Two of the most effective and popular digital marketing techniques today are search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO). When you’re running a business, it’s not worth focusing only on SEO or CRO. Instead, you should include both SEO and CRO in your digital marketing strategy to achieve the desired results. Today we will discuss how SEO and CRO work together to help grow your business. So if you want to improve your SEO for higher conversions (aka lead generation), this guide will come in handy.
Introduction to SEO and CRO
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is the continuous process of optimizing your website and its content. The purpose of SEO is to rank your website higher and make it more visible to users when they search for something related to your business.
For example, you provide waterproofing services in Florida and have a business website that is well optimized for search engines. When someone uses Google Search, Bing, or any other search engine to search for Florida waterproofing, there is a better chance that your website will appear in the top results and be clicked on by the user.
However, if your website is not well optimized for SEO, it is least likely that your website will appear in the top search results and catch the attention of users.
With a well-thought-out SEO strategy, your goal is to improve your website’s search engine rankings so that it becomes more searchable, discoverable and visible to your potential customers. The higher the ranking of your website, the higher the chance that someone will click and visit your website.
But your SEO work does not end here. You need to continue working on your SEO strategy to maintain higher rankings and entice visitors to explore your site longer; otherwise, it can quickly be replaced by competitor websites that are continuously optimized. That being said, getting top positions on the first page is not a piece of cake. Improving your website rankings takes dedication, commitment and months of hard work.
What is CRO?
CRO, short for Conversion Rate Optimization, is a more targeted approach to experimentation and testing to get more leads from your target audience. When a visitor completes a desired action on your website, such as signing up for a newsletter, taking a quiz, or purchasing a product, the visitor is said to have converted to your customer. That is why the process is called conversion.
While SEO focuses on improving your site’s rankings and driving more visitors to your site, CRO focuses on converting those visitors into interested consumers who engage with your site and complete desired actions. Its main goal is to convert leads once they land on your website, so it largely deals with landing pages and other elements that increase your conversion rate.
How to calculate your website’s CRO
Divide the number of visitors who complete a specific desired action by the total number of visitors to your website. Then multiply the resulting number by 100 to get your conversion rate.
Importance of SEO and CRO
With the rise of the digital age and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, more and more people are becoming accustomed to seeking advice online, shopping online and interacting with online businesses. As a result, more and more businesses are relying on their digital presence to find new clients and increase their revenue. This makes it imperative for the modern business to have a website that ranks high for relevant prospect queries and to have a smart strategy for converting website visitors into actual customers.
Doing simple SEO and not focusing on conversion rates simply means that your site is attracting visitors but not adding any real value to your business. You’re only getting exposure, which is important but not enough when you’re looking for ways to make money.
On the other hand, if you don’t focus on SEO and spend a lot of time creating an effective CRO strategy, it won’t work either. For testing and experimentation (which is the main part of CRO) you will need data about how your website visitors explore your website, where they click, which pages they explore more, which pages get the least attention, which CTAs get more clicks if they scroll your site to finish, whether they are leaving your site quickly and much more.
So when your site isn’t showing up in the top results and isn’t being clicked by many people, you won’t have the data you need to test and experiment with your CRO strategy. Therefore, it is crucial for businesses to work on SEO first and then CRO to achieve what they are looking for.
The role of CRO for better SEO results
To get better SEO results, you need to dig deeper and collect more data. This requires you to understand the desired user experience through their search behavior and available data sets. This allows you to fuel your marketing funnel with more leads.
When you are working on CRO, your main goal is to convert each website visitor based on the stage of their buying journey. When an internet user visits your website, they can be at any point in their buying journey. They may be looking for some information, researching their options, but not ready to buy anything, compare prices of products they want to buy, or have an intention to buy a product/service.
CRO allows you to increase the value of each website interaction and generate more leads, ultimately leading to higher revenue. When your SEO strategy starts working and more website visitors engage with your website, it acts as a signal to search engine bots that your website is worth visiting and people who come to your website find it useful and useful. This way, your site’s ranking continues to improve and you see better SEO results.
If done right, CRO plays a big role in improving your SEO results.
Advantages of SEO and CRO cooperation
To achieve the desired results for your business, it is important to work on SEO and CRO together. Now let’s take a look at the benefits you will enjoy by combining SEO and CRO strategy.
Improve your SEO results
As we mentioned above, SEO helps to implement CRO properly and CRO in return indirectly increases targeted traffic to your website. So, by polishing your website and optimizing your conversion rate, you will notice a significant increase in your SEO results.
Improve the consumer experience
With SEO, you focus on improving the user experience (UX). With CRO, you take this approach to the next level as you work to elevate the experience of your consumers. CRO involves testing various elements on a website such as CTA buttons, landing pages, product pages, service pages and long content.
Based on the results of your tests and experiments, you optimize your website and make it more user-friendly and user-friendly. Therefore, by working together on SEO and CRO, you continue to improve the experience of users who come to your website.
Gather key consumer insights
By integrating CRO with SEO, you gain key consumer insights that cannot be obtained through SEO alone. CRO helps you find out what works and what doesn’t. With a CRO strategy in place, you can gather information about your customers’ preferred language, graphics, and messaging that will help you get more conversions, and those that won’t. With consumer insights in hand, you can better prepare future strategies and significantly improve your content.
