SEO conversion rate and conversion rate: a winning combination

Increasing your website traffic while boosting the proportion of visitors who take meaningful action is the goal of both SEO and conversion rate optimisation strategies. These two complementary approaches each have their own technical and methodological nuances, and their impact can vary depending on your website. To clarify the key issues and help you understand how each discipline can benefit your business, we’ll begin with a detailed overview of both areas of digital marketing. We’ll then take a closer look at conversion and how to optimise it. Finally, we’ll compare the two approaches, with formulas and real-world examples to help you plan budgets and calculate the return on investment for each specialism.

‍

Definition and objectives of SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a set of techniques designed to improve a website’s ranking in search engine results. Its main aim is to increase visibility and drive organic traffic to your website. Ultimately, this helps generate more qualified leads for your business or organisation. As we’ll see later, SEO itself is made up of several sub-disciplines: semantic SEO, technical SEO, and more.

‍

The pillars of SEO

We won’t go into every possible ranking factor for the SERP (search engine results page) here, but let’s highlight a few essentials:

‍

Technically sound website

No amount of marketing can compensate for a website with critical technical issues. Certain technical foundations are essential for successful strategies: site architecture, URLs, sitemaps, rich snippets, and page load speed are all crucial. With mobile usage now outstripping desktop, mobile compatibility is vital. This is known as technical SEO. Search engines use bots to crawl sites and analyse data; technical SEO professionals do the same. Incremys offers several modules for rapid and comprehensive technical SEO analysis.

‍

Content quality

This is one of the cornerstones of SEO. Having relevant, high-quality content on your site is essential to demonstrate expertise in your field and engage visitors. Keyword selection, semantic richness, and content length are all factors that deserve your attention. To ensure your content is fully optimised for organic search, Incremys offers content production modules that assign an SEO score based on all key criteria. Easily and intuitively, you can edit and improve your text if any criteria are lacking. For example, if your target keyword isn’t used enough, the software flags this: you simply add it where needed to reach the expected density.

‍

Netlinking

Netlinking is the process of getting links from third-party sites to your own: these are backlinks. Backlinks are crucial as they indicate the quality and relevance of your content. If search engines detect many reputable sites linking to yours, your site will be promoted accordingly, factoring in the quality of those sources.

To achieve strong netlinking, you should:

• Get links from reputable sites;
• Benefit from backlinks from a wide variety of sources;
• Avoid links from dubious or low-quality sites.

Link building, a distinct branch of SEO, focuses on acquiring links. There are two strategic approaches: quantitative and qualitative. Incremys offers bespoke link building campaigns with a purely qualitative focus: articles are written with Incremys technology to target specific keywords and published on authoritative sites, creating opportunities to rank for those keywords. The source article is boosted by its position in the SERP, which ultimately benefits both the referring and receiving site.

‍

What is a conversion?

In digital marketing, a conversion is the achievement of a goal. Usually this means a sale or subscription, but not always. A conversion can also be:

• Newsletter sign-up
• Account creation
• Form submission
• A click
• Software installation…

‍

Defining the conversion rate

The conversion rate, expressed as a percentage, is the ratio, over a given period, of the total number of conversions to the total number of unique website visitors. For example:
A site generates 150 visits per month. The goal is newsletter sign-ups. During the month, that goal is reached 30 times. Your conversion rate is (30/150) x 100 = 20%.

‍

The formula for calculating conversion rate: Conversion rate = Conversions / Visitors

There are two main types of conversion:

• Micro-conversions: small interactions between your business and a site visitor, such as providing an email address, watching a video, or following your social media.
• Meta conversions (or true conversions): have a direct impact on your revenue, such as a purchase or a subscription.

‍

SEO vs SEA (Search Engine Advertising)

SEO and SEA are the two main channels for acquiring website traffic.

SEA has the advantage of bringing qualified traffic to your site very quickly. However, depending on the sector’s competitiveness, it can be expensive. Done well, it’s a good way to boost business or promote your brand.

SEA ROI is relatively easy to calculate, thanks to tracking capabilities that let you measure campaign impact precisely.

