Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of SEO related posts at the web design forum and have been contacted by a lot of seo agencies at work (my email may be doing the rounds). The thing that I’m most amazed by is what a narrow and ultimately incorrect, view of search engine optimisation some people and companies seem to have.
Let me elaborate.
As much as I love the web design forum, some of the advice given is frankly, awful, I can’t not post a reply. A lot of the advice given is a range of generic seo quotes that people have picked from the web. E.g. ‘use headings’, ‘have a keyword density of 4%’ and ‘get backlinks’. The majority of the advice centers around simply getting people on a website or appearing for a generic, competitive term. Compare the latter to SEO’s calling me up at work (and I quote) – “there are 9,000 people searching for xxxxx every month, imagine having 9,000 more people on your site every month”.
All this is fine in theory. However, say you do manage to appear for a generic competitive term or get 9,000 new people on your site – what then. There is a high likelyhood that your boucne rate (or percentage of people who leave your almost immediately) will increase a lot.
Enter Conversion Rate Optimization
So what exactly has happened in this instance? You now have a lot of traffic coming to your site with lots of people boucning off. For websites that require their visitors convert – basically any site that sells a service or product (read: any business website) this is bad news, not to mention a total waste of time.
As a website owner, if you found your site at the latter stage, you’d want to investigate something called conversion rate optimization (or CRO). This is a term given to the science of converting more of you visitors into actual customers – which is what any business requires from their website. Essentially, it the measure of success of a website. For clients who say they want a nicely designed site, with lots of graphics, or clients who want to appear number one for lots of keywords – they really mean they want a site that converts and makes them money.
This one factor is overlooked so much and seems to be a highly vicious circle. SEO and CRO go hand in hand, indeed they need to go hand in hand as they are tighly linked. Quality SEO practice is needed to get more people onto your site, while CRO is needed to convert these visitors into customers.
It amazes me that I still get marketing calls from professional SEOs who say they can get me onto page one for ‘web design’, without any mention at all of CRO – they simply say they’ll get lots of quality backlinks to my site. This is wrong for two reasons. Yes, my site will recieve a lot of traffic, but is it fully optimised to convert visitors into customers (currently it isn’t, currently undergoing a redesign). Additionally, it’sd a well known fact that short tail terms don’t convert as well as a long tail terms. I’m currently much happier being ranked highly for a longer tail version of ‘we design’ – ‘web design xxxx’, where xxxx is my county. Yes, it has less traffic than ‘web design’, but the traffic is more targetted and relevant. Additionally, I have a geo targetted page in the SERPs for this term, which helps too.
In relation to narrow views expressed on the web design forum, well, those people aren’t helping anyone and seem to measure the success of SEO in terms of ‘how many’ people land on their site. As I’ve explained above, this is only part of SEO. I’ll take a typical scenario. Someone asks how they can improve the SEO on their site. People instantly jump in with the generic seo quotes (which are a pet hate of mine). I’ll have a quick look att he OPs site – awful design, no useful content there at all, sometimes not even contact details are present. This is where people need to work backwards before quoting the seo quotes they love so much. Firstly, perform some CRO on the target website and ensure that if a visitor does land on your site that are more likely to convert.
To illustrate some examples of CRO, I’ll explain a few simple and small examples I’ve personally used on some sites I’ve been working on:
- Make call to action button stand out and adjust the button text – on a corporate site website, increased enquiries by 2.5% in the first month
- Adjust the way an existing ecommerce store displays related items – instead of selecting 10 random products on the basket page, select 10 products that people have ultimately ordered, based on the current shopping basket – increased sales by 2.5% in the first month
- Removed unecessary fields in our website enquiry form – cutting it down to 3 fields, from 6 – increase in enquiries
- Boldened and increased font size of first paragraph of text on inner, informational pages – resulted in people spending more time on the site and allowed the page to focus a clearer message to the visitor
- For one company, that had worked with several recognizable brands, I added their logos onto the site in prominant place to build instant trust and reputation – increase in conversions of 3.5% in first month
I’m by no means an internet marketer, SEO guru or leading web designers at all 🙂 However, it doesn’t take any of those to realise that once you have attrcated people to a site you need to do everything humanly possible to get a conversion. On the flip side, you need SEO to get a decent level of targetted traffic on a website.