Expand your customer base
By focusing on CRO along with SEO, you will benefit from an increased customer base. Ultimately, every business wants to bring in more customers and keep them. This is what makes a positive difference to the bottom line of any trading account. By combining SEO and CRO, you will not only be able to retain existing customers by tracking their purchasing behavior and analyzing their interactions, but also acquire future customers. In fact, it is the holy grail for those businesses looking to branch out and expand.
Increase ROI
When you are able to grow your customer base by retaining existing users and attracting new customers through SEO + CRO, you will see a significant jump in ROI.
Key elements of CRO in SEO
When implementing CRO alongside your SEO strategy, there are a few key elements you should work on. Some of them are:
- Creating CTAs within blog posts
While CTA buttons can be easily added to a blog post, it is better to create a text CTA in the blog post. Big, flashy CTA buttons and banners most often fail because readers develop banner blindness.
- Adding Lead Streams to Your Blog Posts
Another CRO element you can include on your website is lead flow. Lead flows are specially designed pop-ups that attract attention and offer value. Depending on your offering, you can choose a plug-in box, pop-up box, or other type of lead flow element. Lead flows are high converting popups as they are known to boost your CTR substantially.
- Testing landing pages
Landing pages are standalone web pages designed for marketing or advertising campaigns. They’re called that because visitors get there after clicking on an email link or ads from Google, YouTube, social media, or similar places. Since it is the landing page where a person becomes a potential customer of your business or where an existing potential customer begins to interact more with your brand, CRO strategy focuses more on testing landing pages using A/B testing to identify the best content designs and features and optimize them.
- Create conversion paths
Some visitors want to speak to your sales representative immediately. These high-intent leads can easily become Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) if you create smooth paths for them to take immediate action. To do this, you can create several thoughtfully designed web pages and compelling and clear messages along with compelling calls to action.
- Use of automated emails
Now, with marketing automation software, it’s easier to tell when someone is viewing a price range on your site or adding products to their shopping cart. If that person happens to leave your site without converting, you can send reminder emails with a link to book an appointment or to a shopping cart.
In addition, you can also add a live chat feature to connect with visitors in real time to offer support or advice, use retargeting techniques, and create blog posts on topics that are trending and can drive visitors to convert.
How to Get SEO and CRO to Collaborate for Better Results
Think of SEO and CRO as two complementary digital marketing techniques. You can use them as a multi-step process. Start with SEO first and once your website starts getting traffic, start working on CRO as well. CRO works better and is more accurate when you collect more data. Ignoring CRO means you won’t get any value even if your website gets thousands of users per month.
So work on both SEO and CRO in parallel. Most businesses see the sales funnel as a three-step model: 1) Get prospects, 2) Get them to take action, and 3) Convert them.
If your sales funnel is like that too, then you won’t get the results you want. In reality, a visitor may visit your website regularly but take months or even years to convert. Therefore, you need to fine-tune your SEO and CRO techniques.
SEO is the first step for CRO and needs to be constantly worked on. With a solid SEO strategy, you can instill trust in your brand among visitors. In the meantime, with a solid CRO strategy, you can eventually convert.
For SEO and CRO to work together, you need to find a balance. There is no cookie cutter approach. While some businesses may achieve better results with a 60/40 split, others may benefit more from a 70/30 split approach. So work closely with your SEO team to find the balance and create SEO and CRO strategies.
How CRO and SEO collaboration helps generate leads
Remember one simple thing. SEO will only improve your website ranking and bring more organic traffic to your website. It won’t get you more leads. If you want to get more leads and increase your revenue, you need to combine your SEO strategy with your CRO strategy. This is the only way to achieve your conversion goals.
The most important thing for any business is that their visitors take actions that contribute to their short or long-term business goals. What do these actions look like? They can be:
- Subscribe to the newsletter
- Purchase of subscription
- Request for a quote
- Buying a product or renting a service
- Book an appointment
- Taking a quiz or survey
When your SEO and CRO strategies work together, it helps you hone your brand by focusing on what works for your business, which marketing campaigns perform better, what kind of messaging your target audience responds to, and what remains ineffective. When CRO and SEO go hand in hand, you can be more targeted with your content, landing pages, marketing campaigns, ads and calls to action.
In addition, you can also identify gaps in your marketing funnel and fix them. Let’s say you have a product or service page that gets a lot of traffic. It looks great at first glance, but when you dig deeper and see very low conversation rates, it’s a red flag that something is wrong with the site. It could be messaging, lack of information, an inactive button or anything on this page. You need to find the problem that is turning away your potential customers and then fix it.
When your website is fast, user-friendly, secure, and has every key element optimized for conversion, you’re sure to see jumps in lead generation. With thoughtful planning, you can convert more of these leads, increasing your revenue as well.
Conclusion
Integrating SEO with CRO is a holistic approach to generating more leads and increasing business revenue. You need to find the right balance between them to work best together. Your SEO agency can help you identify gaps in your SEO strategy, improve rankings and traffic, and help you get more leads and conversions through CRO integration. Always remember that your business website has a huge potential to bring more customers to your business. However, if the website itself is outdated, unattractive or designed without planning, it is time to first redesign the website and then optimize it for search engines and also conversions.
If you are ready to generate more leads and increase your business income through SEO and CRO, or if you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact a professional SEO firm.