is between 50 to 160 characters.
In addition to the above options, you can also decide whether or not to show your company’s name in the title bar. Your company’s name will be shown by default. Choose this option if you’d prefer to highlight the keyword-rich title of your lead magnet instead.
Don’t forget to add your keywords to your Smart PDF’s URL. You can use the same meta title or you can shorten it to the most relevant long tail keyword phrase.
You can access the Smart PDF’s search engine settings after you click on the ‘Publish’ link from the editor. Follow a picture tutorial here.
Next Steps
If you haven’t already, get started with your first SEO-friendly lead magnet by clicking here.
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