knowLedgeUsing SEO to Find New Business Opportunities

The effective use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) doesn’t stop at ranking and lead generation.  There is a data pipeline for companies to find new business opportunities. Follow these steps to uncover the data and discover new ideas for growing or expanding your business.

SEO for New Business Opportunities

Put simply, SEO places your website directly in front of potential customers when they type in certain phrases and questions into a search engine. When they click through to your website and fill out a form, call your company, or sign up for a newsletter, they become a lead.

A Business Opportunity, in contrast, is an opportunity to present and grow your business to a larger target audience, either directly or indirectly. Here are a few examples of business opportunities:

• Identify new services or products
• Referral partnerships
• White label services

Competitor Research with Ahrefs

Using Ahrefs to generate a Competitor Analysis will not only introduce you to a few competitors that you might not be aware of, but it will also give you a snapshot of the referring domains that lead to your competitor websites (bonus for link building). You can export the list to search for gaps in product or service offerings.

Review each competitor's website for products or services that you don’t offer but are capable of delivering. Depending on your industry, you may find that top competitors have packaged or bundled services into an attractive offering for prospects.

Need a few examples? Check out a few Citrix Partner websites. While all of these companies offer services around virtualization, they each have their own specialty and package of core offerings.

Keyword ROI Tools

As your business evolves, so does your industry. Product and service innovations are critical to business growth and relevance in today’s fast-paced market. If your website doesn’t mention the latest buzzwords or trending topics, your competitors will attract the online audience before you can.

Keywords are a driving force in every SEO campaign. With the right research tools, they can also help you identify “related” and yet-to-be-discovered keywords that generate higher-than-average ROI.

Here are a few tools to help you identify keyword targets with the potential to generate higher ROI:

SpyFu offers a calculated value of an organic click along with suggestions

• Google Trends can help you identify seasonal or trending terms around your core group of keywords
• If you have an SEO team or agency, ask them about using Distilled’s SEO ROI Calculation Worksheet