Optimizing a website for SEO has become second nature for most savvy marketers and webmasters. What good is a website if it’s not generating relevant traffic?
But what often goes overlooked when redesigning or optimizing a website is Conversion Rate Optimization, or CRO. In its very essence, CRO focuses on how users engage with a site. Elements like design aesthetics, layout, navigation, and use of content are taken into strategic consideration – all with the intention of best leading users down a desired conversion funnel.
Fortunately, there are a number of great WordPress themes that have been designed to address a lot of these CRO considerations for you. Such SEO and CRO-friendly themes make it easier to channel users down a desired funnel, while keeping them on your site for longer.
But what a theme cannot provide is the intelligence to employ both SEO and CRO strategies that only a human can do. These involve Below we share five ways to help you create an SEO and CRO-friendly website.
1. Speed, Security, and Responsiveness Mean Everything
In today’s demanding digital, if there are three fundamentals to an optimized website, they would emphasize:
- Speed – having a fast-loading website is critical for not only CRO and serving users, but it’s also a Google ranking factor that can impact SEO performance.
- Security – a secure website, as indicative of having an SSL or https:// integrated, is also a ranking factor in Google Search.
- Responsiveness – or ensuring your site is mobile-friendly and responsive across all devices is (yes, you guessed it…) an SEO ranking factor.
Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test how well your site performs and how fast it loads. With such tools, you can find potential pitfalls that can be improved, thereby improving both the CRO and SEO of your site.
2. Don’t Neglect Writing Great Copy
Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of a well-optimized website (for both SEO and CRO) is copy. Yes, users still read copy, especially if what you’re offering is a hefty investment or a product that has emotional appeal. It can also be the means with how users resonate with your brand.
Great copy serves an array different purposes for your site. It’s speaks the voice of your brand and has the potential to engage users (CRO). It also communicates semantics, data, and keywords to search engines (SEO). Whether it’s unique product descriptions for ecommerce SEO, describing a company’s service portfolio, or bridging the gap with Google Ads, striking a balance with copywriting isn’t always easy. But it is essential to a top performing website.
3. Leverage Clear CTAs and Conversion Touchpoints
Of the most essential elements to a CRO-friendly website, CTAs (or “Call-to-Action”) are vital to establishing a sound conversion funnel. Also sometimes referred to as “Conversion Touchpoints,” the most common of CTAs are typically linkable buttons that tell users to “learn more,” “contact us,” or “buy now.” But unlike these conventional options, some website are applying more creative uses of CTAs.
The WP Real Estate theme from InkHive is a great example of CRO-friendly homepage that gives users options in a clear and engaging way. It also gives webmasters and site owners the ability to navigate users to particular categories and pages of the website.
As another creative example, see the CTAs used in this blog post, as shown in the figure below. Sprinkled throughout the post’s copy, there are clear CTA graphics that link to related content. While not particularly conversion-oriented, this does improve the average dwell rate, or time in which users spend on site. In turn, these types of CTAs can actually help with SEO, too.
Using CTAs on your website offers limitless creative possibilities. Whether having users submit a contact form, sign-up for a newsletter, or purchase a product, use your desired conversion goals to help define what CTAs will matter most.
4. Put The Spotlight On Social Media
Any good ongoing SEO strategy will involve content marketing, such as blogging. In which case, your social media audience plays a pivotal role in driving traffic to your content, as well as earning links from the value it provides.
As such, making it easy for users to visit your social profiles, as well as follow, like, or share your content, can be advantageous for SEO in the long-run. A simple strategy to facilitate these objectives is making your social media presence very clear on your website. The mobile-responsive Synapse Pro theme is a great example of this.
Regardless of what device or screen size of users, the social icons on Synapse Pro can always be present in the secondary navigation, shown in red above. These elements will help grow the follower base for any brand or blog that’s producing great content.
5. Nestle Content to Maximize Cleanliness and Word Count
Gone are the days when webmasters and SEOs need to stuff keyword in a page’s copy. Sure, keyword relevance is still important, but ultimately its the level of engagement and depth of copy that matters most.
In most cases, the challenge is fitting enough content on a page (to maximize SEO) but in a way that’s clean and not overwhelming. Unless you have full control over customizing your site’s layout and structure, some themes help address this for you.
Take for instance the Nitro Pro theme that has expanding images and text on hover-over. Not only does this provide a dynamic experience for the user, but it helps make the most of the page’s content with the least amount of space.
For a more SEO-friendly example of this approach, take a look at how PageSpeed Insights shows its findings. By nestling expand-outs like show in the figure below, you can include a lot more content on your pages, but in a manner that’s clean and easy to absorb for users.
As a final takeaway, learning what SEO and CRO strategies work for each individual website is vital. Consider your primary conversion goals, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and other metrics of interest to help define and execute the strategies outlined above.