How to Optimize Your Website for SEO and Conversions

Learning how to optimize your website for SEO and conversions is crucial for your site’s success. 

It’ll ensure your website is working exactly as hard as it should. 

If you have good SEO, you can attract more traffic and get more opportunities to convert potential customers.

And a website optimized for conversions typically has better metrics, such as time on page and bounce rate, which means that Google might rank it higher.

The following tips and strategies will teach you how to optimize your website for both SEO and conversions so you get the both of best worlds.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the process of increasing your website traffic through search engine results.

This helps your website become more discoverable. When potential customers search terms related to your brand, they’ll have a better chance of discovering your website and becoming a customer.

Imagine you have a fitness business. You offer dieting and workout tips on your website.

You also have an article about losing weight. With good SEO practices, a person searching a keyword like “how to lose weight” might have a better chance of finding that article—and therefore, your brand.

That’s the power of SEO.

5 Reasons You Need to Optimize Your Website

There are plenty of reasons to learn how to optimize for conversions and SEO in tandem.

First you need to know how they work together to create a leaner, more productive website.

Let’s look at five specific reasons to optimize your site immediately and to continually optimize your site over time.

1. Make your website useful for your specific audience

Marketers sometimes feel as though they’re at odds with Google. The search engine fails to rank their best content, for instance, or they see a huge drop in traffic after an algorithmic update.

In reality, though, your goals and Google’s are the same:

• Serve up the best possible content for your audience
• Create a positive website user experience
• Prioritize content that offers significant value

You just go about it in different ways. Google’s analyzing millions of websites, while you’re analyzing your specific audience’s behaviors.

Google uses more than 200 ranking signals to decide which pieces of content appear on the first page of the search engine results. The algorithm pays careful attention to signs that a particular web page will give searchers the information they seek.

When you focus on SEO, you choose primary and latent semantic keywords related to search intent. You write content that people love to read and make sure you provide meta information to help Google better understand the copy.

If you optimize your website for conversions, you focus on guiding visitors toward a specific goal, whether it’s joining your email list or buying one of your products. Just like Google, you want to give your audience exactly what those consumers want.

Knowing how to optimize your website for SEO and conversions simultaneously furthers both of those goals and creates a better relationship between your site and the search engines.

2. Grow your organic traffic

The average business spends about 1 percent of its total revenue on advertising. If your business rakes in $1 million per year, you might spend $10,000 on advertising.

While that might seem like a small percentage, it adds up. Some industries, such as retail, spend considerably more on ads.

Attracting organic traffic through SEO, however, is free. You have to pay to develop and promote the content, but that’s not nearly as expensive as pay-per-click.

When you compare the close rate between searchers who arrive at your site via organic search and those that come via paid ads, the results are illustrative. Organic search closes at nearly 15 percent, while paid search closes at less than 2 percent.

Invest your time and, if necessary, money into growing your organic traffic. It might take longer, but the results last longer and result in more conversions.

3. Capitalize on existing traffic

When people visit your website, you don’t want them to poke around and leave. Instead, you want to make a lasting impression and encourage them to return.

Learning how to optimize your website for conversions requires an understanding of the user experience. Figure out how visitors navigate your site, whether they scroll down the page, and how often they click on your calls to action (CTAs).

If someone signs up for your email list, you can contact them at a later date with offers, incentives, and more. You can also encourage visitors to follow you on social, visit your product pages, and read your blog posts.

Capitalizing on existing traffic helps improve your conversion rate because a higher percent of your organic traffic will convert. You know what offer your audience will respond to and how to present it to them in an appealing way.

4. Force your website to work harder

Anyone can build a website — even a beautiful website — but far fewer can create a website that reliably produces conversions. After all, the average conversion rate across all industries is less than 2.5 percent.

You want your audience to convert at much higher rates. To do so, you have to study your audience closely and give them what they need and expect.

If you’ve done the research and applied the data to your site, you can expect a jump in conversion rates. The people who visit your site find what they need quickly and appreciate your brand for providing it. Brand loyalty results.

SEO always comes first, though. Without traffic, you can’t have conversions. Create a site with valuable, sticky content and plenty of opportunities for visitors to convert.

5. Give your audience what they want and expect

Imagine this scenario:

You have an e-commerce site that sells shoes. A customer needs a new pair of running shoes and conducts a Google search for the best shoes for runners. You’ve written a long, in-depth blog post about choosing running shoes, including brand recommendations and information for different types of runners.

The visitor reads the article. At the end, you have a lead magnet that offers a free sizing and fit chart for runners. All the visitor has to do is sign up for your email list.

