Back when we ran a more traditional agency, we used to get SEO leads where the client was really struggling in business.
They had no other channels working.
They didn’t have budget for ads.
Their product/service probably sucked.
But they’d heard about SEO.
("free clicks from Google!")
And they wanted it to SAVE their business.
These are the worst leads.
SEO is going to take time.
It’s going to be inconsistent.
It’s not scientific.
Most the time, these kind of leads won’t benefit from SEO.
They need to reposition their offer.
Then do cold sales. Or ads if they have a little more budget.
In my opinion, in most cases, SEO is a "LUXURY" channel, for brands that already have a thriving business and at least 1 winning sales channel.
These kind of leads were perfect for SEO.
Maybe they’d have a super efficient paids ads channel.
Or maybe their socials and brand salience was great.
They didn’t NEED SEO to save their business.
They wanted to invest in SEO because they’d get super high ROI.
But they could be patient. They could afford inconsistency at the start.
These are the kind of leads that we could help the most and get the best results. So we filtered for these. We qualified for businesses that were already winning.
TLDR:
When qualifying leads for your SEO service, make sure they are not praying that SEO will save their business. This inherently makes them impossible to be a good SEO lead.
Joe Davies