Have you optimized your website for both conversion and search engines?

If you are yet to do so, you are definitely missing out.

Conversions and SEO may seem and are definitely different marketing sectors, but they are intertwined.

Good SEO helps you get more traffic and increases your chances to convert prospects while a website optimized for great conversions boasts of better metrics including low bounce rate and high page open rate.

This means that it will get better ranking from Google.

I have compiled proven strategies and tips that will teach you how to optimize your website for SEO & Conversions to help you benefit from both ends.

But before then, let’s discuss why it is important to optimize your site.

Reasons to Optimize Your Website: 

If you are not yet convinced that you want to spend time optimizing your site for SEO and conversions, here are 5 reasons to convince you more;

[+] Optimization makes your website helpful for your target audience:

Sometimes, marketers don’t understand why they get a sudden drop in traffic or rank after an algorithmic update.

However, what many people don’t understand is that Google has the same goals as you and that is; to serve the most valuable content to its audience, create the best possible website user experience, and rank content that offers better value high.

The only difference is that you are focusing on analyzing your target audience’s behaviors while Google is monitoring and analyzing millions of websites.

Using over 199 ranking signals, Google is able to rank websites on search engine results. 

When you focus on optimizing your website for search engine, you integrate primary and secondary keywords related to your content.

You write content around your keywords and provide relevant information that will help Google to understand your post better.

On the other hand, if you optimize your site for conversion, your focus is to guide visitors to take a specific action such as joining your email list or buying your offering.

Your goal, just like search engines, is to give your target audience precisely what they want.

[+] It helps to grow your search traffic:

Averagely, businesses spend 1% of the revenue on marketing and advertising. 

While it might seem small, with time, it adds up. Moreover, some business, especially retail businesses, spend more on ads.

However, you can cut on cost by optimizing your site for search engine to attract organic traffic, which is free. 

The difference between the searchers who come to your site organically and those that come via paid ads is evident.

Studies show that the conversion rate for organic search traffic is nearly 15% while paid search account for less than 2%.

That’s why it makes sense to invest your money and time into improving your ranking to get organic traffic. 

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[+] It helps you leave a lasting impression on your visitors:

You don’t want people to visit your website and then leave without taking action or clicking a few pages.

For this to happen, you need to understand user experience. 

By using their behavior and the path they used to take action, you can promote offers and incentives that match their preference.

By improving user experience on your site, you will leave a lasting impression on your visitors and record a higher conversion rate.

When you optimize content for both search engine and your target audience, you will have better ranking and conversion.

[+] Let your website work for you:

Virtually everyone can build a beautiful website, but very few people can build a website that produces a reliable conversion.

With the average conversion rate across industries being less than 2.5%, you definitely want to be above average.

To do this, you will have to study your audience and offer them what they want.

If you observe their behaviors and provide them with the content they need, then you will see an increase in conversion rates.

When people find out what they need quickly, they will appreciate you and will be willing to reciprocate the goodness.

However, remember that SEO is paramount as it will help you get traffic, which you can convert. Create a site with valuable, relevant content and have CTA buttons for visitors to convert.

[+] Give your audience the most relevant and valuable content that they expect:

You have a product review site that promotes shoes.

A customer is in need of a pair of gym shoes and conducts a Google search for the best gym shoes.

You have created a long, in-depth blog post on how to choose gym shoes, including the different types of gym shoes and recommended top 5 best gym shoes.

The visitor reads your article to the end and sees a lead magnet that offers a fit and sizing chart for gym goers.

All they have to do is to sign up for your email list to get the free sizing and fit chart.

They sign up, and you send the lead magnet to them.

After a few days, you send an email with a coupon code for the affiliate site you are promoting along with images of the best gym shoes.

The customer is thrilled because they have found something that appeals to them and the discount code encourages him/her to take immediate action to buy.

As you can see, these two (SEO and conversion rate optimization) are inseparable. If you get noticed by a visitor and meet their expectation, you have secured a customer.

Let’s now get to our main topic of the day;

Optimize Your Website for SEO PLUS Conversions In 8 Easy Steps: 

Boosting your website’s SEO will lead to more traffic and ultimately lead to more conversions.

Below are 8 surefire steps that will set you up for success in SEO, so that you can then focus on conversions as you update fresh content.

Step 1: Analyze all your site data

The first step to succeeding in terms of SEO is to collect lots of data to help you notice visitors’ patterns.

If a few people visit your site and do not click on your CTA, it might not be an issue. However, if a larger percentage of your visitors ignore your CTA, you might need to do a few changes.

User behavior report, for instance, may shed some light about how people behave when they visit your site.

Also, Google Search Console (GSC) is great to help paint a clear picture on your visitor’s patterns.