You send the lead magnet immediately to the visitor. A few days later, you send out a coupon code for your online store along with images of running shoes. The customer realizes you have what meets his or her needs, and the discount incentivizes an immediate sale.

As you can see, SEO and conversion rate optimization work hand-in-hand. If you meet your audience’s expectations and help them find what they want, you’ll secure a customer.

How to Optimize your Website for SEO in 8 Simple Steps

To start, you need to boost the SEO on your website to draw more traffic.

The following steps will set you up for SEO success. You can then turn your focus to conversions while continuing to update and release new content.

1. Analyze all of your website data

One piece of data by itself might not tell you anything, but when you collect lots of data, you start to notice patterns.

If a few people visit your site and fail to click on your CTA, you might not have a problem.

However, if a large percentage of visitors ignore your CTA, you might need to make some adjustments.

User behavior reports and Google Search Console traffic data help paint a clear picture. User behavior reports, for instance, show you how people behave once they land on your site, while GSC data tracks key metrics, such as number of sessions, number of unique sessions, bounce rate, and more.

Analyze the data for specific patterns. Referral sources can tell you a lot about your audience. How are people finding your site? Look for pages that get more traffic and more conversions than others. Reverse-engineer that page’s success to replicate it across your site.

2. Conduct thorough keyword research

Years ago, you could pick a keyword out of thin air, write a 300-word article, and rank for that keyword the next day. SEO doesn’t work like that anymore.

Tools like Ubersuggest help you find keywords related to your business and niche. Use it to find long-tail keywords that fit with your prospective customers’ user intent. Think about why they would search for a particular keyword and what they would hope to find on a page about it.

Start with a broad keyword. For instance, maybe you offer dog boarding, so you begin with a keyword like “dog kennels.”

Ubersuggest will provide you with a list of keywords that you can filter in several ways. You’re looking for long-tail keywords you can use to attract a specific audience.

Do this over and over again as you create more pages for your site. Write long, in-depth articles that provide as much information on the topic as possible.

3. Produce long and value-rich content

According to Buffer, the ideal length for a blog post is 1,600 words. That’s just a starting point, though.

Before you decide on the optimum length for your content, Google your primary keyword and visit the top 10 result in the SERPs. Are some of those pages longer than 1,600 words? Then yours should be, too.

Length isn’t everything. However, it sends a signal to Google that you’re providing more information. If lots of people spend a long time on that page — reading to the very end — you’re more likely to rank higher.

4. Optimize for on-page SEO

On-page SEO tells you how to optimize your website when you’re building specific pages. Factors like headlines, subheadlines, URL slugs, and meta tags fall into this category.

Use your primary keyword in your headline, preferably as close to the beginning as possible. It should also appear in the slug and at least one subheadline. Throughout the body copy, aim for .5 percent to 2.5 percent. Try not to go over the higher end to avoid looking like a keyword stuffer.

Sprinkle your primary and related keywords throughout your body copy, subheadlines, and image alt text. Include plenty of context for each so Google accurately understands what you’re talking about.

5. Optimize for off-page SEO

Off-page SEO — also called off-site SEO — refers to the ways in which you optimize your website via external means. Guest blogging, social media activity, influencer marketing, and brand mentions can all improve your site’s SEO.

We’ll talk specifically about backlinks a little later, but links in general can make a big difference in SEO. You don’t want to get links from small, low-authority sites. They won’t help (and they can hurt). Instead, you want to target well-respected publications when researching backlinks.

6. Optimize the website for mobile

With more and more people accessing websites via mobile devices, you don’t want to leave those potential conversions out in the cold. Furthermore, Google has launched the mobile-first index, which means you might rank better if you focus on mobile friendliness.

Responsive design offers the easiest solution. You can download free and premium WordPress themes that have responsive design built in, which means you don’t have to worry about adding any extra code.

7. Speed up the pages

Page speed matters when it comes to both SEO and conversions.

If you visit a website that takes forever to load, you’ll likely click the “back” button and look for something else. Similarly, if you’re filling out a form that refuses to submit due to slow speed, you’ll eventually give up.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights gives you valuable insight into how fast your site loads across all devices and what specific things you can fix to make your site faster.

8. Get quality backlinks

Backlinks are a prime factor in helping your website rank better.

When high-quality sites link to yours, Google interprets the link as a signal of your site’s credibility. As you build a solid backlink profile, your pages will climb up the ranks.

Getting quality backlinks takes effort, but you’ll see results. Consider emailing influencers and other blogs in your niche. Share your article with them and point them to a page where you’ve shared a piece of their content.

