Whatever you want your customers to do – buy your product, engage your services, donate to your charity – a well-designed website can help you get there. Conversion is the process of bringing a visitor to your website through a process like these.
Good SEO, on the other hand, can help early in the conversion process by drawing visitors to your site and ensuring they get relevant content once they arrive. So how do you make your website conversion SEO friendly? Here are some simple tips to get you started.
Keep your design simple
It’s tempting to design a website that ‘pops’, ‘shines’ and generally looks stylish. Which is fine. But before you search for the nearest Flash developer, remember that your visitors are ultimately looking for content, not design.
Your website visitors are more likely to convert if they can easily find what they’re looking for. So keep it simple, neat and easy to read. Sites that rely on lots of images, Flash, or large amounts of JavaScript load slowly, so there’s a risk that your visitors will get impatient and leave.
For SEO purposes as well, a plain HTML website will generally hover around its flashier counterparts.
Create a clear user journey
Customers hate having to search for the information they need. If they can’t find what they’re looking for in a few seconds, they’re unlikely to stick around to crawl through paragraphs of text until they find it.
A strong site structure (or information architecture) will make your site easy to use. Divide your content into clear sections and use each section’s landing page as an index or teaser for more specific content on the pages within the section.
Your home page should provide a broad focus for your business and act as a portal for more content, so resist the temptation to fill it with text. Nobody will read it.
use keywords
Search engines look for keywords in your website headers, links, image text, and metadata.
By keeping your website full of relevant information and clearly signposting it, you stand a better chance of attracting visitors and generating successful conversions once they get there.
Spend some time researching keywords for your business and get inspired by competitor websites. Take note of the words that appear over and over and try putting a few of them into a search engine to see what you get. For each keyword that describes your business, think of two synonyms.
Use calls to action (CTA)
What is the main thing you want your site visitors to do? It’s hard to resist a clear call to action, so make sure they’re well signed and easy to find. They should be at the top of the page fold whenever possible, and a combination of text links and buttons or other graphics.
Never, ever use “click here”. Calls to action work best when they’re descriptive and action-oriented: “Buy a ticket,” for example, is clearer, more persuasive, and better for SEO than “Click here to buy a ticket.”
header tags
Header tags are a great way to separate topics and a key tool to improve your site’s SEO. Tags range from H1 to H6 and search engines rank them accordingly, so any keywords in an H1 tag will carry more weight than those in H2.
They can also help you prioritize your page content, so keep one H1 tag per page and save it for higher-level content headers.
let the words do the work
Get rid of the jargon. It may sound ‘professional’, but for someone who is not an expert in their field, it is just confusing. Don’t be afraid to speak up and get to the point, your visitors will thank you.
Use social networks
If you’re not already using popular sites like Twitter and Facebook, it’s time to get started. Social networking sites like these can help you reach a new audience and stay in touch with your current customers. Add social media buttons to your website and create a Facebook page for your brand or product. Keep content fresh by posting regular comments and inviting a response. It’s a great opportunity to get honest feedback!
And finally…
Measure the performance of your site. Google Analytics is a good place to start, and you’ll soon see which pages are working effectively and which aren’t. Don’t be afraid to experiment. If a page isn’t converting, try different content to see if something else works better. You may be surprised.