Once you stop investing in SEA, the traffic stops. SEA requires constant monitoring and adjustments to maintain a positive ROI.

The main strength of SEO is its longevity. A SEO project can take time and, in some cases, require significant resources. However, it’s a “one-off” investment: once your strategy is implemented and content/backlinks are in place, the site performs for years. Strategies meeting search engine requirements are also protected from risk.

SEO ROI is calculated over the long term. Suppose you invest €50k in SEO in a year, generating an extra €25k margin in year one. You can be confident that the following year, your initial investment will break even.

Another argument for SEO: it delivers better conversion than SEA. Users trust quality web content more than simple ads.

‍

SEO SEA equivalence

What is my organic traffic worth? If I had to pay for Adwords to get my current organic traffic, how much would it cost?

Incremys has developed a SEO vs SEA module which shows the Adwords equivalent value of your organic traffic. All parameters are included: keyword, ranking, average CTR by position. You know exactly, down to the last euro, how much your SEO is generating.

‍

In reality, organic traffic is worth much more than its Adwords value. The SEO conversion rate is far higher than SEA’s. The average SEO conversion rate is around 5%, while SEA is closer to 2% for search ads and about 0.35% for display ads. Focusing on the SEO conversion rate reveals that not all traffic sources are equal.

‍

Conversion and the customer journey

Conversion is the final step in the customer journey. The journey can be analysed in several ways, especially using a funnel as we’ll see later. It can include micro-goals along the way. Much of web analytics is about finding friction points and identifying the best ways to guide prospects towards the objective and turn them into customers.

‍

The conversion funnel: a graphical representation of the customer journey

The conversion funnel (or sales funnel) is a marketing analysis tool showing the steps a lead takes, from first contact to final purchase. As shown in the diagram, the funnel narrows as prospects move through stages. Narrowing the funnel boosts the interaction rate and the speed at which users convert. By reducing the number of choices at each stage, it’s easier to guide them towards the desired action, such as a conversion or a purchase. Analysing the SEO conversion rate at each step helps you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your sales process and make necessary improvements. These tools work as filters for different segments; you can specifically analyse the SEO or SEA conversion rate, for instance.

The main steps are:

‍

Awareness and visibility

The aim here is to make your product or service known to the public. Users’ searches are mainly informational. By providing quality content that matches their search intent and targeting the right keywords, you have every chance of appearing in a prominent SERP position.

KPIs to monitor: your SERP rankings and CTR (click-through rate).

‍

Discovery and consideration

The user now seeks more in-depth knowledge on a specific topic. By optimising the user experience and providing content that answers their questions, you can position yourself as a go-to brand.

KPIs to monitor: micro-goals and user behaviour (time on page, scrolling, clicks, shares, repeat visits...)

‍

Conversion

This crucial step leads to purchase, turning your prospect into a customer.

KPIs to monitor: basket abandonment, acquisition (page, domain or campaign of origin), user behaviour (bounce rate, clicks...)

‍

Loyalty

Loyalty is sometimes neglected, which is a strategic mistake. Generally, it’s more cost-effective to retain existing customers than acquire new ones. Repeat customers tend to spend more and purchase more often. In addition, they may recommend your products or services to others, becoming brand ambassadors.

‍

What is a good conversion rate?

There’s no single answer. There are industry averages and median values, but it’s important to realise that your conversion rate is directly linked to how attractive and well-known your offer is. If you sell the latest foldable smartphone at cost price, your conversion rate will skyrocket, but you won’t make money. Averages are more meaningful in competitive, homogeneous markets. Still, these figures should be taken with caution, as the analysis is complex. You need to factor in average basket value, margin, loyalty rate, etc. All these affect the actual value of a conversion. In any case, monitoring your own conversion rate and analysing its shifts is a good practice. If it rises, your strategies are working. For clear analysis, it’s recommended to segment the SEO conversion rate from the SEA conversion rate. As long as your site’s navigation, content quality and offer attractiveness can be improved, your conversion rate can be enhanced. When a site is fully optimised, both conversion rate and SERP ranking improve—a virtuous circle.

