Conversion rate optimisation is a discipline of marketing that has plenty of overlap with other marketing disciplines. One of these other disciplines is SEO. SEO deals with optimising your website so that it is as visible as it can be in search engines such as Google.
As search engine algorithms have evolved over the years, it has become even more important to provide a good user experience on your website. What this means is that what is good for user experience is good for SEO.
Where this aligns with the objectives of conversion rate optimisation is that search engines such as Google have now started monitoring the user experience on a website and integrating that into their natural search algorithms. This means if you provide a good user experience on your website, you will likely have a ranking boost in organic search.
Of course, providing a good user experience is also good for your conversion rates. This is why using an SEO agency and working on your SEO is a good way to help your conversion rates.
Get super clear on your objectives
One of the first things that you will need to do when you’re working with an SEO agency clearly defines what your objectives are for your website.
With SEO the danger is that you can try and go after every possible keyword under the sun. The reality is that there are going to be certain keywords that are too competitive for you to justify putting all the time and resource into optimising for them. And there is usually going to be a sweet spot of relevance and search volume, which will determine which keywords you target with your SEO.
As mentioned above, SEO and conversion rate optimisation converge when it comes to user experience on your website. What’s good for UX is good for SEO. And in turn also good for conversion rate optimisation. So you must have very clear objectives in terms of which keywords you’re targeting. What your target conversion rates are. And what actions you want users to take on your website once they’ve arrived at it.
Make sure your tracking is set up correctly
Now, of course, to be able to track your user behaviour on your website accurately, you need to ensure that your tracking is set up correctly. This is one of the first things that you should look at. Ensure that you have the correct traffic excluded via IP filters in your Google Analytics, for example. Make sure you have the correct Goals set up to make sure that you are tracking certain actions on a page that show you whether or not your strategy is working.
Monitor on-site user behaviour
Once you have clear objectives set up and you have ensured that you are tracking things correctly, now’s the time to start monitoring user behaviour on your website. Which landing pages are they arriving via? What are they doing once they arrive on these landing pages? Are they scrolling all the way down?
Use heat mapping and eye-tracking software to see whether there are certain parts of the page in which you continue to lose your users. And which parts they’re engaging with the most. Which calls to action are working the best for you? What can you learn from these insights?
Is it the placement, the messaging, the colour, or any other variable that you can see consistently leads to better or worse performance? This is the sort of data that can inform your strategy going forward
Get keyword insights from Google Search Console
It’s been almost 10 years since Google stopped providing keyword-level insight for organic search in Google Analytics. What this means is that even though you can see in Analytics how much traffic you’re getting via SEO to a particular landing page, you cannot see which keywords actually drove that traffic. Most of the keyword data shows up as ‘not provided’.
However, what you can do is access sample data from Google Search Console. Google Search Console is essentially Google’s way of showing you what it sees under the hood of your website. It also includes many useful tools to help webmasters optimise their websites for organic search.
One of these tools lets you see sample keyword data at a landing page level. This should allow you to connect performance at a keyword level to a landing page and provide you insights into which keywords lead to the best conversion rates.
It should give you an insight into what the intent for each of these keywords is and of course help you optimise your strategy and allocation of resources going forward.
Conclusion
What’s good for user experience is usually good for SEO. And in turn good for conversion rate optimisation as well. So working with an SEO agency is a great way of making sure that you’re also looking at conversion rate optimisation which ultimately is one of the most important things when it comes to your bottom line.
