If you have done any SEO in the last year or two, you will know that things are rough “out there”. Getting good rankings for tough keywords is not as easy as it once used to be. And, as a result, your bottom line is hurting where it hurts the most: conversions.
Sure, PPC marketing is always going to be around, if you have the budget that is. And it’s a safe bet, you invest some and you generate some. But SEO, it’s a different ballgame altogether.
The premise of SEO is to optimize your content for best search engine visibility. Whereas Conversion Rate Optimization is all about good user experience. In a nutshell, SEO serves the search engine, while CRO serves the user.
Not many brands have the guts to pull it off, but it can be done. Meaning, it is possible to have a solid user experience alongside great keyword rankings for your content.
In this post, you will learn how to use the latest search engine optimization techniques to boost your conversion rates. It doesn’t matter if you’re running an eCommerce store, a gaming website, or a SaaS product — the approach remains the same.
What exactly is Conversion Rate Optimization anyway?
Before we dive deep into the different SEO strategies for improving CRO, let’s first understand what does it mean to optimize conversions.
At its core, CRO is the practice of utilizing user-specific data (analytics, feedback, etc.) to optimize the user experience of your website or product. By using the CRO approach you can boost certain metrics that are most valuable to your business.
E.g. You might want to acquire more registered users, or you wish to boost the number of people who subscribe to your newsletter. Ultimately, what you want is to acquire new and paying customers. And that’s exactly where CRO shines the best.
Another way to look at it is that you can use CRO to understand the needs of your users, and then create experiences based on those needs. Maybe you need to remove some of the steps you have implemented in your onboarding process. And maybe, you need to produce content that’s more specific to users’ pressing issues.
The approach that one can take to CRO is endless. This post is going to highlight some of the more unique approaches to optimizing conversions. Though, not without the added benefit of helping to improve your search engine rankings.
Performance is important more than ever.
Google has never been this vocal about letting webmasters know that performance is critical for good search engine rankings. And as you know, good rankings lead to more visitors, and more visitors lead to more conversions. It’s a beautiful circle of life!
All the joking aside though, latest reports show that as many as %% users will leave a website unless it has fully rendered in a given timeframe. In short, people don’t like to visit websites that take an enormous amount of time to finish loading.
Web performance optimization must always be a priority since there is any number of competitors on the internet that meets users’ needs. Downtime, slow page loading speeds or any number of deployment issues will drive your traffic elsewhere. Once you identify the issues that are disrupting performance, you will be able to make critical adjustments that deliver results.
But, it’s not only about load times, but also the type of content you serve. Take Images and Photographs in general for example — they’re the highest bandwidth consumers on any given website, yet so many webmasters forget to optimize and compress their images.
Where to begin with performance optimization?
One of the best resources to learn everything about performance optimization is Google itself. You see, Google doesn’t just encourage Mobile-First or tells you to optimize for speed, Google gives you direct advice on how to get it done as well!
The “Why Performance Matters” page is an excellent starting point for anyone looking to understand performance on a deeper level. The documentation covers areas like image optimization, prioritizing resources, avoiding duplicate requests, and a lot more.
Remember, performance equals better load times, and better load times equal more sales!
Additionally, you want to bookmark a website speed testing tool. Anything like Google PageSpeed or GTMetrix will do. The goal is to watch you make incremental progress as you adjust your site based on modern performance standards.
Best of all, most page speed testing tools also give you actionable feedback on how you can improve your website.
In a field as diverse as performance, it’s very common to “forget” or “overlook” something.
Alright, let’s get to the interesting parts which are SEO!
Target later buyers with long-tail keywords!
When it comes to SEO, keywords are the bread and butter of the whole operation. And while getting good rankings for broad keywords is always great, there is a substantial shift happening. A shift that’s leaning towards long-tail keywords, or in marketing terms — the keywords that attract behind-schedule buyers.
Unlike your core keywords which revolve around one or two phrases, long-tail keywords can consist of any number of words or phrases. But, this is great news for you. It’s so because long-tail keywords are 100% specific and with determined intent.
Whenever a potential customer searches through a long-tail phrase, you know for a fact that he is looking to purchase something.
And, as far as CRO is concerned, you’re building a strategy that’s focused on converting search visitors into new customers.
Take a moment to think about it. When you search for “juice” you are aiming for a VERY broad return of results. Juicy comes in hundreds of different forms and landing on a page that interests you the most is almost impossible.
So, you start adding more keywords. Let’s say, “apple juice”. While more specific, you know this keyword is extremely saturated as well. So, you can go deeper. You can start promoting keywords that truly define your product.
Let’s say, “organic apple juice cold-pressed”. Now, you’re onto something. The average juice shopper might not know anything about cold-press, or, they might not care for organic juices. But, those people that do — you bet that they’ll click on your link if you prepare for it ahead of time.
This technique can be applied to virtually any product or service that you offer. Try it yourself, take a piece of paper and write down the different products/services that you sell. Then, try and define what makes your product so unique.
Be as specific as possible. Think like a search engine user. After a few minutes, you should have an extensive list of keywords, a list that you can use to produce specific content! See, it’s not that hard to use long-tail keywords.