‍

Some examples of conversion rates by industry

According to a recent Wordstream study based on thousands of Google Ads accounts, the average conversion rate across all industries in 2022 was 2.35%.

25% of accounts perform twice as well as the average, reaching a 5.31% conversion rate.

The top 10% achieve a median conversion rate of 11.45%—five times the overall average!

Clearly, not everyone is in the same boat. This is even more obvious when you look at conversion rates by sector.

Indeed, the numbers vary greatly by industry:

• Global median conversion rate: 2.35%
• Median e-commerce conversion rate: 1.84%
• Median legal conversion rate: 2.07%
• Median B2B conversion rate: 2.23%
• Median finance conversion rate: 5.01%

‍

SEO conversion rate

The conversion rate is a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that applies to both SEA and SEO. When analysing conversion rates, acquisition channels should be segmented. This way, you can analyse the SEO conversion rate and the SEA conversion rate separately. At a minimum, this is necessary for a macro overview of your marketing performance. As mentioned, SEO generates a more attractive conversion rate than SEA. When we talk about the SEO conversion rate, we’re referring to the specific segment of organic traffic being analysed.

‍

Search Engine Optimisation and conversion rate: two interdependent concepts

To understand how SEO and conversion rate work together, remember:

• When properly executed, SEO brings you qualified traffic continuously and over the long term;
• Simply optimising CTR on a site already attracting qualified traffic can have a major business impact.

Here’s a slightly exaggerated example: one of your web pages ranks first in the SERP. This should generate impressive traffic. But, for one (or several) reasons detailed later, no one converts by clicking the sign-up form. All your SEO efforts have been wasted.

‍

Organic search serving your conversion rate

The primary aim of SEO is to achieve high rankings in search results. Some SEO actions also actively contribute to improving your conversion rate:

• A well-structured website is just as valuable for SEO as it is for visitors’ navigation (and therefore experience);
• High-quality content is essential for SEO. It also showcases your expertise and reassures visitors—vital for converting leads into customers;
• Google prioritises sites with intuitive, user-friendly design—also crucial for not losing visitors at every stage of the customer journey. This is known in marketing as retention. The main lever for strong retention is an optimised user experience.

‍

Should you optimise your conversion rate, your SEO, or both?

The right strategy and levers depend on your business: its resources, needs, and goals. With both SEO and CRO, the investment is sustainable. Actions have a lasting impact. If your conversions are high-value—each conversion generating significant business—then it makes sense to focus on optimising the SEO conversion rate. Once that’s optimised, the next step is to fuel the funnel with SEO campaigns to bring in qualified traffic. In practice, some SEO improvements directly affect CRO and vice versa. For example, a page with low-quality content is indexed for a keyword that doesn’t match the merchant’s offer. The SEO specialist aligns the page with the correct keyword (matching the content and user intent—see search intent). This directly impacts the page’s conversion rate. CRO can then further help by optimising the CTA and UX.

‍

Factors correlated with the conversion rate

Several indicators help you analyse your conversion rate. Knowing them is essential for an effective marketing approach.

‍

Understanding your audience, location

Are most of your visitors in a particular geographical area? Are they mainly men or women? What is their average age? By answering these, you’ll better understand your audience and can define their real needs. Identifying prospect groups (personas) helps tailor marketing strategies and bespoke offers.

‍

Navigation on your website

The path your visitors take—known as behaviour flow—is invaluable. It shows which pages perform well, and where you lose visitors. More generally, it indicates how users interact with your site.

‍

Time spent on page

A person who leaves a page after just a few seconds is unlikely to convert. In this case, your conversion rate suffers. Conversely, someone who spends a long time on a page without converting may signal another issue (e.g., the Call to Action isn’t visible enough).

‍

Bounce rate

This metric shows the percentage of people who leave a page instead of continuing to another one. Generally, a low bounce rate is a good sign. However, some pages can have a high bounce rate without it being negative—for example, a page that answers a simple question fully, so the visitor is satisfied and leaves.

‍

Exit page

This is the last page viewed before leaving your site. For example, if the exit page is the payment page, where users enter payment details, there may be a problem—technical or UX. The user may not feel reassured at that stage.

