With lots of quality website traffic being the holy grail of online marketing, you’re probably pretty well aware of what SEO (search engine optimization) is.
But if you’re not quite certain of what CRO (conversion rate optimization) is, you need to be. Since it’s equally important.
Quite simply, conversion rate optimization is a method for maximizing the number of website visitors that convert into sales or leads.
Much like dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, CRO and SEO have a symbiotic relationship. Fred was no slouch on the dance floor, but having the beautiful Ginger in tow made his moves all the more captivating.
If you have ample qualified traffic to your website but very little of that traffic converts to a lead or sale, your ROI will be lacking.
Conversely, what good is great user-friendly content that spurs people to action if no one is coming to your website? Again, the result is often a return on investment that does less than dazzle.
When you have the right traffic coming in at a steady rate to a website that can quickly and easily convert, you not only have a nimble pairing, you’ve reached digital marketing nirvana.
In fact, we can be so bold as to say that when conversion rate optimization and search engine optimization are together they’re like Joanie and Chachi or Cleopatra and Mark Antony – since the relationship between Fred and Ginger was in fact, platonic. It’s deep.
Here are 5 ways to use SEO & CRO together to create your own love story… that ends with a swoon-worthy ROI (sorry for the spoiler alert).
1. Speed it Up
From an SEO standpoint, how quickly your site loads affects organic rankings. Google frowns upon slowness because they’re all about creating a good user experience.
And that works in your favor because a good user experience keeps people on your site and taking action.
Also, Internet users have short attention spans, so speed is absolutely crucial for conversions. Page Speed Insights is a good tool for analyzing page speed.
2. Write Succinct, Keyword Rich Headlines
Clear, concise, benefit laden headlines that include the keyphrase the person searched for does three things:
- Google likes keyword-rich headlines (also referred to as H1 tags, if you want to get technical).
- It signals they’ve come to the right place.
- It quickly helps pique their interest in your product or service before even delving into the rest of your content. Both good for CRO.
3. Keep it Fresh
Google looks kindly upon websites that are updated frequently. And changing things up on your site and testing them to see what converts best is the cornerstone of good conversion rate optimization.
4. Include Reviews or Testimonials
E-A-T, which stands for “Expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness,” is the metric Google’s evaluators use to rank pages.
While you want to be sure to cover all three of those things, including reviews or testimonials with photos helps cultivate a sense that you’re trustworthy, which is a very important factor for people searching on the internet.
If people don’t trust you it’s unlikely that they’ll hand over their information or purchase what you’re selling. Thus, “trustworthiness” is also crucial for CRO.
5. Make Your webSite Easy to Navigate
You definitely want to make it easy for search engines to crawl your site and index it.
But you also want to make sure that visitors to your website can easily find what they’re looking for – it all goes back to providing a good user experience. Especially since if they can’t, they’ll quickly click elsewhere.
Make sure that your site’s drop down menu has clear, pithy page names and that the content you’ve included provides value and serves to convert. If it doesn’t, scrap it.
Sure, CRO and SEO can work separately. But when they’re used together it’s potent stuff… Powerful enough to leave you smitten.
Now, I’d love to hear from you. How will you combine CRO and SEO on your site? Comment below and let me know.