Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are practically two different processes in Digital Marketing but the results which they achieve complement each other. Conversion rate measures the number of visitors who have come to your website and have followed the calls to action, which means that who have actually purchased your products or services.
SEO in a broader sense means, attracting visitors to the website by achieving higher ranking in the organic SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages) of search engines through the use of keywords.
People often wonder whether their SEO strategies for their website are in conflict with CRO strategies. It is interesting to note that at different stages of the marketing funnel, you need to design different SEO pages and different CRO pages that complement each other. Google search engine crawls to cater to both user needs (Keywords based search) and to give a solution to their problems (CRO focused page).
SEO is all about strategies used in ranking better in search engine results through keywords’ placement, website structure, internal linking, link building and others. CRO focuses on competitive analysis, post-test analysis, qualitative and quantitative research, testing of on-site elements and other such strategies, which will optimize your conversion rates. The SEO works in the direction of attracting visitors to your website and CRO encourages the visitors to take specific actions.
SEO delves into the understanding of the algorithms of search engines. CRO concentrates on understanding the user’s behavior.
A strong data pool is required for defining both SEO and CRO strategies. CRO processes are highly dependent on data procured from SEO results, as CRO is heavily data-driven.
Some of the strategies which can be implemented in both CRO and SEO to increase the search rankings conversion rate are:
1. Use entry page ‘scent’
A source ad or an organic search result should always open a specific landing page connected with it to ensure effective conversion. If you click on the ad and you land somewhere else than expected then it is a waste of time. The visitors are reassured by ‘information scent’ that they are in the right place. The scent sequence provided assures whether the visitor visiting the website stays on the website to complete the purchase or leaves immediately.
Optimizing the page with scent:
Follow the instructions provided by Google in placing dynamic search ads for category pages.
Always remove out-of-stock products from search results.
Have a well-defined and clear site structure.
Use keywords to adjust your layout.
Always match H1 heading with the title tag.
2. Avoid duplicate content
Duplicate content on your website affects your ranking on the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages) and it will affect your conversion rate. Particularly in e-commerce websites, there is a possibility of duplicate product descriptions. Hence, you must ensure that each copy of product description is unique and it will give flair to your product descriptions.
3. Give enhanced product images
Many companies feel that giving high-resolution and high-quality images to their products and services on their website is enough to increase conversion rate. But this is a wrong notion; in fact, you need to optimize the images for search engines. The search engines of the present day are not capable of detecting the meaning of pixels or images. Hence, you have to use the keywords for the image ALT tags. The search engine robots search your image based on such keywords. This practice will positively affect your conversion rates.
4. Use long-tail keywords
The search engines are becoming more complex day by day, and they are giving more importance for semantic search. This fact has made long-tail keywords play an important role in providing higher search rankings to even small company websites that find fetching higher ranking in SERP’s difficult with basic search terms.
5. Use crawlable URL structure
If you use crawlable URL address for your website then you can expect to gain higher ranking in SERP’s by attracting more visitors. By giving a searchable URL structure, you make it easy for the search engine in finding your website and to know what it is offering and its use to customers. With a well-defined URL, the user can identify the uses of the website much faster and may stay at the website for a longer duration as it is relevant to the user. There is also a high possibility of users getting converted to customers.
6. Apply rich snippets
Snippets are the small descriptions that come just below the URLs of your websites on the search results page of Google. They give the user an idea regarding the nature of the website and allow you to stand out from other thousands of search results. If you use keyword rich snippets, the possibility of your website getting higher rankings in the SERP’s increases and as a result, the conversion rate for your website will also increase.
Hence, I would suggest the companies having their own websites to use above stated SEO techniques to increase their page rankings in the SERP’s and to achieve the highest conversion rates.
The highest conversion rates ensure increased profits and growth of your company.