Not to mention, taking advantage of keyword research tools might also give you some interesting ideas.
Use psychology to your advantage.
Do you ever come across a website page that simply feels right? It’s almost like one page to the next are designed in a way to keep your attention focused on the content and nothing else. This approach is also known as psychology in web design.
The goal is to use color schemes, content positions, copywriting and other website elements to captivate the attention of the user.
Though, for the purpose of conversion optimization, you should focus strictly on the content aspect of design psychology. Let’s dig deeper!
How to optimize your content for best conversions
In most cases, content is what drives the user experience on any given website. Every single visitors lands to a website because they either need information, or they are interested in a product.
Whichever it is, web design plays an important role in how a user understands that information. But, also, how search engines interpret any given page.
Anyone can slap some copy on a landing page and call it a day, but a real professional understands that good copywriting can drive more sales.
If you look back on old-school websites, it wasn’t uncommon to see pages bloated with thousands of unnecessary words. The old-school landing pages would go on for 20-30 minutes just to try and lure in customers.
But, that approach has long dried up. Nobody has time to sit through long landing pages just to be convinced of something.
And the latest trends in design emphasize a more direct content approach. An approach that favors clear, succinct, and direct copy.
On the other hand, if you start adding too much content, or using unclear paragraphs — you risk at scaring people away, and in turn, damaging your bottom line.
Remember, your content represents the voice of your brand. If it’s clear, on-point, and explains your product well — you have nothing to worry about.
Become an expert in one area.
It’s easy to get sidetracked and start spreading out your content in areas that don’t even make sense for your business.
Indeed, content creation can be an addicting process, but if you want to see true success — the focus is essential! And by focus, I mean to focus on one particular content subject at all times.
If your product is about ‘luxurious leather sofas’, then focus solely on this one keyword alone. Present as much knowledge as you have about your market, and continue keeping on track.
Further, by putting your content in clusters you can also help search engines better understand what it is that you are writing about. One-off pages never feel good, and generally, create too much of a distraction for anyone to take your content seriously.
Brian Dean from Backlinko does this exceptionally well. Even though his blog is visited by millions of readers, he only has about 150~ published posts altogether.
This is because Brian is focusing on quality for each post, rather than quantity. Not to mention, with the kind of ‘link juice’ that Brian has, he could easily get away by publishing content that’s outside of SEO and Link Building.
But, because Brian wants to boost his conversion rates for whatever services he is promoting — he has kept his focus determined. Likewise, you can do the same thing.
Find your focus. Look for the backbone of all your content and stick to it. If you do, earning authoritative status won’t take long!
Perform A/B testing for different content variations.
A properly executed A/B testing strategy is going to boost your conversions, generate additional leads, and ultimately increase your sales.
A/B testing is the practice of testing 2 or more different versions of a website page to individual segments of users. A successful A/B test will reveal which version of the page is converting the best so that you can use it as the default.
As far as SEO goes, if you want to do SEO-friendly split testing then you must provide Google with detailed data about the pages that you’re testing.
What kind of data exactly must you provide?
Google uses a Crawler to fetch and index pages, and usually, it’s one page per content type. But if you start adding more pages then there is a clear indication of confusion, and Google might have a hard time figuring out which page to rank.
E.g. How can Google differentiate between A, B, C, or D variations of the split tests that you are doing?
Meet Google Optimize.
Google Optimize allows you to test variations of the pages on your website to see how this changes the behavior of your site’s visitors – allowing you to improve your pages to increase conversions, newsletter sign-up, or whatever your online goals.
In a nutshell, this is Google’s personal attempt to try and provide Webmasters with concrete A/B testing tools. Best of all, as of 2017 — Google Optimize is free for everyone.
The entire onboarding process is built to help you start testing as soon as possible. And because Optimize is directly linked with Analytics, you can create in-depth targeting filters to split test a particular subset of your website visitors.
Try using video to convert visitors into immediate customers.
A lot more brands are turning to video content to keep users engaged and interested. A video can quickly convey the overall value to the user.
Further, a thoughtfully-crafted video can promote user engagement, and increase the amount of time that users spend on the site to learn more about the product.
You can create videos that showcase the core functionality of your product. And, you can focus on videos that display additional use cases that users’ might not have thought of themselves.
However, you must also remember that the average attention span is right around 2-3 minutes for most people. So, you have to try and make a solid pitch within that specified timeframe.
Further, you want to use a platform such as Wistia or YouTube to host your videos. Why? Because both will deliver concise statistics on the video performance.
The SEO goal here is to lure people in to watch your video and then have them spend more time on the site. Don’t forget that YouTube SEO is a real thing, and optimizing your videos for SEO exposure is just as important as optimizing basic content.
Closing statement: Focus on original content and modern design principles
It takes practice to find the approach that works best for your given business type. But rest assured that you can optimize your SEO efforts to increase conversion rates!
A lot of experts are doing this on a daily basis, and if you apply our outlined techniques — I don’t see why you couldn’t get a boost in your sales either.
If you have questions or you are unsure about something, please drop us a comment in the section below and we can discuss it further.