SEo and CRO, a match made in heaven 🙂
SEo and CRO, a match made in heaven yes its true 🙂
Spot on. Have to say I have been guilty of emphasising SEO, at the expense (albeit probably unintentionally) of CRO. But you’re right, it’s a bit like having an ideal high street location, with loads of signage bringing people there, but with a terrible shop.
I think serious replies come from no follow forums. So if you really want to interact and learn from many people, I suggest you do that.
Lovely article. I never quite thought of it that way. Now I have got some more work to do 🙁
🙂
Web design forum is a no follow forum 🙂
This a good article. But if you look at it on the reverse, you need good SEO in general to have any chance of CRO.
Thanks
Ben
I would highly like to thank you for this blog solution to a common seo issue we find a lot. The essential and ruled link between seo and conversion ratings should be in the heart of every seo web expert. I would prefer a high conversions rate instead of a high number of people on my sites – which is what myself and my expert team at [REMOVED 🙁 ] always aim for with everysingle site we win
Regards
M.Akhter
Great post I’ve been getting these companies calling me to sell me some SEO service that puts me on the top of google for certain keywords. I laugh and told them it doesn’t matter how many keyword I rank for if they don’t convert. It’s truly not that difficult to rank for topic driven key words a little research usually does the trick but the converting keyword well that’s something different. I guess the key is to find the converting keywords and unless you got a team or alot of time this can be tricky. Thanks for telling people that SEO is all about research I wish more people would do this and not try selling some over paid service that does not do anyone any good….
Yer, thanks for the kind words. The majority of places I look seem to focus on SERPs positions and volume of visitors. The quality of these visitors is just as (if not more) important than the sheer number.
Hello,
I have been referred to this site by Mrigendra. I agree fully with all these points – all very important and not made enough in the seo world.
Kind Regards
Rohit
I read your blog article CRO and SEO – The Essential Realtionship, this is really very important for seo
thanks
Great post! really informative. What about some form of post on web design jobs? I have been looking for ages and just cant seem to find one. I have got a few interviews from this site and waiting to hear back: Web Designer Jobs
Very informative, it’s true both are crucial. No point having people on your site if its terrible and no point having a great site that nobody sees! Good work.
Rob,
Have to agree with you. It’s all about the money. For the clients and for you. There is no maintaining client relationships without making them money.
I find the web design forum frankly shocking in terms of advice but don’t have the energy to be there and start correcting every post.
I have started making sure I find myself in rooms with people smarter than myself (so to speak). I pop back every now and again but get really irritated when genuine queries are met with the generic (and normally out of date) “SEO advice”.
Understanding how to convert people onsite is the best way to beating these template website hacks. 😉
Charlie
I really shouldn’t let such awful comments/threads I see on WDF irritate me at all, but they often do – I “have” to reply 🙂
Point about maintaining client relationships is especially valid!
You spelt “relationship” wrong btw 😛 (The Essential Realtionship)
Ta lol 🙂
Great post Rob! I agree, I think that the key to success in the chaotic online world is finding the balance between SEO and CRO and it is hard to do so within the limited amount of time that we have everyday.
Love the tips on how to achieve a higher conversion rate but i think it is necessary to test the things you do for CRO with visitor screen capture and heat map tools like http://www.inspectlet.com/ and for SEO purposes I generally stick to using the SEOMOZ tool.
You mentioned this post in a thread over on Web Designer Forum. Thanks for this – it’s a great “outsider look” at SEO being more than just marketing.
I’m going to pass it on to our technical apprentices. I think it’ll help them get a bit more of a grounding into what they need to do to ensure clients get a great service.
Cheers for that. If someone finds my ranting useful then that’s a bonus 🙂