Most marketers are frustrated right now.

You’re sending cold emails, posting endlessly on social media, and grinding out articles. Paid channels are expensive, outreach feels forced, and leads aren’t coming, at least not consistently. 

The ROI just isn’t there. 

Yet, my agency, Orbit Media, attracts over 60,000 monthly visits with a 100% inbound strategy and no paid ads.

In this post, I’ll break down how to build an inbound traffic machine that generates predictable leads without paid ads or cold outreach.

Most marketers focus on getting more traffic, thinking it will solve their lead generation problem. But traffic alone doesn’t drive revenue. You need the right audience to land on the right pages and take action.

At its core, inbound success comes down to a simple equation:

Traffic x conversion = Leads

While many factors are involved, this simple formula explains why some businesses generate consistent inbound leads while others struggle to create demand. 

It’s always a traffic problem, conversion problem, or both.

Meanwhile, traffic comes in two flavors: advertising and content marketing. These aren’t just different channels; they are complete opposites.

I’ve always focused on inbound for the following reasons:

• Inbound is more durable than ads: Well-optimized content attracts visitors long after publication.
• Inbound engages prospects early: You can gradually become top-of-mind over time
• Inbound creates community, loyalty, and gratitude: Nobody shares ads, and no one wants cold emails.
• Inbound is cost-effective: When your service pages rank, they generate leads without ongoing ad spend.

Intent is everything. Understanding why people search is the key to attracting the right audience and converting them into leads.

Some marketers make the mistake of focusing on commercial intent queries. While those visitors are the most valuable, the reality is that 80% of searches are informational. 

If you ignore informational intent phrases and content marketing topics, your website is simply a well-optimized sales brochure. That is insufficient. 

To keep your brand top of mind, you need a content strategy that aligns with information and commercial intent phrases. Add navigational queries to the mix, and you have three types of intent:

• Know (informational) – Informational searches are research-based. Someone searching “Paid social best practices?” isn’t ready to buy but needs education. If you provide that knowledge, they’ll likely turn to you when ready to take action.
• Do (commercial) – Commercial searches indicate intent to act. A visitor searching “paid social media agency” is evaluating options. Optimize your service pages for these queries to capture high-intent traffic.
• Go (navigational) – Navigational searches are brand-specific searches like “WebWave.” Visitors already know your company and just need to find you. Ensuring your site ranks for these searches prevents competitors from intercepting your traffic.

I am a Moz user, and I use the tool every day. It is a fantastic keyword research tool, and one of the features is the intent filters. Go to Keyword Suggestions, enter your target keyword, and filter by intent. 

Next, scroll down to Top Suggestions, click the Filters button, and narrow your search to each type of intent. 

See all those informational queries? Use them to drive traffic, increase brand awareness, and stay top of mind when visitors need help.

Key things to remember: 

• A blog post that answers an early-stage question should naturally lead to the next step, whether that’s downloading a resource, signing up for a newsletter, or exploring a service page. 
• Use internal links and clear calls to action to move visitors from research to decision-making. 
• A simple way to implement this is to audit your existing content. Do you have pages that match each search intent? If not, start filling those gaps with the search intent you’ve identified in Keyword Explorer or Moz Keyword Gap Analysis. The best content strategy ensures that no matter where a visitor is in their journey, they find exactly what they need.

Google doesn’t rank websites, only web pages. If you want to rank for a phrase, you need to have a page that aligns with it.

To be clear, you don’t need a page for every phrase you target because many of those phrases will have similar keyword intent. If you search for two keyphrases in Google and the search results pages overlap, you can target both phrases with one URL.

For example, take a look at the search results for triple glazed window in Moz’s Explore by Keyword feature. The top websites include Home Depot, Andersen, Pella and Reddit.

Now, compare with the search results for triple-pane windows. You’ll notice that the same websites are ranking in the top 4 for both keywords.

While I don’t believe in keyword cannibalization, creating two closely related pages is a missed opportunity when you can make one great page that ranks for many related phrases. 

Meanwhile, a more common problem is creating generic pages. The worst example is the “What we do” page. It lists everything a company does but doesn’t focus on a single service.

Instead of creating thin content that’s a waste of time, create one of the best pages on the internet for your topic. 

