SEO is integral to any marketing strategy for e-commerce (or any digital business, for that matter). So you must be wondering, what’s a conversion rate optimization (CRO) platform doing writing about it? Well, it may surprise you to learn that the way in which visitors interact with your website can make a dramatic difference for your SEO rankings.
From bounce rate to sales conversions, each aspect of user behavior can be optimized not only for lead capture or sales but also for page rank.
In this article, we’ll be covering bounce rate, exit rate, time on site, pages per session, overall conversion rate, and how to improve them in tandem with your current SEO efforts.
The basics
Before we dive into how to improve your SEO, let’s start with some basic definitions of what we’ll be covering.
SEO is a huge topic by itself, and this list is only for the items that CRO has an impact on:
- Bounce Rate: Percentage of total visits that users did not take additional actions on your website beyond landing on a single page.
- e.g., They land on your home page, then leave without any further action
- Exit Rate: Similar to bounce rate, but counts only the final page they leave from.
- e.g., They land on your website, click around and then leave off a product page
- Time on Site: This is the average amount of time users spend on your website.
- Pages per Session: The average number of pages viewed during a user’s visit to the site.
Conversion Rate Optimization Terms: Justuno Style
- Cross-Sell: A technique that encourages a customer to purchase related or complementary items to the one they’re interested in.
- e.g., Asking someone if they want fries with their burger
- Upsell: A technique used to encourage a customer to purchase a comparable but higher-priced item, increasing the average order value.
- Conversion: Very generally, a conversion is the point at which a marketing message recipient performs the desired action; In Justuno’s case, it’s when a visitor engages with a pop-up promotion, whether it’s a lead capture or sale.
Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s check out some strategies for how Justuno’s conversion rate optimization platform can improve your website’s SEO rankings.
#1 Immediately engage your audience
Immediately engage your website visitors with a new visitor promotion. When a website visitor arrives, give them time to check out the page, then engage them with an attention-grabbing promotion.
This does two key things: reduces their bounce rate (by an average of 15% among Justuno users!) and increases their average time on page, two primary factors Google uses to rank pages.
#2 Utilize smart product recommendations
Intelligent product recommendations will detect what a visitor is looking at on your site along with anything in their cart and other behavioral indicators to create suggestions. These will dynamically engage a shopper with personalized recommendations as they move through the site, enhancing their experience.
This is especially useful as it increases the time on site, increases the average pages per session, and boost your average order value (AOV). SEO boost + more money from orders? Yes, please!
#3 Inform and help your customers
Use promotions to educate your customers about free shipping, shipping delays, sale countdown timers, or site-wide savings. Use a banner promotion for a dynamic free-shipping threshold (e.g., orders over $50 get free shipping, showing how much they have left to spend as they add items to their cart) for more personalization.
These can be really effective for both increasing your visitor’s time on site and average pages per session. Have a unique promotion or product coming out soon? Put a link in the pop-up to take them to your blog or product page for added bonus time.
#4 Engage that exit!
To save one of the best for last – Exit Offers. Exit Offers are displays that fire when a user is behaving in a way that seems like they may leave the site soon – mousing towards the X or a different tab. On mobile, these promotions can fire when a user is idle or moving toward the back button. This is your last shot at converting a visitor before they leave, so go big! Free shipping, non-gated coupon codes (don’t require an email, just give them a code!), or other relevant offers are the most effective tools are your disposal.
Even if they don’t convert from the Exit Offer promotion and save an abandoned cart, you’ve still contributed to the average time on page. If they do convert, that’s a decrease in bounce rate and exit rate, an increase in average page views, plus a sale!
COVID-19 tip
Justuno has COVID-19 pre-builts available for our customers! Like the new visitor pop-ups, these are easy to rapidly deploy on your website – giving updates to your customers in the most visible, effective way possible.
If you want to learn more about what other Justuno users are doing with onsite promotions during this time, check out our blog outlining how top businesses are effectively communicating with their visitors.
Challenge!
Identify the top five keywords that are driving traffic to your site, create five separate personalized onsite promotions with those keywords, and update the title and meta descriptions to mirror those promotions. This is a great time to work in those long-tail keywords (which are becoming increasingly important in rankings)
Now, not only will you be able to improve your back-end SEO, but your messaging will also be consistent with what your customers are looking for, leading to an overall better brand image.
Final thoughts
Search engine optimization is its own beast of a task for marketers, and it can require a tremendous amount of work in the background to fully maximize rankings. However, there are a variety of surprising elements that help improve it, some of which rather dramatically. The elements laid out in this article are in the latter half.
Improving time on page, bounce & exit rates, pages per session, and converting those visitors can bump up your website those few extra slots which, as we all know, make the biggest difference when you’re looking at a search result page. If you’d like to learn best practices with CRO for SEO, check out this article.
It’s never too late to start leveraging conversion rate optimization for your e-commerce website, and Justuno makes it easier than ever with a 14-day free trial (no credit card required!). Get your New Visitor pop-up promotion (and more) live in minutes and discover the difference.
P.S. if you take nothing else from this blog, please create a new visitor pop-up promotion for your website. It will reduce your bounce rate, increase average time on page per user, get them to other pages, and may get you a potential customer’s email address. This can be set up within three minutes and will have the biggest impact if you’re new to the conversion rate optimization game.
