How Do Conversion Rates and SEO Overlap?

SEO Traffic –> Conversions –> Customers.

If you want better conversion rates and more customers, your SEO is a great place to start.

The keywords you choose and how you target them in your content (plus a couple other factors) affect both conversion rates and SEO, so it’s important to know how they overlap. This way you can do a good job in both areas – and that is what this article is about.

Table Of Contents

• Target Long-Tail Keywords
• Target High Value Keywords
• Focus On The Phrase
• Watch Your Keyword Usage
• Headlines, Title Tags, And Meta Descriptions
• Improve Site Speed
• Customer Reviews For Local SEO
• Tools For Conversion Rate Optimization

Target Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords contain multiple individual words in your key phrase. They are very specific which means these searchers know what they’re looking for. This can make them an ideal visitor of your website who is likely to convert.

My “WordPress SEO Services” is a long-tail keyword whereas “SEO Services” is too general – and too competitive. Because long-tail keywords have high conversion rates and are also less competitive, they are almost always the most profitable. Always go for long-tail.

If you’re not sure how to find good keywords, read my article on keyword research.

Target High Value Keywords

When most of us think of keywords, we think of transactional keywords like “Dentist in Lake Forest.” where the searcher clearly intends to make a purchase.

While these type of keywords have the highest conversion rates, there are other types of keywords you may want to add to your list. the key here is search intent.

I found a lot of people were searching “why is WordPress so slow” and so I wrote a tutorial about how to make your site faster. People read my guide, realize they don’t have the technical capacity to do everything, and some people hire me. “Why is WordPress so slow” is considered an informational keyword – these bring in a good amount of business for me. What kind of keywords can you do this with?

Here are the 4 different types of keywords…

Focus On The Phrase

The content and meta data for each individual page should directly reflect the keyword you’re targeting and what people expect to see when searching for that phrase. What type of content do they want to see? A list? Video tutorial? Key features and/or testimonials about a service? Incorporate these into your landing page optimization strategy.

Google the top results and see what they do. Then make your content more relevant, thorough, or whatever your competition could be doing better. As long as you’re focusing on the phrase and presenting the right information in the right way, you will be more likely to not only convert, but to rank high too.

Watch Your Keyword Usage

Two simple tips here:

1) Don’t overuse keywords in your copy, only use it a few times
2) When you do use your keyword, make it sound natural

Headlines, Title Tags, And Meta Descriptions

These are the forefront of your SEO. They show up in search results, social media, and pretty much anywhere your content is mentioned. They should all contain your keyword but even more importantly, they should be clear, concise, and entice people to click on your link.

I only have one tip here. But it works. Google your keyword and look at the verbiage everyone else is using. Still include your keyword in these 3 places but switch up the verbiage. Instead of using “Best” I always like to say “Ideal” – you get the picture.

Improve Site Speed

Making your website faster can improve both conversion rates and SEO (site speed is a ranking factor and no one likes a slow website). A lot of speed optimizations affect the entire website too, so the more content you have the more important this probably is.

If you have WordPress, take a look at my WordPress speed tutorial. Otherwise run your website through GTmetrix and follow their recommendations. There are some basic things you can do like optimizing images that are pretty easy to do.

Customer Reviews For Local SEO

Getting customer reviews can also improve conversion rates and SEO. Asking customers for reviews is one of the best things you can do for your online reputation, plus reviews are a primary ranking factor in local search results.

Getting reviews on your Google My Business page, Yelp page, and other online directories will help you in both areas. Google My Business is the most important.

Tools For Conversion Rate Optimization

Gravity Forms

Gravity forms measures how many visitors on a page actually fill out the contact form. It’s a premium WordPress plugin however you can do this with any website using goal tacking in Google Analytics. It’s a good idea to create a separate contact form for each page you’re using a form on. This way you don’t just see 1 conversion rate in Gravity Forms but each of your pages will have it’s own conversion %.

Google Analytics

This is a Google Analytics dashboard I created that tells me about my pages related to “WordPress SEO.” I have designated pages for variations of my services (WordPress SEO Services/Audit/Consulting/Expert) which helps me target those keywords better.

This specific dashboard tells me about each page’s load time, a user’s average time on page, and other metrics that clue me in on which landing pages are performing well and which ones probably need improvement.

You can download my content performance dashboard directly into your GA account here. I used filters to only show pages that contain “WordPress SEO” so you should switch those filters to whatever types of pages you want to measure.

Here are some other resources for improving conversions using Google Analytics:

• eCommerce (Google Analytics dashboard)
• Shopping cart abandonment (tutorial by Rejoiner)
• Goal tracking (tutorial by KISSmetrics)
• Tracking click to calls (tutorial by Maple North)

In-Page Analytics

This Google Chrome extension tells you where people are clicking on a given page. I can see quite a few people are clicking on my “work” and “portfolio” links at the bottom, so it might be a good idea to include one of each on the actual page (maybe a case study and testimonial). Interpreting the data can be tricky but I’m sure you will get some ideas.

That’s all I got! If you have any questions about the topics I covered or you have your own ideas on how conversion rates overlap SEO, leave me a comment below. And if you found my article helpful, please share it using that nice floating bar on the left. I would really appreciate that.

Cheers,