Why your traffic isn’t converting with SEO Manager, Ben Dracup
If you follow various social media accounts on social media i’m sure you will have come across incredibly impressive case studies and organic traffic graphs showing crazy growth.
You may have also heard the terms “vanity metrics” or, which is more applicable to this post, “Vanity traffic”.
Sure, these graphs look great, especially as modern-day SEO is becoming more challenging due to an increased amount of Ads (nice for my few Google shares, not so much for my professional SEO life) and new features such as AI overviews taking up valuable real estate on the SERPs.
However, something to consider, is this huge increase in organic traffic actually having a significant impact on the company’s bottom line? (sales and/or leads) Maybe it’s having extremely little impact, especially if this increase in traffic is attributed to super top-of-the-funnel blog posts and/or conversion rates are really low.
Side Note: So all in all, if you are a junior SEO or all-around marketing professional, don’t feel discouraged and not good enough when you see all these super fancy graphs on social media, as in reality, the impact on the bottom line could be very minimal!
If you are in a lucky enough position to see huge organic traffic increases, or even if your organic traffic is steady (which is still an accomplishment!) you need to be making the most of that traffic by implementing conversion rate optimisation (CRO)!
Read on for insights on how to double down on conversion opportunities including how to influence users to convert, user experience tips, and top tools to help you diagnose any conversion issues!
Key Conversion Opportunities with Content
If you’re new to CRO, there are some basic content principles which you want to consider, for most importantly, your commercial pages, and secondary, your informational pages.
Here are some key tips:
Commercial Pages
Ultimately, commercial pages, which include category pages, product pages, and service pages, are the most important pages on your site to try to improve the conversion rate as these pages are the most likely to generate sales and leads.
Things to consider for your commercial pages include:
- Social Proof
Social proof, such as reviews, ratings, testimonials and “as seen in” banners, build trust and credibility which drives conversions.
- Value Proposition
A strong value proposition clearly communicates what sets your product or service apart from competitors.
- Features and Benefits
Listing product or service features is essential, but pairing them with clear benefits makes them more compelling. Instead of just stating what a product does, explain how it solves a problem or improves the user’s experience.
Informational Pages
- Clear Call-to-Actions (CTA)
A well-placed and persuasive CTA guides users toward the next step, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up, or downloading a resource.
- Strategic Internal Linking
Internal linking helps guide users from informational content to high-converting commercial pages. By strategically linking related pages, you can improve navigation, increase time on site, and support SEO efforts.
- Sticky Navigation which inherits the main navigation
A sticky navigation menu ensures that key actions and important pages remain accessible as users scroll through the site.
TIP: Google’s UX Playbooks
For more tips, check out Google UX Playbooks which appeared on the internet a few years ago and were originally used with agencies and partners working closely with Google on UX and CRO strategies.
There are some great insights especially as they are tailored to specific industries!
- Google UX Playbook for Retail & E-Commerce (PDF, 108 pages)
- Google UX Playbook for Lead Gen (PDF, 44 pages)
- Google UX Playbook for Travel (PDF, 80 pages)
- Google UX Playbook for Finance (PDF, 106 pages)
- Google UX Playbook for Real Estate (PDF, 60 pages)
- Google UX Playbook for News and Content Sites (PDF, 62 pages)
- Google UX Playbook for Auto (PDF, 39 pages)
Optimising for UX & Site Performance
User Experience has come to the forefront of lots of SEO’s minds over the last year or so (definitely mine!) due to the Google Search document leaks in July 2024 and findings from Google’s antitrust trial in October 2023.
While SEOs have long speculated that user integration signals must be part of the algorithm, logically, it makes a lot of sense! Google had strongly denied this, until now, where they can’t deny it anymore!
So now we know that Google ranks sites based on user engagement, click behaviour, and Chrome browsing data. Newly discovered UX-related ranking factors like NavBoost track user satisfaction, favouring sites with better UX and longer engagement.
This means that CRO, User Experience, or whatever you want to call it, needs to be consciously considered in any SEO strategy going forward.
Microsoft Clarity
One of the key tools to add to your SEO arsenal going forward for optimising UX is Microsoft Clarity.
Similar to HotJar, with features such as screen recordings, heatmaps etc, Microsoft Clarity is one of the most talked about tools at the moment in the SEO industry! Best of all, it’s free!
One of the coolest features of Clarity is that rather than watching individual screen recordings, Clarity uses AI to analyse a bunch of screen recordings and also heatmaps, all at once!
Check our Celeste Gonzalez’s guide on the Clarity Blog for a bit of a walkthrough.There is also this great webinar from Colin Lee, a Product manager on the MS Clarity team.
Page Speed
You may think page speed doesn’t matter much due to the rise of 5G and high-speed broadband. However, people living in less developed countries and rural areas may struggle to even achieve an optimal 3G connection.
Believe it or not, people in the UK are still struggling for optimal mobile data speeds! You may say to yourself “well the website loads fast for me!” while sitting at home with your 100mb/s fibre optic broadband
A great way to test this for people on a 3g signal for example is to use the chrome dev tools and Enable 3G in the network tab to see how it loads with a 3G connection.
Page Speed Testing Tools
Google’s Page Speed Insights tool is generally a great start when it comes to diagnosing page speed issues. PSI gives a score from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better performance. This score is based on factors like page load speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
3rd Party Page Speed Testing Tools
My new favourite 3rd party (and free!) page speed tool is Debugbear. DebugBear’s Page Speed Test provides a comprehensive analysis of a website’s performance by evaluating various aspects that impact loading speed and user experience
The test offers actionable recommendations to improve speed, such as optimising images, leveraging browser caching, reducing JavaScript, and minimising render-blocking resources. Features related to Core Web Vitals are great too, look at this where it shows me where the layout shift (CLS) is happening:
Ultimately, there are a whole bunch of tactics, techniques and tools to improve CRO. This guide only touched on the range of things which can be implemented to aid conversion rates. Don’t forget to explore our CRO Services and have one of the experts at Minty deep-dive into your website!
