Why Integrating CRO With SEO Is Necessary

CRO (conversion rate optimisation) is a similar area of marketing to SEO (search engine optimisation) wherein – it is something that is always recommended to be done as a foundation for your online marketing.

However, CRO is rarely discussed and/or integrated with SEO campaigns – and that is almost always a big mistake.

In this article, I’ll share with you the reasons why this is so.

SEO (search engine optimisation)

At its core fundamentals, the purpose of SEO is to deliver coverage, awareness and exposure to audiences throughout their information seeking and purchasing processes – search engine algorithms utilise the user’s behaviour, search queries and data sets to serve up what is believed to be answers to the user’s strings.

In short, SEO is positioned to generate awareness and website traffic.

CRO (conversion rate optimisation)

CRO, unlike SEO, isn’t involved in targeting users directly or driving awareness and is simply an active stage during the user’s time with you.

In short, CRO aims to increase the value of the traffic you have gained – by maximising user interactions to enhance the ultimate value derived for your business from the user.

So, why do you need to integrate CRO into your SEO campaigns?

#1 – The solution isn’t always to just drive more traffic.

Traffic. Traffic. Traffic.

That’s usually the first solution for most people. However, that’s not always the right one.

In regards to traffic – SEO and CRO go hand in hand. As, if you are already generating significant traffic, however, it isn’t converting – then the two areas you should look at are:

• Am I generating the right traffic, to begin with? (SEO)
• If yes, why is my traffic not converting? (CRO)

If the first thing you do at every hurdle is aim to generate more traffic – you could just be skipping past the real issue.

#2 – Your CRO is a constant experiment

As aforementioned, with SEO increasing the number of users landing on your website’s pages, CRO’s job is to make these users do something that you want them to do.

And, if you are completing the first bullet point above (generating the right traffic through accurately targeted SEO campaigns, then your eyes should be on your CRO – and how to make it work.

That doesn’t mean if you don’t gain 100 conversions in the first day to change all of your CTAs, it means to be patient over a good period of time (one month, minimum) and then judge – and tweak respectively. Then repeat.

CRO should involve iterative testing, ongoing learning, and experiential refinement.

#3 – A large amount of opportunity is pre-click

An area of search marketing that often goes unmentioned or realised is that a large chunk of opportunity occurs pre-click – existing in the gap between an impression (a user seeing your website in search engine results pages) and a click (a user landing on your website).

CROs and SEOs alike spend a large amount of time curating and crafting together CTAs relevant to individual websites and their relative industries – to change the user from an impression to a click.

And, in the world of CRO and SEO, most of the work can be done in the user’s experience between them entering their search in a search engine – and taking their first action to land on the website.

My summary…

CRO should never be overlooked. By business owner and marketers – with it being a crucial part of the user journey. And, it isn’t always the right solution to jump straight to generating more traffic. First, make sure that your current process of capturing users is working as hard as it can be – and your SEO campaign is targeted correctly.