14 Important Ways SEO Multiplies Conversion Rates

Conversion rates sink lower every year online. Marketers are trying a variety of conversion rate optimization tactics almost in desperation to generate a sale.

Yet that might not be solving the matter at the level needed. Aside from branding and product development, SEO is something companies should be focusing on and committing to. In this epic post we discover 14 important ways SEO aids conversion throughout the full customer journey.

SEO has this power because most customer journeys begin at Google search. And even when they don’t, consumers and B2B buyers are accustomed to the Google-launched shopping and buying journey. Advanced SEO is focused on visitor intent, and is best able to deliver messaging at every key customer touchpoint. SEO then aids in presales and helps other marketing activities achieve better success.

Promotional Tactics aren’t as Powerful

It’s not that promotional tactics being used by CROs aren’t effective, it’s that add-on incentives often weaken the value proposition (e.g., when you offer a price discount to get the sale, it cheapens the value of your product/service).

It’s competitive out there, and SEO saves the day by creating a stronger context so that everything including incentives work better. As you read the 14 factors below, you’ll understand the improved marketing context.

The Google search experience colors perceptions, and Google rewards websites which conform to their user experience model. As an example, Google often lists top companies in a sector in a special search results box. SEO helps to ensure your company is one of them.

So, from keyword selection, topics, impact and engagement, content funnels, to customer loyalty and life time value (LTV), SEO can reach customer prospects first to help create the ideal buyer journey and then support every part of it.

And an important note, is that prospects almost never purchase on first visits. SEO will bring them back again and again until that customer is ready to buy. And also important to mention, is that SEO driven insights can help creative producers generate better blogs, marketing pages, copy headings, marketing messages, CTA’s, imagery ideas, as well as important contributions from the sales team.

There are 3 key element benefits of SEO:

SEO delivers the greatest volume of traffic, leads and revenue
SEO hosts the customer experience begun at Google
SEO feeds and supports your entire marketing campaign

Lead Generation by Industry. Screenshot courtesy of Unbounce

Let’s explore how SEO should be utilized in your lead conversion process.

B2B SaaS Funnel Conversion Benchmarks by Channel

For SaaS companies, 5 major sources see leads closed a third of the time. However, the volume of traffic and leads via organic search is by far higher. And email which spawns webinar participation derives most of its leads initially via Google search. Customers return via Google.

Why SEO and CRO Should be Integrated

This vital topic of CRO and SEO is an advanced SEO discussion. The 14 SEO/CRO factors listed below convey its boosting effect on all marketing activities. In this post we examine in detail how SEO serves the entire customer sales conversion process.

SEO Revenue — Screenshot courtesy of BrightEdge

Changing Views on Modern Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization never gets credit for the full value it delivers into marketing campaigns. It’s never associated with sales conversion. Yet since Google is the top source of customer journeys, SEO becomes the host of all conversion boosting activities — from relevance and engagement, all the way to post purchase anxiety resolution, and to return visits where the conversion process resumes.

If SEO strategy is isolated from the customer conversion process, it actually undermines rankings and traffic. Google evaluates websites for conversion-related activities. If your site ranks poorly on desktop searches, Google may consider it less trustworthy for consumers (YMYL)- thus not worth showing to searchers.

Shopper Conversion rate by device. Screenshot courtesy of MonsterInsights.

Most B2B buyers make serious, high involvement purchases on their laptop or desktop computer. SEO can guide the development of trust and credibility components.

Improve your Customer Experience

In a nutshell, if your conversion rates are awful, it’s likely your brand and product competitiveness that’s the issue. Visitors don’t hate your stuff, rather it’s that competitors have a much better brand and value-building conversion process. You’re getting beat!

Companies that invest in SEO well, tend to get better all round results. It’s just common sense that if you fund search engine optimization-driven content generation well, that more prospects will find and buy your products.

And let’s not forget, you can reach your competitor’s customers, just like they can reach yours — if you’ve done SEO well with a professional level SEO consultant.

It’s important to see that conversion begins right within the Google search results, and continues for the lifetime of a customer. This is the experience that businesses neglect. And those people who have seen your company and brand could convert at any time in future when they are presented with the right offer.

SEO techniques can lift your sales conversion rate and help support your sales team. That full discussion is included below with the top 14 conversion rate boosting benefits of SEO.

Aligning Content and Conversion Funnel using SEO

As I covered in my last book on aligning SEO and content, SEO goes a long way in capturing, impacting, engaging, and keeping customers loyal. And when content creation is guided by SEO, the content draws more search engine traffic, and is most interesting and significant to active searchers (who are actively searching for solutions).

You can introduce new words and ideas to them certainly. But the keywords/topics that drew them to your website become a centerpoint of their buying journey. Ignore the visitor’s search intent and you’ll suffer lower conversion rates.

SEO Integrates the Lead Conversion Process

Search intent may be the most important factor in capturing hard to land, fickle and demanding prospects. Convincing your target audience that you have the best information and the most significant product/service isn’t easy. It must match what they are really looking for.

So from the initial keyword search, to clickthroughs, benefits, to engagement and then easing doubts about your product, SEO aligns this experience called the sales conversion process. If SEO is undermined, the customer’s experience is disjointed and fails.

