How to optimise your landing page for both SEO traffic and conversions

As a rule, conversion optimisation is all about creating a sleek minimalist experience that would enable page visitors to proceed through the buying process without distracting.

On the other hand, search engine optimisation (SEO) requires us to provide an abundance of relevant and original content for search engines to understand what the page is about.

That’s not the only aspect where SEO and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) tend to clash. More often than not, SEO experts would demand internal links going from the page, schema code, and other elements conversion optimisers would deem unnecessary or even harmful.

No wonder the question of how to please both is one of the most frequently asked in the digital marketing industry.

How to create a landing page which would rank high in Google as well as does a good job capturing leads and sales?

1. Understand the power of SEO

The first step of aligning the SEO and CRO teams is to achieve an understanding of why your business needs both. While SEOs don’t usually have a problem understanding why conversions and sales are essential, search engine optimisation often remains a mystery for the rest of a company, even for other marketing teams.

Not many people realise that organic traffic is the foundation of any business success.

Search remains the most effective online traffic and visibility source which simply has no alternatives, and it’s not going to change anytime soon. Having Google presence is not really an option: if a business is not on Google, it does not exist, right? 

• Google processes more than 3.6 billion daily. In other words, there are 40,000 search queries every second and 1.2 trillion searches per year globally.
• The majority of customers use the internet to research before making a purchase (source). This means that even if you brought traffic using other methods (like ads), people will still search for your name in Google, so organic presence will be crucial for their continuing their buying journey.

Google is still where many buying journeys start as well as where most reputation checks are conducted before consumers have enough trust in a brand to buy from it. Whether it’s text or voice search, SEO is still the only way to get your product discovered through search.

2. Add content that fosters sales

For years, it has been considered that just about any content helps with SEO. That resulted in lots of weird pages being produced. If a business were selling Valentine’s Day gifts, the “SEO copy” would talk about the history of that holiday.

Obviously, conversion optimisers were not thrilled with that SEO tactic. Well, this strategy is not only one-sided but also outdated.

Google has got much better at understanding relevancy, context, and search intent. Going back to that example, while the history of Valentine’s Day is related to the target search query, it does not fosters sales in any way, and can actually distract a potential customer from buying anything.

Google understands it as well. There’s a big difference between “relevant” and “useful” or “helpful”. And Google evaluates a copy and ranks a page accordingly. It prioritises helpful content that matches keyword intent, not just any content.

As such, possible content that would help both SEO and CRO here could be:

• Quick tips on where to start in your gift quest
• Help in picking gifts based on your partner’s personality
• Ideas on how to pick gifts based on the stage in a relationship

Or even all of that, broken into sections, each linking to matching products.

If you are optimising a service page, it makes sense to go into more details about the service and explain what is involved. For example, a hair dresser’s landing page would include care and styling recommendations based on the type of hair and how long it is.

To help you create content that both ranks and converts, use Text Optimizer, a search intent optimisation tool that helps create a copy matching all kinds of target customers’ expectations.

3. Make use of video content

It is a well-known fact that videos improve conversions. But are they also good for organic search visibility?

Videos used to have little to do with SEO because search crawlers couldn’t really know what it is the video is about without text content.

Well, this has changed.

Not only Google can now understand videos (and even build automatic transcripts), but videos are gaining organic visibility. Embedded videos can send more positive signals to Google by improving on-page engagement.

That being said, videos are almost always a good idea for both organic traffic and on-page conversions. Plus, you can create videos pretty easily these days. Tools like InVideo help you put together engaging videos for your landing pages without the need to invest in third-party services or expensive software.

Check out their templates for product videos, for example. You can brand and customise any of these by using a handy visual editor. Easy!

I do recommend using a meaningful and relevant voiceover for each video you create. Mind that it’s all indexable content! Here’s also a great collection of free video footage for you to use in your videos.

4. Prioritise engagement analytics over acquisition analytics

Finally, what we monitor and measure reflects our marketing focus, so it is important to adapt your web analytics strategy to emphasise engagement rather than mere acquisition.

Prioritising engagement metrics means adjusting your current analytics solutions. Finteza is a web analytics platform with a strong focus on conversions. Not only can it monitor your entire sales funnels, but it also comes with a comprehensive solution to track just about any attraction and retention metrics.

Finteza can deliver detailed engagement and retention reports based on traffic sources (e.g. organic traffic). This way you are aligning the efforts of the two teams in a most effective and productive way.

Conclusion

Organisation silos are not uncommon in just about any company’s structure. Many teams tend to work in isolation. However, it is unfortunate when misalignment happens in two teams that are bound to work together.

After all, SEO and CRO are two steps in one process: getting sales. One is not effective – or simply doesn’t work – without the other. 

So how come they are often misaligned?

By getting SEO and CRO to work together, you will find both of the teams much more productive. Consequently, you will see much better results from your digital marketing strategy.

By creating content that sells, you will see better ranking and better-converting traffic. By using video content, you will make your landing pages more engaging (which in turn will improve the site’s search visibility). And finally, by prioritising engagement metrics, you will motivate both teams to work together.