‍

Value per visit

This figure indicates the monetary value of each visit. If your online shop gets 100 daily visits, with a 5% conversion rate and an average spend of €50, your daily turnover is €250. So, each visit is worth €2.50. This is an important figure and should be compared to the next metric.

‍

Cost per conversion

This is the cost to your business for each conversion. It’s not always easy to calculate, but is extremely important. If cost per conversion exceeds the value per visit, you’re losing money.

‍

ROI

Return on investment: the difference between what you’ve gained and what you’ve invested. This applies to SEA, SEO, and CRO.

‍

Which tools can you use to collect and analyse all this data?

Google tools are essential for web analytics and technical monitoring:

‍

Conversion rate in Google Analytics

GA makes conversion rate calculation easy: simply define what a conversion is (a “goal” in GA), and it tracks it automatically. You can also associate goals with monetary values. Accurate value attribution enables almost accountancy-level performance monitoring.

‍

Google Search Console for SEO KPIs and CTR performance

Google Search Console KPIs are especially useful for SEO. But they also include valuable indicators for conversion rate analysis and optimisation.

‍

Sitemap analysis

Google bots crawl the web to index website pages. To help them, you should supply a sitemap listing all URLs and indicating which should be prioritised. Google Search Console submits the sitemap for validation and checks which pages have been indexed—crucial, as only indexed pages are visible in search results.

‍

Search query/keyword analysis

Google Search Console provides a list of keywords that put you in the Top 100 results. You can identify your best-performing queries. This includes: average position for each keyword, number of impressions, and number of clicks. Average clicks (CTR) are also shown. These figures are especially important for improving the top of the conversion funnel.

‍

Website SEO performance analysis

Google Search Console highlights technical SEO data: for example, which URLs return errors (404s), site speed, and technical optimisation level. More broadly, it flags all technical errors crawled by the search engine. One of its most interesting features is that it gives recommendations for improving your SEO.

‍

External link analysis

We’ve already discussed the importance of netlinking for SEO. Google Search Console analyses all external links: source sites, destination pages, and associated anchors. The reports help you measure each backlink’s quality and spot broken links.

‍

Mobile site performance

Many small details can harm your mobile site’s display—such as unsuitable fonts, incompatible plugins, or slow loading times. Mobile search is significant, so it’s vital to offer a user-friendly format for smartphones and tablets.

‍

Assessing security

This is increasingly important and users are paying more attention. Website security is crucial, especially for e-commerce or sites collecting sensitive data. Google Search Console can spot security vulnerabilities and suggest solutions.

‍

Google Search Console or Google Analytics?

These tools are complementary. Google Search Console focuses on how users reach your site (SERP, queries, clicks). Google Analytics comes into play once the user is on your site (regardless of how they arrived), providing a wealth of data explained later in this article. For a complete and relevant analysis, use both. Google interfaces can be complex, so Incremys includes (among other things) GA and GSC reports in its custom reporting modules, focusing only on indicators truly useful for analysts and decision-makers.

‍

Incremys for faster, more efficient results

Incremys also lets you easily and efficiently monitor your SEO conversion rate and identify areas for improvement.

‍

A concrete analysis example

To illustrate what you can do with Incremys, here’s a specific use case. For a given SERP position, there’s a typical expected CTR. By analysing your pages’ performance, you can easily see which perform (achieving the expected or better CTR) and which can be improved. For example, results in third place typically get a 2.43% CTR. If your Incremys report shows you’re only getting 0.4%, there’s room for improvement—rewrite your title and meta description. Depending on the SERP, you may also need to optimise images or add elements like rich snippets (e.g., reviews).

‍

For example, for the search “poêle à bois”, it’s easy to see that the site manoamano.fr is likely to perform well because of its position: it includes photos, user reviews, a price range (all “rich snippets”)...... On the other hand, topchaleur.com suffers by comparison, lacking the aforementioned elements and displaying an overly long, truncated description.

‍

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO)

CRO, or Conversion Rate Optimisation, is a discipline in its own right, using protocols, analysis, tools and tracking—just like SEO. It’s mainly larger companies that call on CRO specialists. For example, Amazon has made conversion rate optimisation a constant priority since its founding in 1995. It was recently shown that Amazon Prime customers have a conversion rate between 10% and 15%—a real achievement in an increasingly competitive market.

