CRO, SEO and scaling your business

SEO is a multi-skill discipline – there is a whole range of related functions that need to be developed and planned for to ensure that a business thrives. Conversion rate optimisation – or CRO for short – is one of these areas.

Because so many different businesses have different metrics by which they test success, often SEOs will drop down to traffic as their most important KPI. Though this is not necessarily an issue, it can mean that other areas of performance are given less well-rounded attention. CRO is one of those areas that, while falling well within the realms of SEO, is often left by the wayside.

The issue is that, for CRO to be worth doing, it needs to be approached scientifically. CRO is the process where you can scale your success.

Imagine that you are an SEO – your business goal is to raise your site revenue from £40,000 to £50,000 a month. You are told to do this by increasing traffic from 60,000 sessions to 80,000 sessions. Immediately, there are a number of questions you need to ask yourself.

1) Is it possible to raise traffic from 60,000 to 80,000 sessions?

Is this more content that you can build? Is the content already on the site good enough?

2) How many sessions will you need to actually raise the extra £10,000?

Is there a certain product, service, or section of the site that is worth more?

3) Are you monetising the traffic you already have?

Or better yet, are you monetising the traffic you already have effectively?

While questions one and two are probably an ordinary part of every SEO’s role – question three might not be. The reason that question three – the CRO question – is difficult to answer is that it requires analysis and insight that can take time to put together.

The truth is that, without answering question three, you might be missing your opportunity for scale. As an SEO, the target is almost always more traffic. But what if you can make more use of the traffic you already get? What if you could go back to your manager and tell them that you’ve raised the extra revenue without building traffic?

Introducing a robust CRO process to your SEO campaigns is the best way to add scale. By thinking about question three first, you can ensure that you are delivering the highest value work all the time.