CRO & SEO strategies can significantly increase organic traffic, improve user experience, and boost your site's performance, search engine rankings, and conversion rates. In this guide, our experts discuss what CRO & SEO are, their importance, and how they work together to optimize your website for users and search engines.
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What Are CRO and SEO?
Conversion rate optimization (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. Data from Serpwatch indicates average conversion rates range from 1.84% to 5.01% across industries.
Conversely, search engine optimization (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.
Why Are CRO and SEO Important?
Even the best advertising campaign is wasted if no one sees it. So, to get people's attention, it’s essential to combine CRO and SEO services. To give you a better overview, here are the 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. CRO guides visitors toward desired actions, such as completing a purchase.
- Improved customer retention: CRO creates a UX that encourages repeat business. When casual visitors convert into customers, they are more likely to return and make additional purchases if you’ve implemented a well-executed CRO strategy.
- 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.
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 signups.
For these strategies to be effective together, your content must support and not contradict the actions that potential customers are meant to take. Furthermore, webpage elements such as CTA buttons and links for CRO should be designed so they do not interfere with SEO performance.
It can be accomplished through the following:
1. Search Intent
Keyword research will help you determine the best phrases to target so you can capture leads that will convert. To develop effective content strategies that benefit CRO & SEO, it’s important to ensure your content aligns and prioritizes one of the four types of search intent — whether it’s informational, commercial, transactional, or navigational.
Informational
Billions of people type search terms on Google to look for more information. For example, the top three non-sponsored results for “how to lose weight” outline clear and specific ways to do so. These posts pair well with CTAs for further engagement with the brand (e.g., a link to a newsletter or free nutrition plan).
- SEO: Capture your target audience with engaging, high-quality, and relevant informational content (a blog post or detailed industry guide) that answers the specific query.
- CRO: Urge website visitors to convert with a call to action to learn more from your brand.
Commercial
Commercial intent is in the middle of product research and a completed purchase. These users are looking up more information about certain items in preparation to buy (e.g. “benefits of robot vacuums” or “top-rated skincare products”).
- SEO: Make sure your content type and angle align with these inquiries, such as lists of top products and detailed reviews.
- CRO: Demonstrate what sets your offerings apart and provide links to relevant products.
Transactional
Consumers looking up transactional keywords (e.g., “purchase casual dresses online” or “book hotel in Austin”) indicate that they are ready to buy and are more likely to engage with purchase links.
- SEO: Present your offerings in the best light through detailed and keyword-rich descriptions, high-quality photos, and customer reviews.
- CRO: Streamline your checkout process and offer multiple payment options to close as many deals as possible.
Navigational
These queries are used to locate a specific webpage or site, and users know exactly what they are looking for (e.g. “New Yorker homepage” or “Spotify premium”).
- SEO: Make sure your website is the top result for brand queries and that users can quickly navigate to specific landing pages. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, localized SEO strategies can boost your rankings on Google Maps.
- CRO: Each landing page should have clear CTAs to guide visitors to the next step for conversion. These links and buttons must be prominent on the page but should not interfere with the user experience.
2. Enhanced UX
Both SEO and CRO aim to provide a better user experience. A site that is easy to navigate keeps visitors engaged and more likely to click on the CTAs they find compelling. These elements, along with thorough UX research, will help ensure pages rank well on search engines and streamline a potential customer’s journey to conversion:
- Quick page loading speeds: Fast-loading web pages are crucial for higher visitor retention and conversion.
- Optimized images: Compressed images do not interfere with page speeds. High-quality and relevant visuals engage users while they browse the site and explore your offerings.
- Seamless navigation: A well-organized site structure ensures visitors can easily find what they’re looking for. Clear menus and logical page hierarchies enhance UX, search engine rankings, and conversions.
- No on-page distractions: Reduce visual clutter and focus on key elements (relevant content, CTAs) to minimize confusion and maximize engagement.
- Minimal user friction: Obstacles like slow-loading pages, confusing internal linking structures, and complex forms are common points of friction for users. A frictionless experience increases user satisfaction and opportunities for conversion.
- Low bounce rate: This metric measures the percentage of visitors who only visit one page. Engaging, relevant, and valuable content, quick load times, and intuitive navigation can minimize bounce rate, improve SEO performance, and increase conversions.
3. Data-Driven Optimization
Both SEO and CRO rely on analytics to measure performance. The following metrics can provide insights to help you refine website performance and boost conversions:
Traffic sources
Leverage tools like Google Analytics to determine where visitor traffic is coming from and optimize high-performing channels to attract more leads. Visitors more likely to convert will come from targeted search engine traffic, email marketing, and referrals from trusted or partner sites.
Keyword performance
Google Search Console and Ahrefs can help you identify which keywords are bringing in the most quality traffic to your site. Do the following for your best-performing keywords to improve conversions:
- Optimize and enhance existing content to boost engagement
- Align content with your visitors’ search intent to increase traffic
- Ensure CTAs are prominent and relevant to entice visitors to convert
Conversion paths
Google Analytics also enables users to track visitors’ conversion paths. Streamlining the user journey from the landing page to the desired action (purchase, signup, etc.) significantly increases engagement and conversions.
