SEO CRO Best Practices: How to Use Them Together for Higher Online Sales

This article was first published on April 25th, 2023, and was last updated January 2024.

You have been optimizing your website for months now. You’ve done industry research and selected target keywords. You have written new content, increased your site speed, built new links, and run dozens of split tests on your site to find out what your audience wants to see. Surely by now, your site is the best it can ever be, so should you keep optimizing? The answer is yes. 

Website optimization is a journey, not a race. SEO and CRO require a lot of patience. Before you decide to ditch optimization for a faster route, consider some of the following SEO and CRO best practices for investing in long-term SEO and CRO strategies.

Reasons to Invest in Long-Term Optimization Strategies:

1. SEO and CRO Bring Customers to Your Site

You already know that organic SEO brings traffic to your website. Whether you are a local service provider or an online retailer, ranking high in the SERPs greatly impacts your website traffic. You may also have realized that increased traffic does not always translate into equally increased business and revenue. This is where CRO comes in.

SEO helps your website get found by quality leads by putting your website at the top of the list for relevant search queries (aka keywords). CRO turns those leads into paying customers by optimizing your site to meet the users’ needs and guiding the users to take the desired action.

First, you show the search engines that you are a match, and then you prove it to the users. By doing this, you can get your traffic and revenue too!

2. SEO and CRO Helps You Beat the Competition

In this digital age, you are no longer competing with the shop next door. Now, your competitors are anyone from anywhere. This means you have to step up your game locally and nationally. That’s where optimization comes in.

SEO helps you get found in local searches as well as in national listings. This visibility is half the battle in beating your competition, as demonstrated by first-page results getting anywhere from 70%-90% of all traffic (depending on the source you cite). Unlike PPC campaigns, your competition cannot simply pay extra to usurp your spot.

CRO works a little differently, but this is where you can really solidify your competitive edge. You can run tests to find out what captures your users’ attention and use this information to improve your website’s design, messaging, offers, and marketing campaigns. With this information, you can increase your conversion rate and keep users coming back. After all, if users buy from you once, they will likely come again, further increasing your market share and decreasing the competition.

3. Optimization Builds Your Reputation

A website that ranks high in the SERPs is usually considered to be both high-quality and trustworthy. This is because search engines, like Google, have strict standards for first–page listings.

Think of it this way: would you rather go to a restaurant featured in multiple food magazines, recommended by your friends, and has dozens of 5-star reviews online or a restaurant that you know nothing about? You’d probably choose the first restaurant. Search Engines work the same way: the more they see that people like a website, the higher they rank it, further vouching for its reputation.

SEO and CRO work hand-in-hand in this endeavor. What is good for your audience is also good for the algorithm. Improving the UX of your website, creating content that provides useful information and answers questions, and making your user’s time on the site as easy and enjoyable as possible will help boost your SERPs rankings as well as your reputation as a business.

Remember, the better the experience you have somewhere, the more likely you are to go back and recommend it to other people as well.

4. Long-Term Optimization Brings Long-Term Benefits

SEO takes a long time to build, but the benefits of your rankings also last a long time. Unlike many forms of marketing, SEO keeps growing and keeps working for you 24/7. Once you start optimizing, your work builds on itself, creating unlimited potential in terms of traffic. As long as you keep up the work, your rankings and traffic will not disappear overnight the way they do if you stop paying for ads.

The same goes for CRO. Testing and implementing winning variations can take a long time. When you are just starting out, you may not see ROI right away, but as you work to figure out your audience’s preferences and needs, you build a better site. The result is a user-friendly website that meets your audience’s ever–changing needs and preferences.

You shouldn’t expect to see immediate results and sudden jumps in revenue when you start new campaigns. Instead, you should expect to see incremental revenue that builds over time. Optimization is about building solid SEO and CRO strategies based on steady growth and improvement, like a good investment portfolio that pays dividends over time.

5. Optimization Can Save You Money

That’s right, SEO and CRO can actually save you money. How? Because they lower the need to spend money on ads. SEO doesn’t just bring more users to your site; when done correctly, it brings in the right kind of users. In fact, organic traffic converts at higher rates than paid traffic in almost every industry!

Speaking of conversions, CRO is a vital part of this money–saving equation. CRO helps you maximize on the traffic you gain from SEO by turning that traffic into customers. CRO helps you learn more about what your users want from the site and your business. This can help you create more effective ads, content, and can help select better keywords for SEO.

Better traffic and more conversions mean you can lower your cost-per-acquisition and increase your ROI!

SEO CRO Best Practices for Businesses

SEO and CRO are ongoing processes requiring continuous monitoring and adjustments based on changing user behavior and search engine algorithms. Here is a list of SEO CRO best practices:

SEO Best Practices

• Keyword Research:

• • • Identify relevant keywords related to your content or business.
    • Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush for keyword research.

• Quality Content:

• • • Create high-quality, informative, and engaging content.
    • Focus on solving user queries and providing value.

• On-Page Optimization:

• • • Optimize title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags.
    • Use descriptive and SEO-friendly URLs.
    • Include relevant keywords naturally in your content.

• Mobile Optimization:

• • • Ensure your website is mobile-friendly for a better user experience.
    • Google considers mobile-friendliness in search rankings.

• Page Speed:

• • • Optimize images and use browser caching to improve page loading speed.
    • Faster-loading pages tend to rank higher in search results.

• Backlinks:

• • • Build high-quality backlinks from reputable websites.
    • Focus on natural link-building strategies.

• User Experience (UX):

• • • Provide a user-friendly experience with clear navigation.
    • Use descriptive anchor text for internal links.

• Technical SEO:

• • • Regularly audit and fix technical SEO issues (crawl errors, broken links, etc.).
    • Implement an XML sitemap for search engines to understand your site structure.

• Local SEO:

• • Optimize for local searches if applicable (Google My Business, local citations).
  • Encourage customer reviews and testimonials.

CRO Best Practices

• Clear Call-to-Action (CTA):

• • • Use compelling and clear CTAs to guide users.
    • Ensure CTAs are strategically placed on the page.

• A/B Testing:

• • • Conduct A/B testing to compare different versions of a page.
    • Test elements like headlines, images, and CTAs to optimize for conversions.

• Simplified Forms:

• • • Keep forms concise and only ask for necessary information.
    • Use multi-step forms for longer processes.

• Trust Elements:

• • • Include trust signals like testimonials, reviews, and trust badges.
    • Highlight security measures for e-commerce sites.

• Page Personalization:

• • • Personalize content based on user behavior and preferences.
    • Show relevant offers and recommendations.

• Loading Speed:

• • • Optimize page speed for faster loading times.
    • Slow-loading pages can lead to increased bounce rates.

• Responsive Design:

• • • Ensure your website is responsive on all devices.
    • A seamless experience across devices improves user satisfaction.

• Exit-Intent Popups:

• • • Use exit-intent popups to capture leaving visitors with special offers or incentives.

• Analytics and Data Analysis:

• • Regularly analyze user behavior using analytics tools.
  • Identify areas for improvement based on user data.

SEO CRO Best Practices with Summit Scout

It’s hard to be patient when it comes to growing your business but creating long-term SEO and CRO strategies is well worth the time it takes. The steady, incremental benefits you gain from investing in optimizing your website turn into long-lasting, compounding rewards for years to come. Isn’t that worth staying the course?

If you’re interested in starting a campaign with SEO or CRO or both, Summit Scout can be there to help! Visit both of our organic SEO services and get in touch with our Conversion Rate Optimization experts today to get started!