The world of the Internet gets complicated every day with changes and updates to search engine algorithms. In addition to your search engine rankings, you have your conversion rates to worry about. This makes it crucial for business owners to combines their SEO efforts with CRO.
CRO is interconnected to SEO in such a way that if SEO is casting a wide net while fishing, then CRO has the ability to trap the right fish. CRO is the art of converting traffic that you get with the help of SEO. Conversion rate optimization is concerned with converting the visits into actual sales. So, after conquering SEO you need to climb the mountain of CRO.
You can easily gain more visitors to your site, but if none of those visitors sign up for a program, make purchases, engage with the content shared, or otherwise convert, your SEO efforts be for vain. As per the research done by Rand Fishkin of Moz, we always overlook CRO and yet it yields the highest return on investment for any type of business. If businesses of today start learning how to apply CRO, then they can start reaping larger income. Even eConsultancy estimates that more than 77 percent of businesses are neutral or dissatisfied, and only 2 percent have a decent satisfaction rate.
Companies of today simply need to assess the amount of money spent and determine how they can generate more. This tangent between SEO and CRO is the most precious so we have to learn the art to integrate both of them seamlessly.
Before we begin with how to combine SEO and CRO, it is important to emphasize that CRO is the focal point of SEO. No one tries their hand at SEO and attempt to drive traffic to their website without expectations of conversions. Below you will find some of the ways to integrate SEO with CRO for better conversions.
#1. Keep your content simple
Do you know what Google does through frequent Penguin Updates? They try to look for sites with unnatural links and then take action against them. Too many links in your content can prove to be a distraction for website visitors, who might find it difficult to convert. By reducing the number of links in your content, you can improve SEO and add more value to linked pages.
Since more links are able to increase diversions and reduce the chance of making logical decisions, it is important to refine your purpose by withdrawing all the non-essential elements and putting a timely call to action in others. It is important to remove the thin content from hurting your online reputation. It is better to explain details with testimonials and reviews. Make sure that the depth of the language and content generates positive results in terms of encouraging visitors to take more actions.
Remember Rap Genius, which used to interpret lyrics and poetry? Google penalized them for using link schemes and manipulating their rankings as well.
#2. Speed up the load time
Do you know the reduced load speed of your website can lead to higher bounce rates? Speed is one of the most important factors that affect conversions. As per Neil Patel who writes in his KissMetrics blog that reduced speed costs billions for business. Google has also started to use speed in its ranking algorithms. You should know that a one second delay in load time leads to 11 percent lower views and 16 percent reduction in customer satisfaction rate.
So how will you improve website conversion with both SEO and CRO?
You can always check your Page Speed insights on Google and correct the errors which need to be fixed on the spot.
#3. Create shareable content
Google is taking into account all kinds of social proof such as the number of times your content is being shared on social media platforms. It will also look into how many clicks you’re getting from those shares. This would make it crucial for you to create shareable content and also make it easier for people to share the content. You know this is a double win as your ranking increases for SEO and your chance of converting those click-through visitors into actual customers improves.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when creating content –
The following report from eMarketer shows that 52.8% of consumers check out brands on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. This means that sharing and having people share your content through these platforms could do wonders for your SEO and conversions both.
Drawing the bottom line
You start to get clicks on your online shop. But is that the end of the story? It is actually the beginning of yet another important step – converting the clicks generated. Clicks alone are not able to earn anything. If you put focus on making simple content that is easy to share and increase the load speed of your site, you can kill two birds with one stone and improve both your SEO and CRO efforts. If you have more insights to share, feel free to leave a comment below.
