When dealing with SEO, it’s very easy to focus on search engine metrics and the associated numbers. Yet, in the broader context, SEO plays its role in a wider range of methods and applications.
This is why any good SEO company will also be aware of PPC, social media and even CRO. The latter, of course, stands for Conversion Rate Optimisation. After all, what good is making your website as visible as possible if it’s not also setup to convert as many users – turning them to customers, subscribers or any other target objective - as possible.
Compelling Content
Users aren’t robots. Because SEO focuses so much on understanding Google’s crawlerbots, ensuring the placement of organic keywords, meta data and other vital pieces of data to catch Google’s eye, it’s easy to forget that people will simply walk away if they’re not presented with something interesting.
This is why great content is still vital. If your articles or videos aren’t engaging and unique, your SEO efforts will often be in vain. If they don’t help convert people, it’s an arguable waste of resources.
Calls To Action
A call to action (CTA) is a key part of any CRO strategy. It’s the reason PPC ads display sales and tempt you with “free delivery today!” or why videos encourage you to subscribe… all of this is proven to encourage a positive reaction from more people.
Again, this is about compelling content. People won’t act as you wish just because your website is there. They need a compelling reason to do so. Focus on your unique selling points and use them!
CRO needs Context
What does “conversion” mean anyway? For some, it means subscribers, while others prioritise creating new customers or even just generating viable leads for their business. Each company and website will have it’s own goals, with a specific metric.
Your CRO means nothing without this context. A high subscriber rate isn’t useful if you have no plans to use it and still aren’t generating the required sales. In other words, focus on the objectives you require and don’t get distracted with other metrics,
Longer Tests
You can’t implement your CRO strategies and expect results to generate instantly. One of the biggest mistakes people make is celebrating too soon and further developing their SEO campaign based on the earliest feedback from the CRO efforts.
Let’s say you’ve implemented some new adverts and, within the first week, the results are up. Time to do this for other products or areas of your site, right? Well, if you wait a month or two, you might find it was a seasonal blip, or it might drop on the weekends. All of this is vital information that’s easy to miss if you’re too focused on one area. Good SEO is all about looking at the wider picture and that includes time.
Learn From Failures
Perfecting your optimisation requires plenty of trial and error. When things work, it’s great, but what about when they don’t? Use this opportunity to learn something.
What did you change, this time, that resulted in a drop? Make a note of all your changes, including those with negative outcomes. This will give you a list of things you should build on, as well as avoid. In other words, it more clearly outlines the road to success.
This is a well known scientific principle: even a failed hypothesis brings you one step closer to the truth. This is also true in SEO – make a note of which keywords work and which don’t. Even the latter can still be used: including them as negative keywords for any PPC or sponsored promotions, for example.