If SEO can’t complete its hosted experience for that visitor, then your sales team won’t get the leads. You can’t drive a bus load of people and drop them off half way to the destination. Disjointed visitors leave the site and you won’t get that sales phone call.

If you’ve ever tried to generously send leads to another company as I have, it likely failed. Because the customer’s journey was about you, not the company you sent that prospect to.

See more on advanced level SEO services and strategic SEO/Content Creation.

Let’s Review 14 ways SEO Increases Sales Conversion Rates

Increased Organic Visibility: Higher rankings on Google and more ranking pages means much more traffic to your website. Higher visibility leads to increased traffic and more opportunities for lead generation and closed sales.
Content Quality Enhancement: Google’s EEAT guideline guides SEO consultants in creating content that resonates with searcher’s true interests — their search intent. That content isn’t just functional but ensures it’s engaging, authoritative, trustworthy, significant, and has real life elements to avoid being considered “AI generated spam.” SEO rules help build structure in blog posts which Google insists on.
Continuous Reach and Exposure: Continuous exposure to consumers helps to create familiarity and credibility. When a site ranks for all relevant keyword phrases, consumers are persistently reminded of your brand relevance allowing you to get your timely offer across at some point in time.
Fending off Competitor’s Presence and Value Proposition: Continuous exposure keeps eyeballs on your brand/products thus competitors can’t get their messaging through to contaminate your lead nurturing.
Exposing a Larger Variety of Impactful Content: Having more content pieces exposed in Google means more granual connectivity to consumers who have particular interests at different stages of the buyer journey. And developing ‘super landing pages’ can solve both rankings and conversion rate improvements.
More Brand and UVP Promotion: Brands are complex memories in consumer’s minds and your brand will need exact benefits, and personalized to them, in terms of keywords and topics.
Deliver the USP Precisely when Needed: SEO delivers your UVP, but to help sales make a sale, the fickle customer needs a little boost from good selling proposition points. Those USP benefits need to be visible or credible right from the start as they search on Google.
Enhanced User Experience: SEO consultants are actively involved in making websites better for Googlebot and for human users. This goes beyond technical SEO (core metrics, page speed, mobile-friendliness, and user navigation). Improving these elements allows high rankings, a better user experience (EEAT), leading to increased engagement, longer visit durations, thus higher chances of lead conversion.
Increased Presence on other Websites: SEO creates mentions, likes and backlinks from important industry websites such as as industry blogs, news stories, and listings in top portals and review sites. Prospects see those and it helps build credibility and trust which helps to nurture leads.
Geographic Targeting: When you have specific local, regional or international audiences, an SEO specialist consultant captures that hard to access audience, with content that’s relevant to them and their needs, and optimized in the keywords of their language.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): SEO helps to expose content for key touchpoints in the customer journey allowing for added support to get benefits across. And SEO assists in improving and testing calls to action within content for specific prospects in keyword silos.
Long-term Lead Generation: Sustainable SEO means low cost, continuous, value building, and adjustments to keep leads coming in forever.
Supporting Paid Advertising Campaign Lead Conversion: Searchers consider paid ads less credible unless they also see the company’s content showing in the top Google search results. After paid PPC campaigns are finished, the organic search listings keep your company and brand visible to those consumers.
Feeding your email Campaigns: When visitors arrive, they may leave their email address or other contact info, allowing you to reach them in sales building email campaigns.

Actionable Steps to Optimize SEO to Support Conversion Rates

Okay, so we know SEO can play a powerful influence in boosting your brand, creating the right message and content pieces at the right time. It captures a lot of relevant prospects, keeps your brand in front of them more often, and keeps competitors away from your customers.

Try these 6 Steps to Empower SEO for sales conversion:

do deeper content and keyword research to identify and then focus on the keyword phrases which your site can realistically rank for, and which will deliver the best leads. Hire a professional SEO consultant to help you study the task and get you positioned correctly.
map out your customer journey and content funnel, then create more optimized content pieces that match up to the key touchpoints in your prospect’s buying journey.
rework/revise marketing pages so they provide essential decision supportive pointers and the flow from Google is not so disjointed. Improve and edit your marketing page content so it resolves key pain points and fully resolves their information quest.
build more credibility, trust, authority, and real world events/evidence to ensure Google rates your E.E.A.T factor highly.
create more impactful, engaging articles on interesting topics and give them a unique, exciting angle with a hook to create more stickiness for your content, and lower bounce rates so Google believes your site is high quality.
test your content and SEO on specific geographic targets and with PPC advertising in a blitz campaign to gauge if you’re making impact. Adopt a high quality analytics solution so you can ascertain what is working and what is not.

These techniques will help inform your sales team, and provide pre-sales support, along with easing customer reluctance about your product and brand. The sales staff can’t do it all. Finetuning SEO and content specifically for the sales team will help them with presales and convert their hot and cold leads.

Now you have 14 different ways you can optimize your conversion rates using search engine optimization.

Advanced SEO Services

Contact Gord at 416 998 6246 to discuss. I’m looking forward to speaking with you.