5 Proven Ways To Improve Website Conversion Rate with SEO
An easy-to-navigate, well-constructed website that boasts of rich, relevant content not only helps your SEO efforts but also helps your users find what they want and improves your website’s conversion rate. Before we get into the details of how to do it, let’s have a quick vocab lesson.
What is SEO, SEM and CRO?
- Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
- Search Engine Marketing or SEMis the practice of marketing a business using paid advertisements that appear on search engine results’ pages (or SERPs).
- Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO is a process that involves understanding how users move through your site, which actions they take, and what’s stopping them from completing a transaction or a goal that you have set. It is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take the desired action — be that filling out a form, buying your product, or otherwise.
Now that we know what these terms mean, let’s understand how they’re related and how they contribute to your business success.
How are SEO and CRO related?
SEO and CRO are like peanut butter and jelly or pancakes and maple syrup; each ingredient brings out the best in the other. SEO and CRO are one such pair: good separate, unbeatable together.
Many online businesses believe they have to pick one of the two (SEO and CRO). You could spend an entire chunk of your budget on SEO and rank at the top, but if your visitors do not convert, that’s a fail on the CRO end. Similarly, if your site offers wonderful content and products but if it does not rank, that’s a fail on the SEO end.
How can SEO and CRO affect each other positively?
As a rule of thumb, limit one specific topic to one page. This boosts your search engine rankings by helping the crawlers easily and quickly see what a page is about; at the same time, it makes your site more relevant for your visitors. One clear message leads to minimum confusion and maximum conversion – a huge win for CRO.
A good online marketing strategy incorporates both SEO and CRO and ensures that they work in harmony to achieve the strategic goals and objectives of the business.
Let’s take a look at how CRO can be improved with SEO:
1. Publish fresh, authentic content and aim for ‘on topic’ backlinks
Search engines consider hundreds of ranking factors to place one website over the other in search results. The number of these ranking factors is only going to increase and their nature is only going to get more complicated with Artificial Intelligence being used in search engine algorithms. Here are the key factors that impact a website’s search engine rankings:
- The quality of content on your website makes a big difference in all this. Fresh and original content is always good news for SEO. Back every blogpost on your website with these SEO Good Practices:
- Create a catchy headline with the focus keyword
- Provide a meta description with the focus/related keyword
- Include the focus keyword in the first paragraph
- Have subtitles that have the focus/related keywords
- Include naturally placed related keywords in the text
- Name ALT attribute of the images with focus/related keywords.
- Include titles and subtitles with H1, H2, H3 meta tags
- ‘On topic’ backlinks from reputed, credible websites is crucial for SEO. A recent study from Stone Temple indicates that backlinks have a big role to play in improving SEO ranking. Getting backlinks, not just to your website’s home page but also to various inner pages and blog posts, gives a positive signal to search engines about the quality of your website. More relevant the anchor text (the blue, underlined, clickable text in a hyperlink), the better it is for the SEO.
Keyword rich domains on new domain extensions such as .tech, .store can work to your advantage for getting these ‘on topic’ backlinks. For example, if the website www.kindle.store is backlinked to anchor text ‘kindle store’, it is a positive indication to the search engines about the relevance of the website.
2. Use Entry Page ‘Scent’
It is imperative to maintain a strong connection between the search result and the landing page. When your users click on a link and find themselves somewhere they did not expect, then it’s a problem. Information scent reassures users that they are at the right place. It determines whether a user will convert or leave (bounce rate).
Use this basic checklist to optimize your page for scent:
- Have a clear site structure
- Match title tag and H1 heading
- Exclude products that are unavailable
- Adjust your layout based on the keywords
3. Give Enhanced Product Images
Users will barely ever buy anything without seeing it. They’ll want to touch it, hold it, maybe take it for a spin. All this is obviously not possible to do online, therefore, it is important to make your products come alive through excellent photography and graphics. Images let your products shine and encourage conversions. For inspiration, check out Made.com, an eCommerce website that sells high quality designer furniture.
Here are some tips on how you can use images to optimise SEO and thus improve CRO:
- Be descriptive with image names. Google can understand red-and-white-polka-dot-dress.jpg but not DCM2704AA.jpg.
- Alt attributes of the image should also have they main keywords, but not too many
- Add model number, if any, under alt attributes.
- Include multiple shots, each with description that is specific to that shot.
- Keep the image size below 70 kb to keep the page light.
4. Outrank Your Competition with Long-Tail Keywords
The entire point of Google’s search business is to present users with the right information based on their searches. A user will rarely ever just search for ‘SEO’ It’ll either be ‘SEO trends’, or ‘Tips to get good SEO rankings’, etc. These are called long-tail keywords. It is recommended that you invest time and effort into researching these keywords and optimally using them in your content to improve your website’s conversion rate.
Keyword research is a long and complicated process which requires time and dedication. There are multiple tools like SEMrush and Google Adwords to your aid. However, here’s a quick hack that you can use to get started or get a direction.
- Type in the keyword that you want to target for an article or product page in the search bar.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and take a look at the “Searches related to…” for that keyword. Usually you’ll get a mix of close variations of your main keyword.
- These are sometimes great keywords to target because they’re long tail and have less competition than Body or Head Keywords.
(Pro Tip: Take one of the keywords from the “Searches related to…” area, pop that into Google, and check out the “Searches related to…” results for that keyword. Rinse and repeat until you have a laundry list of awesome keywords that you can use.)
5. Use Crawlable URL Structure
Another great way to gain higher ranking is to use crawlable URL address for your website. A searchable URL structure makes it easy for the search engine to find your website and know what it’s offering to the consumers. A well-defined URL not only helps the website to rank better but it also makes the user experience pleasant. With this, there is a high possibility of these users getting converted to customers.
Here are some tips:
- You’ll want this page to be discovered by the right people (and crawlers). So, the keyword that gets to the nub of what your page is about should be included in the URL.
- Avoid capital letters as they can confuse search engines and make it more difficult to understand.
- If you want to optimize your URL then the way you separate words does matter. Google robots are set up to read hyphens and not underscores.
Example:http://yourdomain.com/url-tips
and not http://yourdomain.com/url_tips - Prepositions and conjunctions are distractions and can be stripped out of the URL completely. Just as users can understand what a topic is about without these unnecessary words, Google will derive all the meaning it requires too.
Bonus 6. Make The Most Out of Deep Linking
Today’s consumers want information ‘now’ and they have endless options where they can find it. Having a website that is well optimized and aligned with your business goals can be both lucrative and essential when you become the go-to site for your customers.
