When SEO and CRO Collide

[webgem]

So this has been bothering me for a while now. Obviously the goal of a website is to get leads/sales/whatever and the best method for that is to have strong landing pages that really "make the sale". However, everywhere i go online where the topic of "niche" websites are discussed, the only thing mentioned for ranking in SEO is "create awesome content" which is great and everything, but the awesome content isn't
a) Specifically designed to convert
b) Scalable for local based industries

So what do you do and what would you recommend?

 

[stackcash]

You're going to see CRO for SEO be the next big trend that bloggers talk about. I would bet CRO is talked about a whole lot more wherever enterprise SEO professionals are hanging out.

IMO, there are two reasons why it's not more popular already with niche / authority site builders:

1) There is little demand for such information because people aren't actually having success with ranking their sites and never reach the point of CRO.

2) Most successful niche / authority site owners usually just start building new sites once they obtain top 3 rankings for their current site. They're of the mindset that it's easier to rank new sites than squeeze out extra revenue from existing sites.

I've definitely been in camp #2 for a while now. But, ranking sites is getting harder and harder. It's already more beneficial to focus on growing a single site as much as possible over having a slew of niche sites like the old days.

I'm guessing that CRO experts are going to have a nice little market to educate over the next 2 years if they're smart about it.

To more accurately answer your question, CRO is basically just A/B testing.

The main problem that I face when considering to implement an A/B test is whether or not the changes will affect on-page SEO. For example, split testing headlines. How is Google going to respond if you're changing a single pages title / h1 tag once a month? I'm at a loss myself...

Regardless... here are a few useful A/B testing tools:

https://yorocket.com/
https://www.crazyegg.com/
https://www.kissmetrics.com/analyze/
https://nelioabtesting.com/nelio-ab-testing-publishers/
https://www.optimizely.com/

 

[webgem]

The issue I see is that if someone was looking for a service based business ie: a locksmith and searched for a local locksmith. The I as an affiliate marketer created the"ultimate guide to hiring a locksmith" as resource to draw in search traffic, the resource I made wouldn't actually be answering the searchers question, and it also wouldn't even be designed to get users to complete a quote.

 

[stackcash]

Well, that's just a common sense thing.

You should include CTAs in the content that are super obvious for those people who land on that page, but are seeking to hire someone immediately. You need to understand visitor intent. You also need to know how to funnel your visitors where you want them to go.

But, anyone that was searching for something that landed them on an "ultimate guide" isn't ready to buy today. They're just seeking more information. You need to prime them with your guide, and then push them to the page that will convert them to a customer.

People that are ready to buy will be searching for things like "keyword zipcode" or "keyword town name" or "top keyword in city."

If they are landing on your ultimate guide using those buying keywords, then you fudged up a little bit and need to a good job at funneling that traffic to a page that will convert them.

Ultimately, those "keyword zipcode" searches should be landing on a service page with a hard call to action.

I did a whole guest post on how to write those pages here: https://www.serpwoo.com/blog/experts/dominate-local-search-results/

 

[Prentzz]

Everything @stackcash said YESYES.

Split tested a seemingly small change in a pricing table for a SaaS business and signups almost doubled, with no significant change in retention at month 3. This was for a business doing 40k/mo+

Took a page which was doing well in SERPS for a pretty valuable niche keyword and copied what wirecutter.com is doing for there CTA's to Amazon. Again, almost doubled CTR and around a 1.5x increase in revenue from the page.

Test and then test again. It's gonna take like 5 minutes to setup, wait a couple weeks while you work on other stuff then check back. Oversimplification - sure, but it's good enough. Start studying some basic stats and at least understand statistical significance then plan out a few tests that actually make sense for the kind of traffic landing on your page.

Didn't answer your question whatsoever..