A well-planned website strategically targets multiple keyphrases. However, not every page is optimized for search. Some keywords are too competitive (like "SEO services"), some pages aren't ideal for keywords (such as "About us"), and sometimes, search optimization isn’t the main priority.

But to give yourself a chance of being discovered by prospects who need your services or visitors looking for advice, map keywords when building your sitemap. 

Here’s an example of a site structure optimized for search

• Home page: Your home page usually has the highest Page Authority, so it targets your most competitive, commercial-intent queries (e.g., "paid social strategy agency"). It’s also the page that ranks for the navigational keyphrase (your brand name).
   
• Service pages: Create one dedicated page per service, optimized for commercial-intent searches (e.g., "LinkedIn advertising services") rather than lumping everything into one generic page.
   
• Blog pages: This is where you target informational-intent searches that attract early-stage visitors (e.g., "How to run a LinkedIn ad campaign"). These are the URLs that attract links and build your Domain Authority. They also grow your email list and give you something to share on social media. 

Instead of creating thin, single-keyword pages, use semantic SEO to create content that accomplishes the following:

• Cover all related subtopics: Expand on key concepts associated with your service page keywords. For example, if we have a service page around website optimization services, it makes sense to target keywords like how to optimize a website for SEO and benefits of website optimization. 
• Include keyword variations: Use synonyms, industry terms, and natural language that people search for.
• Answer related questions: Do this in the flow of the article or add FAQ sections that address searchers' concerns, like "How much do website optimization services cost?"
• Structure your content strategically: Organize with subheadings (H2s, H3s) that mirror search behavior, making it easy for both Google and users to navigate.

Again, Moz can help. The Similar SERPs feature in Moz Keyword Explorer makes it easy to find related terms for a page. 

A second option is to filter by Relevancy to identify all related subtopics. 

Finally, consider using the Keyword Gap 2.0 feature to find topical gaps in your keyword strategy. In this example, I entered my website URL against three competitors ranking for website design services.

If I wanted to improve topical authority for website design services, this screenshot gives me an idea of where to start for quick wins and new opportunities.

Search volume is overrated. While it’s useful for gauging keyword demand, many SEOs have an unhealthy obsession with search volume, in my opinion.

That 97 searches-per-month keyword we’re targeting also ranks for multiple variations according to Google Search Console. As you can see from the GA4 report below, the page attracts 3x more traffic than the search volume. It’s only possible with Semantic SEO.

The page targets commercial intent and is optimized to convert visitors into leads. Hence, it drives a steady stream of demand because it works as cheese and mousetrap.

Also, 7% of visitors from the service page convert on the landing page.

I encourage you to use Google Search Console to understand how many phrases your optimized page ranks for. In the Search Results section, click Add filter and select Page from the drop-down menu. Paste your URL and scan through. Don’t be surprised if there are dozens or hundreds of them.

I’ve never done traditional link building in my life; instead, I prefer link attraction. My link building strategy is to create content, so valuable people spontaneously link to it. 

These links don’t just help the blog post rank; they make every URL on my domain more likely to rank.

What kind of content naturally earns backlinks?

Long ago, I found some research by Buzzsumo and Moz that changed my content strategy forever. It showed that 75% of content doesn’t get any links. While it’s a sad number, there are two types of content that consistently attract links. 

They include:

• Strong opinion content
• Original research

To quote  Steve Rayson, co-founder of BuzzSumo:

"If you want to create content that achieves a high level of shares and links, concentrate on opinion-forming, authoritative content or well-researched and evidenced content."

Search volume underestimates the actual demand for a topic because it only shows demand for a specific key phrase. In reality, a page that ranks for that phrase will also rank for dozens of related phrases, assuming we did good semantic SEO back in step four.

Take a look at the example below:

Read that sentence again and then answer the following questions:

• Have you ever published new original research? 
• Is your website the primary source of data or statistics for a topic? 
• Do you publish any strong, counternarrative opinions? 
• Have you taken a stand on any topics?

If you answer no to these questions, you should infuse these formats into your content strategy.

Original research crushes all other content formats in its ability to attract links 

That’s because it supports the assertions of others. Writers and editors link to it because it makes their content more credible. In fact, I have linked to two research studies in this post already. 

