At first glance, it might seem like Conversion Rate Optimization and Search Engine Optimization do not correlate.
On the one hand, SEO focuses on optimizing content for search engines so websites can increase their visibility.
On the other hand, CRO optimizes content for a better user experience, which, in return, increases the chances of users answering a call to action or, in other words, converting.
Well, this is actually why SEO and CRO go hand in hand together. If done right, SEO will ultimately boost your Conversion Rate Optimization Strategy and vice-versa.
To elevate SEO and CRO to the pro-level, consider hiring some of the professionals at the new york web design company to do the magic.
In this article, we are going to discuss how to make that happen.
1. Optimize Loading Speed
All SEO marketing experts will tell you that your website’s loading speed will directly influence both SEO and CRO.
Google has made this an essential ranking factor, meaning that your loading speed will play a major role in ranking in search results.
The way it works is that Google will send bots, also known as crawlers, to examine and index your website’s pages. However, as these bots need to verify billions of pages, they will allocate a budget for each website.
A crawl budget refers to the amount of time these bots will spend in a session. Therefore, if your website’s loading speed is slow, these bots won’t get to examine and index all of your pages.
Secondly, load times will affect the user experience as well. Over 53% of users will abandon a web page if it hasn’t loaded within the first three seconds.
In other words, nobody likes a slow website, neither Google nor the users. With that said, make sure that your website’s loading speed up to standards.
Luckily, Google can provide you with a handy tool that will let you see how long it takes for your website to load and give you a few tips on improving its performance.
2. Focus on Mobile Friendliness
Just as with loading speeds, Google will also take mobile-friendliness into account when ranking your website. In other words, if your website is mobile-friendly, it will rank higher in search results compared to websites that aren’t.
Not only that, but being mobile-friendly means that your website is designed to enhance the UX for people who use these types of devices, and, of course, a better user experience also means better conversions.
With that said, use an SEO auditing tool to find out whether your site is mobile-friendly or not. If not, you should consider going for the responsive web design approach since that’s Google’s preferred method of making a website mobile-friendly.
However, keep in mind that going for a responsive website design approach will most likely require you to do a website overhaul, which may be costly and time-consuming.
But with just over 50% of all web traffic being generated by mobile devices, this move might be worth it in the long run, both in regards to SEO and CRO as well.
3. Strengthen Your Security
Security has to be the top priority for every website, especially for Ecommerce stores.
Needless to say, if your website is labeled as not being secure, users will avoid spending too much time on it. They won’t fulfill any desired actions either, like filling in a form or making purchases, for example. This ultimately leads to having decreased conversion rates.
Not to mention that the lack of security will also make your website rank lower in the search results. With that said, start by getting the SSL certificate. That will get the “HTTPS://” tag in your URL, indicating that your website is secure.
4. Improve Navigation
Your website’s navigation will influence your conversion rate, as well as your position in the search engine rankings. When it comes to Conversion Rate Optimization, you will want users to quickly browse through your site to find what they want as fast as possible.
Therefore, you will need to implement a search bar, include multiple category options, give users the ability to filter elements, and so on.
There’s one more thing that you need to look out for, and those are links. Links are what give users the ability to browse through your website.
Those links might be broken in some cases, leading users to a page that says “404 error”, potentially discouraging them from continuing to explore your site.
Broken links will also negatively impact SEO. That’s because when the search engine crawlers stumble upon a broken link, they will stop visiting that page and simply move on to another, meaning that the said page won’t be indexed and will not receive a ranking.
An SEO audit will help you find and fix these links. Meanwhile, consider creating custom error pages containing useful text and links that will direct them to another page.
By doing this, you will mitigate the risk of users leaving your website altogether.
5. Increase Duration Of Visits
The more time a user spends on your website, the better the chances of getting that user to convert and the higher you will rank in search results.
To maximize SEO and CRO, you should aim for a dwell time of somewhere around one to two minutes. Anything under thirty seconds will be considered poor by Google, therefore negatively impacting your rankings.
So, how can you increase the amount of time a user spends on your website?
You can start by including more visuals, videos to be specific. You could create videos where you would talk about your company, presenting its values to get visitors to learn more about you or create videos showcasing your products.
Users are more likely to watch an entire video rather than reading paragraphs upon paragraphs of text.
Therefore, by including videos, users will spend more time on the site, and you can use that time to convince visitors to buy your products or your services. Meanwhile, you’ll get to boost your search rankings as well.
Videos aren’t everything, though. The rest of your website shouldn’t contain filler content. When it comes to texts, make sure that they are informative and also incorporate keywords naturally.
Final Words
All in all, SEO and CRO do influence one another. Keep in mind that the ranking factors set by Google prioritize websites that have an enhanced user experience.
That’s why there’s such an emphasis on loading speeds, security, navigation, mobile-friendliness, and duration of visits.
Besides all these, I would like to enhance the importance of finding the best keyword for SEO.
Tomas is a digital marketing specialist and a freelance blogger. He is focused on new web tech trends and digital voice distribution across different channels.