‍

Key CRO techniques

All CRO techniques aim for one thing: to optimise user experience. User experience (UX) and conversion rate are closely linked for obvious reasons: if a user is dissatisfied with their time on your site, they’re unlikely to buy or sign up. Three main areas can be optimised: technical, usability and content.

‍

1 – Technical

Page load speed

It’s proven that fast page loads keep visitors on your site. Conversely, if a page takes longer than three seconds to load, users often leave. Beyond UX, this is also crucial for Google, which penalises slow pages.

‍

Security

Users must be reassured when providing identity and payment details. HTTPS in the address bar is a clear sign of security: most users now expect it and won’t buy if it’s absent. This isn’t just technical—poor design or spelling mistakes can also undermine trust in your service.

‍

2 – Usability

Site design and usability

The visual aspect of your website—especially the homepage—reflects your business, like a shop window. A clear, well-designed site signals professionalism and builds trust, as well as making reading more comfortable. Usability is crucial: users must be able to move easily from page to page (internal linking is important here). For example, in a sales funnel, ideally no more than three clicks separate the entry page from purchase.

‍

Mobile compatibility

Mentioned earlier for SEO, how your page displays on a mobile also affects UX. In 2018, more than one in three online sales were made by smartphone. “M-commerce” is now a distinct concept, with growing influence every year.

‍

3 – Content

Content quality

Content is the primary factor in attracting visitors to a website. High-quality content means not just text but also images and videos. Intelligent internal linking helps users navigate, improving retention and lowering bounce rate. Content built around strategically chosen keywords (for their volume and intent) helps you rank in the SERP—this is “SEO content”. It’s for both users and search engines. There’s another kind, purely for conversion: copywriting—marketing writing designed to maximise conversions on sales pages.

‍

A/B testing – an effective approach

This is a fundamental concept in conversion rate optimisation. It involves testing different versions of a web page and analysing user behaviour to determine, with data, which is most effective. These tests let you measure the impact and relevance of changes.

Types of A/B tests include:

• Classic A/B or A/Bn testing: A/B tests compare two page versions; A/Bn tests compare more than two.
• Split testing: direct different user groups to different landing pages, changing the whole journey. Ideal when adding new pages or redesigning a site. You can measure the impact before going live.
• MVT (Multivariate Testing): test several variables at once to analyse the best combination (content, colours, CTAs).

‍

Where should you allocate budget: CRO, SEO?

Decision-makers should rely on a data-driven approach—just as Incremys is designed for. Here’s an example analysis:

‍

ecommerce CRO or SEO?

• organic traffic: 30,000 visitors per month
• value per visit: €0.3
• SEO market share (Incremys data): 3%
• target SEO market share (Incremys data = SEO growth potential): 5%
• SEO campaign price: €15k
• conversion rate: 3.5%
• conversion rate optimisation target: 5%
• CRO cost: €15k
• monthly revenue before optimisation: organic traffic x value per visit = €9k
• monthly revenue after SEO optimisation: +60% = €15k
• monthly revenue after CRO: +42.85% = €12.85k

This gives a macro view and helps you determine ROI. Of course, you can go further by including additional data relevant to your business—like average basket value, average margin, etc. These granular approaches are best used alongside a big-picture view of your site’s growth potential.

‍

Conclusion

SEO and CRO work hand in hand. Both disciplines focus on optimisation, and any good SEO will include CRO concepts in their strategy—such as optimising CTAs, design, and navigation. Ideally, your SEO specialist should be able to provide CRO recommendations or point you towards the right experts (designer, developer, etc.). In reality, few sites invest in CRO before leveraging SEO: SEO delivers results beyond revenue, such as visibility. The SEO conversion rate is higher and, above all, much more sustainable than with SEA. That’s another reason to favour an integrated strategy focused on SEO and including CRO.

You can deepen your understanding of the topic by reading all our articles on related topics concerning the SEO conversion rate.

SEO and web marketing knowledge base.

‍

‍