Can SEO Improve Your Website Conversions?

Now that we’ve covered improving your SEO, what happens to your conversions?

You won’t see results right away. Rankings take time to build, especially with the plethora of content that exists online, so you have to work hard to build quality content, attract backlinks, and establish credibility with Google.

However, you should start preparing for conversions now. If you know how to optimize your website, you can immediately see greater conversions even if you have low traffic.

SEO improves conversions by directing the right searchers to your content. If you make a page’s purpose clear, Google can rank it accurately based on search intent on the part of the consumer.

Additionally, writing longer, more value-driven articles increases the chances of a visitor converting. They recognize the value of what you’ve shared and become intrigued. As long as you present them with an attractive offer, you increase the chances of gaining conversions.

Optimizing Your Website for Conversions – Improve the User Experience

User experience simply means how people perceive your site relative to navigation and finding what they want. A good user experience leaves the visitor satisfied and appreciative.

To snag more conversions, focus on the smallest details. For instance, examine your homepage and identify every element, from your logo and top navigation bar to the widgets in your sidebar. If you removed one of those elements, would you harm the user experience?

If not, get rid of it. Focus on driving your traffic toward the action you want people to take.

Try User Behavior Tools to Analyze What Needs Improvement

Guesswork only goes so far when it comes to user experience. You might think an element on the page is necessary, but user behavior reports don’t bear that out.

Running user behavior reports gives you unique insights into what people do when they arrive on your website. Heatmaps, for instance, show you where the most clicking activity happens so you can position your most important elements on the page.

Conclusion

SEO can prove extremely complex, but knowing the basics will give you a running start.

Begin by collecting as much data as you can and conducting thorough research. Write content geared toward your audience, but make sure it’s better than your competitors’.

Create separate campaigns for on-page and off-page SEO. Make sure your site loads quickly on both desktop and mobile and that you’re attracting backlinks as much as possible.

Then figure out how to optimize your website for conversions so you don’t waste all that good traffic.

Focus on the user experience and the patterns you detect through user behavior reports. Over time, you’ll see traffic and conversions increase based on your hard work.

Furthermore, even older content can continue to work hard for you. Don’t discount your efforts as only relevant to the moment.

If you write solid evergreen content, you can attract traffic — and generate conversions — for years to come.

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How to Make Money From Social Media

Want to know a fun fact?

If you Google “make money blogging,” you get 78,000,000 results.

That’s no surprise.

There has been an online business boom over the past few years. The web is plastered with stories of average Joes making millions from their blogs.

If you made the same Google search for social media, guess how many results you’d get?

Not half as many. Not even close.

There are plenty of people in our industry who will tell you that social media isn’t monetizable.

You’ll hear comments like these:

“You need your own website.”

“It’s too risky.”

I’ve got news for you.

I’m not one of those people.

Sure, it’s risky.

What business doesn’t come with a risk?

You may even decide to get your own website to scale your business further.

That’s fine.

But right now? You can absolutely monetize your business idea on social media.

There are many people actively making money from their social media accounts. The rise of YouTube business moguls and Instagram influencers bear testament to that.

By the end of this article, you’ll have a viable business idea that you can monetize using your social media channels.

Let’s get started.

1. Decide what you want

Before we even get into business ideas and monetization strategies, I just have to ask:

What do you want from all of this?

What is your purpose?

It could be money. It could be freedom. You decide.

Come up with a very visceral response to these questions and put it down on paper.

When business gets tough (and it will), you can go back to your purpose for an extra dose of motivation.

After you’ve come up with a concrete “why,” you need to decide what you want the result to be.

That’s where you need to get specific.

Here are some examples:

• Gain 50,000 Facebook fans
• Make $5000 per month in affiliate income
• Launch two online products by the end of the year

Why do this?

You can’t attain something that is not concrete and measurable.

More importantly, you can’t reverse-engineer a plan if you don’t begin with the end result in mind.

Now that you know what you’re working toward and why you’re doing it, let’s get into the action steps.

2. Define your idea and craft your niche market

My guess is that you have a few general ideas already.

However, you don’t want to be painting in broad strokes.

That’s not a business model that works.

Instead, you want to narrow down your idea to a particular niche.

Here’s how.

Decide who you want to do business with. Don’t worry about alienating people or confining your idea to a box.

While it sounds counterintuitive, if you focus on one audience, you will have more impact.

You can always revisit this. Your niche is not set in stone.

Aim to be as specific as possible.

For example, you can decide that you’ll be targeting young female entrepreneurs between the ages of 21 and 30.

What service or product will you be providing to your target audience? This is a matter of reducing your idea to suit your target audience.

