I was asked a great question, and it’s something I talk to clients about very regularly:
“Should every page do everything? I’m having trouble determining which pages should be optimized for CRO and which should be optimized for brand building.”
Blog posts and informational pages (brand building pages) are likely intended to inform, not to be conversion tools. They drive traffic to create an audience that subscribes, and you can do remarketing through Meta and Google and so on. Product pages to convert sales are not always meant to rank in search engines unless you are the manufacturer and there is no better option with a category page.
There are always exceptions to the rules, like a comparison blog post that helps with the main funnel, or a “how-to” guide that shares an accessory or missing part to complete a solution, and a product page where the query is for a specific product like a running shoe (size 11 (insert brand)). But these are exceptions and not a general strategy.
One way to apply what should drive traffic, what should convert, and the pages for both is to break down the goal of the pages in a document and try not to cross the line when creating a conversion page rank. Focus your time on converting pages intended for conversions and providing the best information experience for those intended for branding. This will make your life easier and give your website a better opportunity to increase both traffic and revenue. This also allows the CRO team to do their job while you do yours. The goal is to learn how to work with the CRO and other teams.
For this article, I’m combining brand building with traffic-driving pages (aka SEO) to keep things simple. The concepts apply to both.
CRO and SEO must work together
THE conversion rate optimization goal (CRO) is about helping the person take a specific action, which could be adding a product to a cart, joining a newsletter or SMS list, subscribing to a service or publication, taking a specific action like adding an upsell to a cart, increasing the number of page views, etc. Although SEO and CRO can work together, they are normally siled and a CRO specialist is not an SEO or need to know SEO, just like an SEO is not required to know CRO.
CRO strategies can include:
- Deleting copy blocks.
- Weight the page with video and move the specific SEO elements needed.
- Reinforce the brand in the headers versus topics of the page section.
- Push videos to the bottom of a page so that images, reviews, testimonials, etc. are visible. may be present even if it stops video SEO performance.
- Setting up split testing on live pages without verification canonical tagsmetarobots, etc.
These are all things a CRO can and will do to help convert more on-page traffic, although they may prevent pages from performing well in both SEO and AIO/GEO. That’s why train and work with a CRO team to ensure they don’t touch the content that matters, like schema, internal linksthe structure of the site, the positioning of specific elements, are important. It’s how you approach the situation and how you can be proactive rather than reactive.
For advice: One thing that helps me when we get into a debate is to remind the CRO that without traffic from SEO, there are no users to convert and we are both out of a job.
How to Stop CRO and Branding from Hurting SEO
The first thing we do with clients for whom we don’t do CRO and who are heavily focused on “brand” versus marketing, is create a help guide that includes:
- SEO and AIO/GEO best practices for page types such as product, blog post, how-to or comparison, listing, homepage and category pages.
- A map of pages or folders that are 100% off limits for CRO.
- An easy-to-reference technical SEO guide to common CRO tasks, like split test designs that won’t impact SEO so they can run their tests and we can continue to thrive.
The goal, especially at the enterprise level, is to have something quick and easy for other teams to understand and reference. If it becomes too long or too complicated, it will be ignored and your job will become more difficult.
Page Type Guides
While we all want our wishlists to be there for pages being edited for conversions, not everything matters. Include the essential high-level elements for the pages. If this is a how-to guide, your SEO must-haves might include:
- Specific keywords in section headers, such as “tools you’ll need” in a bulleted list and “steps to do XYZ” in a numbered list.
- Practical diagram (obsolete for Google on mobilebut can be used elsewhere for mobile)
- No sales pitches in the opening or paragraphs about the company, because the goal is to provide a solution, we can then share, offer an alternative or a product and service.
Category pages on an ecommerce site may require copy, breadcrumbs, and possibly an FAQ if applicable. And a blog may have restrictions on its personal interest, such as a company picnic or short-term promotion versus something evergreen that is a solution consumers regularly ask for.
For advice: When you say the blog can’t have type X content, make sure you offer an alternative to avoid pushback. Being proactive with solutions makes it easier to prevent self-serving content from impacting the informational content that needs to be ranked.
Folders and pages out of limit
One of the most important things we do with the CRO and branding teams is to create a site structure where we have our “SEO” or traffic content. There may be two or three blogs on the website, one for SEO, one for company updates and product releases, and another for support and help. The two that aren’t intended to drive traffic may be fair game, and you ask IT to block them in robots.txt or use a noindex meta robots, track them.
Landing pages designed for partnerships that contain statistics and information that you use for backlink acquisition, or old but authoritative pages, can all be listed as prohibited. Create a document or sheet with these pages and add a quick blurb explaining why they can’t be edited without SEO approval. A short bulleted list of negative things (in plain English) that might occur if a change is made can help inform the decision maker of the risks. This way everyone is aware of potential losses.
Be careful about how restrictive you are. Not all pages need to be ranked. Product pages on an e-commerce sitefor example, are rarely important for ranking because they compete with other products and category or collection pages. If collection pages are ranked, you have more stability because products can go out of stock faster, and if that product never comes back, you’re losing revenue if you don’t focus on collections instead. Let the team play with product pages and protect categories if traffic is your goal. Next, have requirements that should remain intact for product pages, like internal links and schema.
Technical SEO Guides
The last thing we do to balance conversion pages and authority building (SEO) pages is to have simple technical SEO guides in case teams make decisions while you are offline or on vacation. Have a header for each page type and a list of general tips.
The list of general guidelines could be a bulleted list with explanations.
- All split tested pages must have a canonical link return to the main page and whose existence is guaranteed.
- URL: yourdomain.com/product/XYZ is the main URL.
- yourdomain.com/product/XYZ1 and yourdomain.com/product/XYZ2 are the split testing URLs.
- Both split test URLs must have a canonical link to yourdomain.com/product/XYZ
- <link rel =“canonical” href=“https://yourdomain.com/product/XYZ” />
- H1 tags on category pages should mention the main product category. Brand statements can be presented in standard paragraph form and use font size for formatting.
- Temporary, non-SEO landing pages should be placed in the test folder yourdomain.com/test/, which is blocked by robots.txt, so search engines don’t crawl it.
- Long-term landing pages that are optimized and do not compete with brand building (SEO) pages fit into the proper structure of the site. If they are competing topics on a main page, place noindex meta bots, follow them, or use a canonical link to the main page.
- Any tool that needs to be installed in the page header, especially JavaScript, should be tested in Search Console to ensure that it does not block page rendering (Google’s ability to view the page).
- Place the script on the page.
- Copy the URL and paste it into Search Console (insert screenshot of location).
- Click View Test, then look at the screenshot.
- If the page displays correctly, we can probably run the tool safely.
- If the page does not display correctly it could impact SEO and we should place the script elsewhere or use another tool.
Branding pages to drive SEO traffic and optimizing conversions can both happen in unison. It’s about working with the teams and making sure they have the tools they need so they can do their job without causing damage to your channels. These are three of the things we do regularly with our clients, especially at the enterprise level or small teams where people are in a hurry and don’t have time to do research.
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Featured image: Paul Poetry/Search Engine Journal
