If you’re familiar with search engine optimization, you already know it’s a highly effective digital marketing strategy to drive relevant organic traffic to your website. But getting more people to your website is only half the battle.
That’s where conversion rate optimization comes in, helping you turn visitors into customers and guiding them to complete conversion actions like purchases or newsletter sign-ups.
Learn what CRO and SEO are, why they’re most effective when combined, and how you can implement these practices on your own website.
What is CRO?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the practice of analyzing and optimizing web pages or applications to increase the percentage of users who take a desired action.
CRO tactics include:
- User behavior analysis
- Target audience segmentation
- A/B testing layout improvements
- Call-to-action (CTA) optimization
- Usability testing
- User surveys
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of analyzing and optimizing a website to increase rankings and visibility in organic search engine results pages (SERPs).
SEO work includes:
- Technical SEO improvements ensure search engines can effectively crawl and index content.
- Adding relevant keywords to headings, title tags, and long-form content to improve their searchability.
- Planning and creating high-quality content to target users at different stages in their customer journeys.
- Building backlinks to strengthen the site’s authority.
4 benefits of using CRO and SEO together
- Increased traffic value
- Data-driven decision making
- Lower acquisition costs
- Improved user experience
On their own, CRO and SEO are both effective ways to boost organic traffic and increase conversions. When you combine the two, their impact multiplies.
Some of the top benefits of using CRO and SEO together are:
1. Increased traffic value
Traffic from search engines tends to be of higher quality than that of cold audiences coming from digital ads. By searching, organic audiences have already expressed some interest in the products or information you have. Once SEO efforts have done their job by getting people to your website, CRO takes the baton to improve the chances they’ll take action once they get there.
CRO work improves the value you get from every visit by improving the conversion percentage for all channels, no matter where your audience is coming from. Together, SEO and CRO efforts create a more valuable set of website visitors on your site.
2. Data-driven decision making
Both SEO and CRO rely on data from sources like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and CRO tools like Hotjar to guide their efforts.
Whether it’s building a data-informed understanding of your audience or selecting the right landing pages to optimize, when CRO and SEO data work together, they create a clearer picture so you can make informed decisions.
3. Lower acquisition costs
SEO brings in more relevant organic traffic. Organic acquisition is more cost-effective than paid advertising, which means conversions from these users reduce your overall customer acquisition costs (CAC). This can decrease your reliance on ad spend while boosting overall performance.
CRO increases the number of visitors who convert by better guiding existing traffic toward becoming paying customers. This improves conversions for all channels that drive users to the website, maximizing your return on investment (ROI) and helping you reduce overall acquisition costs.
4. Improved user experience
SEO and CRO both work to improve a website’s user experience (UX) in different ways. SEO ensures that visitors from search get what they’re expecting. CRO ensures the website makes it clear what the next ideal action is. Both practices involve improving the load speed of webpages, which significantly improves the UX.
How to use CRO and SEO together
- Optimize headings
- Improve site speed
- Optimize for mobile
- Streamline your site structure
- Add FAQ sections to content
- Add internal links
Here are some steps to get you started blending your CRO and SEO strategies:
Optimize headings
Headings are an important tool to help you rank for keywords and help search engine crawlers understand a page’s content. Unfortunately, some site designers make the mistake of optimizing headings for keywords without considering their effect on conversions and user experience. Most users only skim pages, so headings also need to be attention-grabbing and communicate your value proposition effectively.
Use keyword research tools to identify which target keywords to include in your headings, then follow conversion rate optimization best practices, such as including action words and benefits. This will help your site rank for important keywords and convert visitors once they click through from the search engine results page. Lastly, edit your heading so it’s 60 characters or less—this ensures the end won’t get clipped in the search results.
For example, if your target keyword is “vegan leather handbags,” a landing page with a heading titled "Best Vegan Leather Handbags" is effective for SEO. However, "Affordable Vegan Leather Handbags for Eco-Conscious Shoppers" is a better title because it communicates your value proposition (affordability), matches search intent, and incorporates the target keyword—all while totaling 60 characters in length.
Improve site speed
Nobody likes a slow website, including Google’s crawlers. Improving your site speed improves your Core Web Vital scores, a ranking factor in Google’s algorithms since 2021.
Improving your site speed can also improve your conversion rate by decreasing the likelihood of website visitors bouncing off your site if it is too slow to load. An ideal site load speed is within zero to three seconds.
Optimize for mobile
These days, most people are never too far away from their mobile devices. In fact, there’s a good chance you’re reading this article on your phone. Search engines account for this in their algorithms, requiring that websites are mobile-friendly and present the same (or very similar) content to users regardless of their screen size.
Mobile optimization is a must-have for users in today’s world. If your site isn’t fully functional and easy to use, users will find a competitor’s site that is. Opting for a responsive web design that’s mobile-friendly can significantly boost your site’s conversion rate by ensuring users stay on the site and continue to take a desired action. So, as you finalize your web design process, take the time to test your website on a mobile device as well as your desktop computer.
Streamline your site structure
From a conversion rate optimization perspective, an organized and intuitive structure makes it easy to find information and reduces the likelihood of users bouncing off the site if they can’t.
From an SEO perspective, a well-organized structure helps Google understand your site architecture and crawl your content as efficiently as possible. If Google can’t crawl content on your site because it can’t find it amongst a messy site structure, then some pages won’t be indexed, which means they won’t rank in organic search results or bring organic users to that landing page.
To improve your website’s structure, consider your brand story, plan a clear hierarchy, and add a search function to maximize flow and discoverability.
Add FAQ sections to content
Adding frequently asked questions (FAQs) to webpages helps your site rank for question-based search queries, appear in featured snippets, and appear in the answers to People Also Ask questions on Google’s search engine results pages.
FAQs can also increase your conversion rate by addressing prospective customers’ objections and giving users the information they need to inform their research and decision-making. This means they won’t have to reach out with those questions, adding a layer of friction, or turn to a competitor if they aren’t addressed.
Add internal links
Internal linking creates links between relevant pages within your website. This link-building strategy benefits your SEO by passing link authority from high-authority pages to lower ones. It also demonstrates connections between articles, building topical authority. And it can help search engines efficiently crawl your site.
Internal linking can also benefit CRO by guiding users through a logical conversion path and directing them to relevant content that matches their needs, such as a demo video or the pricing page.
SEO and CRO FAQ
What is CRO?
CRO, or conversion rate optimization, is the process of analyzing and optimizing a web page or application to increase the percentage of users who take a desired action, such as a purchase or newsletter sign-up.
Is SEO part of CRO?
SEO and CRO are considered two separate pillars of digital marketing. However, they are both types of website optimization. They share some of the same practices, such as updating content and improving load speed. When these pillars are considered together, the website optimization work has a much larger impact.
What is an example of SEO and CRO being used together?
An example of SEO and CRO being used together is improving page speed. This improves Core Web Vitals scores, a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm, and improves conversion rates by preventing users from bouncing off the site before converting.