Again, this needs to be very specific.

Let’s say that your general idea is in the marketing field. Perhaps you want to provide marketing services and use your social media channels to get clients.

If you were to narrow “marketing” down, here’s what it would look like:

• Content marketing
• Copywriting
• Direct response copywriting
• Direct response copywriting in the health niche
• Direct response copywriting in the alternative/natural health niche

Do you see how many layers you can peel off your general idea?

3. Validate your business idea

Most people skip this step and go full throttle with their business ideas.

Now is the time to take a step back.

You have a concrete idea, but you’re missing some crucial insights.

• Does your niche market actually exist?
• Does your idea conform to your long-term, result-oriented goal?
• Are there enough people out there with the problem that you’re solving?
• Are they willing to pay you to solve it?

That’s where validating your idea comes into play.

Here’s how you can do it.

Step #1: Go to Google Trends to get an overview of your niche market.

Plug in your niche keyword in the search bar and press enter.

You’ll get a graph showing the interest for your keyword over a particular period.

If the graph is steady or on the rise, these are good signs.

If there’s a decline, you may want to reconsider your niche or do some further research.

You can also scroll to the bottom of the page to find “related queries” and “related topics.”

These will also give you ideas for narrowing down your niche. You can click on the individual queries to see the overall trend for them, as well.

Step #2: Find competing products on online marketplaces.

Competition shouldn’t scare you.

In fact, it tells you that there’s a market for your business.

It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to sell, be it a service or a product. You only want to know if there’s demand for your topic.

Here’s how you can do that.

Search for your niche topic on Amazon. Browse through the books and evaluate the overall demand.

Books with lots of reviews, good or bad, are a good sign.

Go to Udemy to check out the online courses in your niche. Again, you’re looking for proof of demand.

Lots of courses with ratings are a positive indication.

Go to YouTube to see if there are popular videos on your topic. If people are viewing video content on your topic, there’s definitely demand.

Search for your niche hashtag on Instagram. I plugged “content marketing” in the Instagram search bar and saw that the hashtag had over 600,000 posts. That’s a great sign.

After you validate your idea, it’s time to start thinking about how you can monetize it.

4. Come up with a monetization strategy.

This is perhaps the most-asked question.

How do you monetize your idea?

Do you sell a product? Trade your time for money? Advertise other people’s products?

The choice is yours.

Deciding how you’ll monetize your business idea is the easy part.

Doing the work is a whole other ball game.

Before you decide on a strategy, you need to know what is involved and what resources you’ll need.

Here are the common monetization methods.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is massive in the blogging world.

This is where you promote other people’s products. You get to earn a commission on every sale that you bring for the company.

It’s an excellent strategy, but you need a decent-sized following to make a reliable revenue stream.

Here are some popular affiliate networks that you can sign up for.

• ShareASale
• Commission Junction
• Amazon Associates
• ClickBank

Note that these networks will have their criteria that you have to meet to join.

Sponsored posts/advertising

This is another method of promoting other people’s products. It’s very common on blogs and networks like Instagram.

Typically, you’ll earn a flat fee for publishing a post about a particular product.

Brands that pay for sponsored posts usually want to maximize their reach. It means you’ll need a sizeable following.

How do you land these posts?

You can reach out to brands directly if you have enough leverage. Alternatively, you can use a network that connects brands with social media influencers.

IZEA is an attractive option.

Informational products

Information products have an enormous market right now.

Brian Harris reported that his blog made more than $220k in online course sales. He did it in 10 days!

What are some examples of info products?

• Online courses
• Ebooks
• Online events

Don’t you need a website to host these digital products?

Not necessarily.

You can set up sales funnels without a website. All you need are landing pages and an email management system.

There are also platforms that host your online courses for you. Thinkific, Teachable, and Udemy are excellent options.

Offer a service

Do you have a skill that you do exceptionally well?

I’ve got news for you.

There’s someone out there willing to pay you for it.

Create a few service packages based on your skill and market it on your social media networks.

Want some ideas?

• Coaching
• Consulting
• Freelance writing
• Social media management

5. Choose the right social media channel

This is perhaps one of the most important decisions that you’ll make.

You can’t spread your time and resources across several channels. Instead, decide on one social media platform.

While you can diversify as your business grows, I don’t recommend starting with more than one channel.

How do you know which is the right one?

It depends.

Here’s what you should consider.

• Who’s your target audience and where do they hang out?
• What’s the nature of your idea?
• What type of content would you primarily need to promote your business?
• Which platform is the best fit for your content strategy?

Whatever you decide, you’re not short of options.

