When it comes to your marketing plan, a strong focus on your search engine optimization (SEO) is a must. It plays an important role in helping rank your site and helps build brand awareness in general. 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) though can be just as helpful in contributing to Google’s love and adoration for your site. A process that helps improve the website, in order to encourage your users to click that purchase button.

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Which one is more important? Well, to answer that question - they’re equally important! Interestingly, both SEO and CRO overlap when it comes to using them for the benefit of improving your site, and converting traffic.

In this guide, we’ll look at both individually and their benefits for driving results. Combining the two together can create a powerhouse of effort that can pay off in the best way for your business. 

Knowing how to leverage them equally is a great asset to your marketing strategies moving forward.

What is CRO?

For those a little unfamiliar with CRO, it’s a practice that helps to increase the percentage of users that carry out an action through the website. 

These desired actions can be anything from purchasing a product to saving it to their favorites section of the site. It can be clicking on a specific link, filling out a form, or signing up a newsletter.

With conversion rate optimization, you’re continuously challenging your website elements in order to successfully convert customers. CRO is a great practice to use with the average ROI for CRO tools being 223%. Those results for any business site would be a welcome change.

How CRO benefits your website

With the right methods, CRO can help convert your traffic to paying customers, and paying customers are what you want. Here are some of the ways CRO benefits your business.

Helps you leverage your current website

Your current website has a lot to offer and it could be that you’ve not even scratched the surface of its potential. Using tools like Yieldify can help to improve your CRO through your website’s functionality and existing design layout.

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Get to know your customers more

With CRO practices, the suggestions you make through the personalization of your site can help connect with customers. The more you know about your customers, the better success you’ll have at influencing them and getting them to do what you want.

Reduces customer acquisition costs and improves retention

It’s a lot more difficult to acquire customers, with acquisition being five times more costly than retaining an existing customer. With the methods that come with conversion rate optimization, you can utilize what you already have and what’s successful with current customers.

Hopefully, as a result, all the advertising and marketing you do for your site will maximize its value.

What is SEO?

SEO or search engine optimization is one that’s commonly known amongst many businesses and tends to be used a lot more for improving a site’s general online presence. Search engine optimization is a practice that helps boost your website’s rankings through search engine results.

With webpages or a site that generally hits closer to the top of the search results, more people can discover your business. 

How SEO benefits your website

With search engine optimization as part of your marketing strategy, how will it benefit your website in particular?

It can help find quality traffic

As SEO generates organic results for its users, you’re more likely to get traffic coming to your site that’s better targeted. With outbound advertising strategies you could be reaching those who aren’t necessarily interested in your product or services. 

With search engine optimization, the majority of your traffic might be more inclined to make a purchase.

Helps reduce your ad spend

With SEO, you’re not having to spend any of your money on ads. As it’s all organic, the results you get aren’t going to cost you anything - other than what you do to optimize your SEO. 

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In fact, search engine optimization reduces the cost of acquiring customers by 87.41% in comparison to what you spend on digital advertising.

More clicks are achieved than with PPC

Whilst PPC ads appear above organic results, it’s been proven that more clicks are achieved through organic results on the first page.

Why this is, we can’t be sure. It may be that as many users know those ads are paid for, they may not be as trustworthy as Google’s own, organic results.

The powerhouse of CRO and SEO

Now that we know how both CRO and SEO can individually help your business and its presence online, what about combining the two? Here are a few ways that you can utilize this powerhouse for further benefits, particularly when it comes to UX.

1. Use them to identify friction points 

When it comes to your webpage, there are like going to be some pinch points. Imagine a user is approaching your site for the first time and they realize that certain web page elements are causing more hassle than it’s worth.

As a result, you could cause the user to do the opposite and instead of purchasing, they’ll simply click off, deserting their shopping basket. Shopping basket abandonment is more common than you think. With 18% abandoning their baskets on the basis that the checkout process is too long. This is just one example of why people leave their digital baskets behind.

By looking at the friction points within your site, say your checkout process, for example, you can use both SEO and CRO to improve it.

One example of combining the two is during your checkout process. Looking at possible friction points during the process can help convert more leads to paying customers. SEO can help structure the page in a way that’s going to get people to the checkout page.

With CRO, any friction points within the page elements themselves can be tested and resolved with the relevant tools. Ultimately, by addressing those friction points, you give your users more incentive to go through with their purchase.

2. Assess bounce rates and page loading speed

Both bounce rates and the speed at which your pages load is crucial for improving your website’s performance. When a user clicks on your site, from whatever link it may be, the page should load quickly. 

The average page loading time for a desktop site is 10.3 seconds. The faster it loads, the more satisfying it is for the user and it means they can get straight into browsing the site. If your site is taking longer to load, then a few SEO tips may be helpful. 

- Compress your images.

- Check for background apps that may be slowing down the site

- Limit your video content where possible.

As a result of this, it can ensure CRO does its job and encourages users to land on a page and complete a prompted action. Bounce rates are also improved because this metric measures how long someone stays on the page, before clicking off. SEO can help track the right people so that those clicking on the page, will get what they were hoping for in content.

3. Use them to create valuable content for clear search intent.

With the right content, your pages are most likely to rank well on Google. With that in mind, it’s important to create valuable content for one but content that’s structured and laid out in a way that’s SEO-friendly. 

You also need to ensure that the content you’re creating is matching the search intent, and answers what questions or queries the user has. With both SEO and CRO, you’ve got some great tools that help track your user’s behaviors. 

By understanding what your users need. In turn, you’ll create valuable content for them which provides all the information desired.

4. They help to leverage data

CRO and SEO both hold different data, which can make discovering what your users want and need, a lot easier. Everything you get from data helps move users along the path of the sales funnel. 

Data insight can help improve SEO practices and those SEO practices can help bring more traffic to the site. With more traffic, you get more conversions. 

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Leveraging data through two data-rich processes can be extremely helpful in converting leads to paying customers, and retaining them.

CRO and SEO are incredibly important to use together

When aligning these two processes together, you’re able to create quality results for your business. Not only that but your users get a more seamless, satisfying experience every time they come onto your site.

With both CRO and SEO, it’s a repetitive process that can constantly evolve and present your site with further opportunities.

Feel free to contact us to see the unprecedented growth of your business.

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