Take any website and plug it into a backlink checker, and you’ll see that the most linked pages usually have original research. If a site has any research, it’s almost always at the top. Since I already have it open, here’s the report in Google Search Console for our website:

Find an industry claim that lacks data

Every industry has repeated statements that are rarely backed up with real data. I call these "missing stats." Finding and publishing the missing stat is one of the easiest ways to create content that attracts links.

For example, marketers have always said, “Blogging takes a lot of time.” But how much time? Where was the data? It didn’t exist. 

So, I reached out to 1,000 bloggers (it was a long, slow, manual process) and asked them nicely to take a survey. Then I did it again and again for 11 years. I publish the answer each year in a nice little chart.

Did you see the GSC screenshot above? Maybe you noticed. 2,200 websites have linked to that URL. 

Those links build our Domain Authority→which powers our rankings for commercial intent phrases→and attract qualified visitors to our key service pages → where we convert them into leads.

Don’t forget to make research easy to cite

If I want my content to earn links, I have to make it easy for people to reference. Here’s the structure I follow:

• Clear, bold statistics stand out, like "blogging frequency is down"
• Charts and graphs make data visually engaging
• Headlines frame insights in a compelling way, like "The average website lifespan is two years and seven months."

Make the job easy for journalists and editors, and they’ll likely cite your research. 

Many marketers dismiss guest posting as outdated, but that’s a mistake. In the early days of executing my content program, I published most of my content on high-authority websites.  

Guest posting helped me in the following ways:

• Gain credibility by publishing on respected industry platforms
• Reach new audiences who are already interested in my expertise
• Improve SEO through high-quality, contextual backlinks
• Connect with industry leaders and expand my network (it’s how I met the wonderful folks at Moz)

Guest posting isn’t about quick wins. The impact builds over time. Commit to publishing one guest post monthly to create a steady stream of high-quality referral traffic and links, strengthening your authority.

To get the most impact, focus on three things:

• Find the right platforms: Identify industry blogs your prospects read that accept guest contributions.
• Write data-backed insights: Use original research or strong opinions to create content that stands out.
• Link strategically: When possible, link to your best-performing research-based content to increase Domain Authority.

Some SEOs are often so focused on rankings and traffic that they fail to focus on the post-click experience and miss opportunities to convert visitors. They don’t build a lead-generating machine because their bounce rates are high, and their conversion rates are low.

This type of SEO is all cheese and no mousetrap.

Our final tip is to expand your skills and become an expert in persuasion, not just attraction.

Years ago, Rand Fishkin published a post about becoming a T-shaped marketer. The idea is simple:

Go broad: Develop a working knowledge of many marketing disciplines while avoiding major skill gaps that could limit your ability to execute an integrated strategy.

Go deep: Next, choose one area of specialization and master it so you have deep expertise in a specific discipline.

But if the goal is to drive a continuous flow of qualified leads, you need a second critical skill: conversion rate optimization (CRO). 

Through CRO, you’ll learn: 

• How to trigger cognitive biases
• What wins the sales conversation 
• How to handle objections and leverage evidence 

The good news is that many of the conversion-related skills will look familiar. 

• Do you understand EEAT? Then, you know how to fill your pages with testimonials, client logos, and trust seals. 
• Do you understand keyword research? Then you already have insights into your audience. 
• Do you know how to measure traffic performance? Then, you’re not far from reporting on CTRs and key event rates. 

Many pages on Orbit Media are examples of conversion-focused content and design. A good example is this industry-focused page on bank web design. Did you notice the trust seals, data, and testimonials? It converts like a champ.

The beauty of conversion optimization is that it improves lead gen performance regardless of the traffic source. Even if organic traffic declines, lead flow may improve because you have other traffic sources. 

A solid inbound strategy attracts the right audience and ensures they land on pages designed to convert. To make this work, optimize for search intent, create dedicated pages for key search queries, and prioritize original research to attract topical backlinks. As your authority grows, adopt a T-shaped approach to deepen your expertise and scale your impact. 

However, while SEO is a powerful source of attracting qualified visitors, you need a decent conversion rate to drive a steady flow of leads, and that’s what I’ll cover in my next blog post for Moz.

Stay tuned!