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest can all be monetized.

Let’s say that your niche is photography.

You’d want to choose a platform with a strong visual focus. In that case, Pinterest and Instagram would be excellent picks.

If you produce more video content, YouTube might be a better bet.

That’s not to say that you can’t use the other platforms. But you need to select your home base.

6. Get your social media profiles ready to win business

After you decide which platform is best, it’s time to optimize your profile to attract and convert clients.

While you’ve already validated your idea, a sales conversion is the real deal.

It’s the truest form of validation.

Let’s get your profile ready.

While it depends on the social media network that you choose, here are some general best practices.

Ensure that you have a professional headshot as your profile photo. Be sure to name your photo with your niche keyword before you upload it.

For example, if you’re a wedding photographer located in Seattle, you can name your photo “Best wedding photographer in Seattle.”

This will ensure that your image is optimized for Google image search.

Note: If you use multiple platforms, use the same profile photo. This way, your brand will be immediately recognizable.

Complete your social media profile. A full profile is good for the optics. And what’s good for the optics is good for business.

A complete profile is also more likely to surface in a search compared to one that isn’t. That organic traffic is important.

Include a message that resonates with your target customer. Your profile is the first thing that a prospective customer will see.

It’s your digital billboard.

Here’s what you should include.

• Unique value proposition: How you make your prospects lives better.
• Unique selling point: How you’re different from competitors.
• Call to action: Why and how your prospects should contact you now.

7. Have a content strategy

The bottom line?

All of the steps up to this point will be irrelevant if you don’t have a marketing strategy.

Content marketing is by far the superior option.

It’s likely why 76% of marketers are increasing their content marketing spend.

You can’t survive on social media without producing exceptional content for your audience.

The good news is, you already have your business objectives.

You simply have to create content that will drive you toward these goals.

The social media platform that you select has a lot to do with the type of content that you’ll distribute.

This makes it fairly simple.

If you choose YouTube, video is the only way to go.

If you choose Facebook, you have far more diverse options.

It’s a good idea to consider a platform that will allow you to distribute a variety of content.

So how do you create the type of content that drives engagement?

Here’s how.

Step #1: Explore the content that’s already out there.

The point of this is to analyze what type of content has the most impact in your niche. An easy way to do this is to search through the platform that you selected.

Let’s say that you chose Instagram.

Type in your niche hashtag and analyze the top posts.

Don’t stop there.

Click on the individual posts and find the profiles with large followings and high engagement levels.

You can then analyze their content to see what’s working for them.

Do this for several accounts in your niche, and you’ll begin to see a pattern.

Step #2: Find your differentiating factor.

Yes, you want to find high-performing content, and then do it better. That’s just good marketing.

But if you want to create a distinct personal brand, you need a differentiating factor.

Figure out what your competitors are doing and take a different route.

This is not about reinventing the wheel. In fact, that may hurt you.

You could simply have consistent brand elements on your content. That would be sufficient to set you apart.

Whatever you decide, make sure it’s distinctly yours.

8. Start building an email list immediately

Let’s talk about the one thing that all online entrepreneurs need.

It’s the holy grail of online assets

I’m referring to your email list.

A whopping 93% of marketers practice email marketing.

Without it, you’re missing a massive opportunity to nurture a lasting relationship with your social media audience.

That relationship can lead to sales, maximize your profits, and fuel your business years down the line.

The best part is, it doesn’t take much to set this up.

You can sign up for an email management system and start collecting email addresses right away.

There are plenty of low-cost or free options like MailChimp.

There is one thing to note.

Your audience will not submit their personal information without a valid reason.

This means that you need to incentivize them. You can offer a high-value piece of content in exchange for emails.

Ebooks, cheat sheets, checklists, and mini online courses make great offers.

After you have all this figured out, you can place your email capture forms on your social media profiles for maximum visibility.

Facebook is the best platform for this as it allows integrations with many email management platforms.

For other social media channels, you can leave a link to your form where appropriate.

Simple, right?

Conclusion

Making money has never been this easy.

The opportunity that we have to sit from home and pull a profit is remarkable.

The Internet has made sure of it.

Don’t get me wrong: It will take a lot of time and work for your business to come together.

The strategies discussed in this article are just the beginning.

Execute them, and you’ll have a clear path forward.

The best part is, you don’t need a website.

At least, not in the beginning.

You can completely monetize your idea on your social media channels.

It’s inexpensive and easy to set in motion.

The tricky part is remaining committed to scaling your business. Put the steps in action, and you’ll have a stable platform for your business to take off.

What strategies do you use to monetize your social media channels?

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