Can SEO work without CRO?
Engagement optimization = SEO + CRO
Hey friends,
Cynics like to say that SEO doesn’t actually drive sales. And they’re right, kind of. SEO alone doesn’t drive sales.
It guides the earliest stage of a buyer’s journey: getting them to your site. But after that, we’re in the realm of conversion rate optimization (CRO).
Which begs that question: why pursue SEO at all if you’re not also going to implement CRO?
?? All in service of the buyer’s journey
The best content is immediately useful to buyers while also bringing them into the buying process. It connects with them by…
SEO optimizes your content so that people notice it and follow it from Google to your site. CRO optimizes that same content so people will stay on your site and keep learning.
In practice, CRO strategy can include a variety of actions:
?But all of it is in service of keeping your target audience engaged. In that sense, SEO and CRO are contained within one larger pursuit…
?? SEO + CRO = engagement optimization
The buyer’s journey is the through-line here. When we keep our focus on the buyer, we can see that SEO and CRO are really just two phases within that one unified journey.??
In that sense, we might think of CRO and SEO as two parts of a broader optimization strategy: engagement optimization.
?? SEO as engagement optimization
It starts with selecting topics to write about for organic search. You’re selecting those topics with the buyer in mind.
The ideal topic is connected to your ideal buyer’s needs and your product’s value proposition at the same time.
In other words: you’re trying to craft a narrative that engages your target audience on the SERP. (Clicking on your page link is, arguably, the earliest micro-conversion in the entire journey.)
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?? CRO as engagement optimization
The conversation around CRO usually centers on getting visitors to click specific links – signing up for demos, submitting their contact info in exchange for demos, those types of transactional modes of engagement.
But in order to reach that transaction, you first need to win their interest. In that sense CRO is also tasked with ensuring softer types of on-page engagement.
These are factors that keep a person on your site long enough to ultimately click on a typical conversion link. You can quantify and optimize each of them, but that kind of engagement data requires more than just click metrics.?
?? Choosing the right tactic for each page
CRO tactics won’t yield much change for a page until the SEO components are driving traffic.
But when you do optimize the click-through on those high-traffic pages, the results can be huge.?
So the question is:?
How do you find those high-traffic, high-engagement pages to employ CRO updates?
You can pull GA4 data reports – but that method is laborious and sometimes painful. In the ércule app, you can find those pages by simply clicking on the “Stars” view, like so...
Star pages are already doing well in search and keeping people's attention on the page. The next step is to review click data, link placement, and compare CTAs.
How many Stars are there in your library? See for yourself: sign up for a free trial.
After you’ve optimized all of your Star pages, you can move on to pages that are doing well in terms of SEO but are struggling with on-page engagement. The ércule app has a view for those, too.
We call them Sloths: pages that get attention but don’t move much.
These are just a few of the views in the ércule app. If you want to focus on pages that are keeping readers attention but failing to drive traffic, look at the Wallflowers view.
In addition to providing and sorting data, the ércule app recommends courses of action for updating content based on its performance.
What does your content library need? Now is a great time to find out.
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