To enhance conversion paths, follow these steps:
- Map out touchpoints: Identify key stages of the user journey and the touchpoints they interact with. Optimize each webpage to increase engagement and time on site.
- Streamline navigation: Lead website visitors smoothly toward your conversion goals through internal linking and intuitive navigation.
- Enhance CTAs: Actionable CTAs in prominent locations encourage users to take the next desired step.
User behavior
Heat maps and session recordings provide detailed insights into user interactions, showing where they click, hover, and scroll. Leverage tools like Contentsquare, Mouseflow, or FullStory to identify high-performing areas and optimize them to further increase conversions. Identify friction points and understand why users abandon your site at a certain point or fail to complete the desired action.
Tips To Maximize CRO and SEO for Your Business
Whether optimizing for SEO or CRO, your site must be engaging enough to keep visitors for extended periods and encourage them to complete desired actions.
Here are some tips to maximize CRO & SEO:
- Optimize SEO and CRO for local search: Use location-specific keywords, Google My Business listings, and local backlinks to enhance local SEO. Ensure landing pages for local searches include compelling, localized copy and CTAs to create a sense of familiarity, accessibility, and convenience that encourages conversions.
- Integrate multiple CTAs: Provide various ways for website visitors to take desired actions, covering as many types of search intent and actions as possible (e.g., Chat, Sign Up, Buy Now, Book, etc.). This is especially important for your homepage: make sure information seekers and potential buyers can accomplish what they want with a single click.
- Implement SEO and CRO on-page optimization: Close meta descriptions with CTAs, create an effective internal linking strategy to lead to product pages and contact forms and use headers to guide readers to conversion points.
- Use strategies for SEO and CRO for mobile search: Mobile-friendly websites rank well on search engine results. A seamless mobile experience ensures more time on site and more opportunities to entice visitors to convert.
- Perform A/B testing: Conduct A/B testing on CTAs, customer forms, and other critical website elements to determine which variations perform best and convert the most visitors.
5 Key CRO Metrics To Track
CRO metrics can provide valuable insights into user behavior and preferences. You can use them to adjust your SEO and CRO strategies for better performance:
- Bounce Rate: This 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 and engaging your website is and how well it conveys information to users.
- Time on Site: This shows how long people spend exploring your website or whether they just quickly glance at it before clicking away. If that’s the case, it would indicate poor user experience. But if people spend a lot of time on your website, it’s a good sign that your optimization strategies are working.
- New vs. Returning Visitors: This is one of the most important metrics you can track for CRO. It will give you a clear picture of who visits your website and how long they stay before leaving or coming back. It also helps you determine if any patterns in behavior indicate where your site needs improvement.
- In-Page Analytics: This metric tells you what content people are spending time reading and engaging with and which parts they're ignoring. This will help you make changes so that visitors can easily find the information they're looking for on the first page they visit.
5 Main SEO Metrics To Track
SEO metrics allow you to better understand your website's performance and make informed decisions for long-term optimization.
- New Referring Domains: This metric measures the number of websites linking to yours. It shows that other businesses think their visitors can benefit from going to your site. The more sites link to yours, the more likely Google’s algorithm will see you as an authoritative source for information about your topic or industry.
- Domain Rating: This refers to a site's influence on others in its niche and is measured by the number of links from other sites pointing at yours.
- On-Page Optimization Score: This evaluates your site content and how it's structured and organized.
- Keyword Ranking: This is how high up in the search results your site appears when people look up your keywords and the percentage of times your site appears in the top results.
- Impressions: This is how often your ad has been shown to people through Google Ad Words or Facebook Ads.
4 Mistakes To Avoid When Combining CRO & SEO
- Don’t overuse keywords. Use them sparingly. You risk being penalized by search engines if your content is too keyword-heavy. Instead, use these targeted phrases naturally while sticking to your chosen topic.
- Avoid thin content. While it’s important to publish fresh content consistently, it’s also important to ensure it is of high quality. It should 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 hundreds of factors and constantly changes its algorithm, which means SEO and CRO strategies need to be updated accordingly. To avoid being penalized, keep up with these updates to ensure your SEO and CRO efforts are always up to par.
- Avoid 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 algorithms and humans.
SEO & CRO: Key Takeaways
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 that is valuable to visitors. Once you provide them with what they’re looking for, CRO turns engaged visitors into customers.
Remember to stay on top of developments regarding best practices and monitor the changing search engine algorithms, as there are very few preset rules for SEO and CRO that are “evergreen.”
To drive the best results, consider consulting the top CRO and SEO agencies.
CRO & SEO: FAQs
What is the difference between SEO and CRO?
SEO and CRO serve different but complementary roles in enhancing a website's performance. Key differences include:
- SEO strategies aim 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 UX.
Simply put, SEO brings people to your site, while CRO ensures they take the desired action once they're there.
