Your site must be search engine-friendly, with accessible URLs and metadata that help crawlers index it. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO) come in. Applying effective CRO and SEO techniques can improve user experience, increase organic traffic, and boost your site's performance and conversion rates.
In this guide and with the assistance of an SEO agency, you'll discover how to optimize your website for users and search engines using a combination of CRO and SEO services.
Table of Contents
What Are CRO and SEO?
CRO focuses on enhancing the rate at which a website or marketing campaign converts visitors into sales. Its primary aim is to boost the number of users taking desired actions. Industry data from Serpwatch indicates average conversion rates range from 1.84% to 5.01%.
Conversely, SEO aims to maximize your website's visibility in search engine rankings through high-quality backlinks and relevant, keyword-rich content. The ultimate objective is to attract organic, non-paid traffic from search engines like Google and Bing, as well as from other platforms such as social media and news websites.
How Do CRO and SEO Work Together?
SEO and CRO work together to achieve two main objectives: driving quality traffic to your website and converting that traffic into actionable results, such as sales or sign-ups.
Here's how they work together:
- Driving quality traffic through SEO: SEO focuses on optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results. The goal is to attract more visitors by offering content that matches their search intent. Whether it's informational or transactional, the content should answer the questions posed by the users.
- Conversion focus through CRO: Once SEO brings visitors to your site, CRO optimizes the user experience (UX) and guides these visitors toward specific actions, like making a purchase or filling out a form. It involves strategically placed call-to-action (CTA) buttons, easy navigation, and relevant content.
- Enhanced UX: Both SEO and CRO aim to provide a better UX. A site that is easy to navigate is more likely to keep the user engaged, which is a factor that search engines consider for rankings.
- Data-driven optimization: Both SEO and CRO rely on analytics to measure performance. SEO metrics like traffic sources and keyword rankings can offer insights into how well your CRO strategies work and vice versa.
- Cost-effectiveness: SEO brings in organic traffic, reducing the need for paid advertising. CRO ensures that this organic traffic is more likely to convert, providing a higher return on investment (ROI).
By aligning your SEO strategies to bring in quality traffic and your CRO strategies to convert this traffic effectively, you create a synergy that boosts your rankings and conversion rates.
Why Are CRO and SEO Important?
You could have the best advertising campaign, but your efforts will be wasted if no one sees it.
To get people's attention, combine CRO and SEO services.
Here are some of the most prominent benefits of combining CRO and SEO:
- Increased visibility: Your advertising campaigns and website content will be better noticed with effective SEO.
- Better conversion rates: Even if people visit your site, it doesn't guarantee sales or engagement. That's where CRO comes in, optimizing the UX to guide visitors toward desired actions, such as purchasing.
- Improved customer retention: CRO helps in creating a UX that encourages repeat business. When visitors convert into customers, if you’ve implemented well-executed CRO, they are more likely to return and make additional purchases.
- Data-driven decisions: Both CRO and SEO rely on analytics for continuous improvement. This data-driven approach allows you to refine your strategies based on actual performance metrics.
- Cost-effectiveness: SEO brings in organic traffic, reducing the need for paid advertising. Meanwhile, CRO ensures that this organic traffic is more likely to convert, offering a higher ROI.
By integrating CRO and SEO, you attract visitors and effectively convert them into customers, which makes both strategies essential for a successful online presence.
Tips To Maximize CRO and SEO for Your Business
Whether optimizing for SEO or CRO, you must start by building a site people want to visit.
Here are some of the best CRO and SEO practices to get you started:
- Define your audience: The first step to successful SEO and CRO implementation is understanding your target audience and creating content accordingly. This means researching who your customers are and what they are looking for online. It’s also important to know who your competitors are and what they’re offering. For example, if you sell baby products, you’ll likely want to rank high in searches related to pregnancy and infant care. This will help you attract new customers and increase sales.
- Create a content strategy: Once you’ve figured out your target audience, you can create a content strategy for your site. A content strategy is a road map for what types of content you want to publish and when. A content calendar is an excellent tool for this. It should include topics related to your company and industry and what type of content you publish each day. The goal is to publish new content frequently, engage with readers, and drive them back to your site.
- Optimize your on-page SEO: Choose a keyword relevant to your business and its audience. Your website should focus on this keyword throughout the content and title. Next, you should create a Google My Business listing so you can show up in local search results. Once your website is live, create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google to easily crawl it.
- Create an effective landing page: Ensure your visitors buy something or sign up for your email list.
- Implement off-page SEO: Once you’ve implemented on-page SEO, it’s time to focus on off-page SEO. To do so, you must create quality content that engages readers and drives them to your website. This can be in the form of blog posts, eBooks, videos, interviews, etc. Furthermore, you’ll want to build high-quality backlinks to your site to help it rank higher in search engine results. This can be done through guest blogging, social media, and influencer marketing.