GSC tracks crucial metrics including bounce rate, unique sessions, and much more. Simply put, analyzing data will help you know which pages get more traffic and conversions.

Step 2: Conduct comprehensive keyword research

SEO keeps becoming more and more competitive.

You need to think about why your prospective customers would search for a certain keyword related to your business and niche.

Fortunately, you can get useful tools like Ubersuggest which helps you find a list of keywords including long tail keywords to help you attract specific audience.

With tools like this, you can create more pages for your site to provide as much information as possible for your site.

Step 3: Produce valuable in-depth content

Experts recommend 1,600 words for most blog posts.

But before you decide on the ideal length of your post, search your primary keywords on Google then see the top 10 results on SERPs.

This will give you an idea of how long your content should be.

Length is important but not everything.

However, having longer content notifies Google that you have more information and if more people spend a long time on that page, then it’s more likely that you will rank higher.

Step 4: Optimize for on-page SEO

When it comes to on-page SEO, it involves optimizing your website elements such as headlines, sub-topics, Meta tags, and URLs, among others.

To ensure these elements are optimized for search engine, use primary keyword in your headline, at least once in your sub-topics, and also in your URL slugs.

Also, spread it throughout the copy to achieve 2.5-5% keyword density. Anything above this is considered keyword stuffing, and Google may penalize you for that.

Also, use related keywords throughout your copy and also in image alt text.

Step 5: Optimize off-page SEO

In simpler terms, off-site SEO refers to ways you can boost your site’s ranking through external means.

These means include social media activity, guest blogging, brand mentions, and influencer marketing to mention a few.

Later in this section, we will also talk about backlinks which can also help to boost your site’s rankings significantly.

Step 6: Optimize the website for mobile

Most people access websites via mobile devices.

As a result, you want to get a share of these conversions.

What’s more, Google has the mobile-first index which it says might rank websites with more mobile friendliness higher.

The ideal way to do this is to make the design of your site mobile responsive by downloading free and premium WordPress themes.

These offer a responsive design to mobile devices which also means you don’t need any extra code.

Step 7: Speed up the pages

If you need to succeed in SEO and get conversions, your site needs to load fast.

Otherwise, prospective customers will more likely click the back button and go elsewhere.

It is like when you’re filling out a form only for it to fail to submit due to low speed – you eventually give up.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights allows you to know how fast your site loads across devices and what to do to make your site load faster if need be.

Step 8: Go for quality backlinks

Sites with quality backlinks rank higher.

For this reason, you don’t want to get backlinks from small, low-authority sites.

When high-quality sites link to yours, Google sees your site as credible. The more solid your backlink profile becomes, the higher your pages rank.

Well, it takes a great deal of effort to get quality backlinks, but you’ll notice amazing results. To do it, reach to other blogs in your niche and email influencers.

Consider sharing your article with them and point to a page where you shared their content.

Can SEO boost your Website Conversion?

You now understand how to optimize your website for SEO, now let’s talk about how to boost conversions.

Of course, you will not see instant results when it comes to ranking since it takes time to improve because of the wide range of content existing online.

Therefore, you have to build quality content, establish credibility with Google by attracting quality backlinks, and improve your users’ experience.

However, for conversion, it should start now. Even if you have low traffic, you can optimize your website and see an improvement in conversions.

SEO improves conversions by ensuring search engines sends visitors who have the intention of becoming your customer to your site.

Besides, creating value-driven, lengthy articles will increase your chances of converting many visitors.

They know the value of your content and thus will be ready to be your customer because they see you as a keen, knowledgeable person who understands what he/she is doing.

The Best Way to Increase Your Conversion Is By Improving the User Experience

User experience means how people perceive your site in relation to finding what they want and ease of navigation.

A good user experience makes the visitor happy and satisfied.

To increase conversion, be keen on small details such as your homepage, logo, navigation aids, and widgets.
Test your CTA buttons in different locations as well as widgets to see which one offers the best user experience.

You can also focus on driving your visitor towards your CTA buttons.

Another Way to Boost Your Conversion Is to Use Behavior Tools

Behavior tools help you to eliminate guesswork.

You might think that a certain element helps with navigation on your site, but user behavior report proves you wrong.

Having user behavior tools will give you unique insights into what your visitors do when they get to your website.

Heatmaps, for example, will show you where clicking happened so that you can insert your CTA buttons on the page.

Bottom Line:

Although it seems complex, SEO can give you a boost when it comes to increasing conversion.

Start by collecting data on your visitors and write content that is relevant to your audience, and ensure it is better than that of your competitors.

Boost your site load speed and ensure that it is responsive. Attract as many quality backlinks as possible.

Use behavior tools to improve your user experience.

Finally, write creative, evergreen content that attracts traffic and generate conversions for many years.