- Use high-quality images on your website and social media platforms: If you want people to click on links and read what's written in those links, they need to see high-quality images on their screens.
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly: Google has been putting more emphasis on mobile-friendly sites. If your site isn't optimized for mobile devices, you could miss out on potential customers looking for your services on their phones.
- Monitor your progress: Once you’ve implemented all the above SEO and CRO strategies, it’s best to keep an eye on their progress to ensure ROI. You can track your website’s analytics, including page views, bounce rates, conversion rates, and other metrics. This will allow you to identify areas where you can make improvements.
Which CRO Metrics Should You Track?
CRO metrics can provide valuable insights into user behavior and preferences, helping you to adjust your SEO and CRO strategies for better performance.
- Bounce Rate: The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. If you want to increase your conversion rate, you need to decrease your bounce rate.
- Pages Per Visit: A high number of pages per visit indicates that people spend a lot of time on your site, while a low number means they're not staying very long. Pages per visit can tell how user-friendly your website is and how well it conveys information to users.
- Time on Site: You should also track time on site as it shows how long people spend exploring your website— or whether they just quickly glance at it before moving to other sites. If that’s the case, it would indicate a poor user experience. But if people spend more time on your website than others in its category or industry, that’s a good sign.
- New vs. Returning Visitors: This is one of the most important metrics you can track regarding CRO. It will give you a clear picture of who is coming to your website and how long they stay before leaving or coming back. It also helps you determine if there are any patterns in visitor behavior that indicate where your site could use some improvement.
- In-Page Analytics: This metric tells you what content on your page people are spending time reading and engaging with and which parts of the page they're ignoring entirely. This will allow you to make changes within your content so that visitors can easily find the information they're looking for on the page they visit first.
Which SEO Metrics Should You Track?
On the other hand, SEO metrics allow you to better understand your website's SEO performance and make informed decisions regarding ongoing optimization.
- New Referring Domains: This metric measures the number of websites linking to yours. It shows that other sites think highly enough of yours to include a link in their content. The more sites that link back to yours, the more likely Google will see you as an authoritative source for information about your topic or industry.
- Domain Rating: Domain rating refers to a site's influence on others in its niche. The higher the number of links from other sites pointing at yours, the higher your domain rating will be.
- On-Page Optimization Score: This one requires a little more effort than simply looking at the numbers— you need to check out the content on your site and how it's structured and organized.
- Keyword Ranking: This is how high up in the search results your site appears when people search for your keywords and the percentage of times your site appears in the top results. According to Backlink, the top result gets around 32% of all clicks.
- Impressions: This means how often your ad has been shown to people through Google Ad Words or Facebook Ads.
Mistakes To Avoid With CRO and SEO
- Don’t overuse keywords. Use them sparingly. You risk being penalized by search engines if your content is too keyword-heavy. Instead, use keywords appropriately and naturally while sticking to your chosen topic.
- Avoid thin content. While it’s important to publish new, frequent content, it’s also essential to create high-quality content. This means your posts should be at least 300 words long and contain useful, actionable information for your readers. Publishing thin content is another way to get penalized by search engines.
- Be aware of Google’s algorithm. Google considers 200 factors when changing its algorithm, which means SEO and CRO strategies need to be updated accordingly. Google updates occur every few months and typically focus on rewarding high-quality content. To avoid being penalized, stay up to date on Google’s updates to ensure your SEO and CRO efforts are always up to par.
- Avoid using generic terms on your landing pages. When writing descriptions, there should be a balance between keywords and descriptions because they must be optimized for both Google Search Engine Results Pages and customers.
How To Make CRO and SEO Work for Your Business: Takeaway
SEO and CRO are both essential to any business website.
While there are numerous ways to optimize a site for SEO, the primary aim is to create quality content useful to visitors. Once you provide them with what they’re looking for, CRO helps convert them into customers.
Remember to stay on top of developments regarding best practices and monitor the changing algorithms of search engines, as there are very few preset rules for SEO and CRO that are “evergreen.”
FAQ
What is the difference between SEO and CRO?
SEO and CRO serve different but complementary roles in enhancing a website's performance.
CRO vs. SEO key differences:
- SEO aims to increase a website's visibility in search engine results to attract organic traffic. The key metrics for SEO include keyword rankings and domain rating, and strategies often involve keyword research and on-page and off-page optimization.
- CRO focuses on converting website visitors into customers or encouraging them to take other desired actions. CRO metrics include bounce rate, pages per visit, and conversion rate, with strategies centering on landing page optimization, A/B testing, and enhancing the UX.
Simply put, SEO brings people to your site, while CRO ensures they take the desired action once they're there.
