Inbound Marketing and SEO: Insights from the Moz Blog

Part V: CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION

By Thomas Høgenhaven

The aim of conversion rate optimization (CRO) is to improve the performance of a landing page or website in terms of measurable actions users take that support business goals (that is, conversions). Depending on the particular business, desired conversions can be quite different from site to site, even within niche industries. Some of the most common conversions include:

• Purchases

• Form submissions (such as newsletter sign-ups or contest entries)

• Link clicks (such as affiliate links or email signature links)

• Social shares

• Downloads

Mastering CRO is crucial to succeeding in the online marketplace. Websites with high conversion rates are better at monetizing traffic than websites with low conversion rates. Their proven ROI allows them to invest more in marketing channels such as SEO and social media. Moreover, increased competition across online channels (both paid and organic) is driving down profit margins. As the cost of attracting website visitors continues to increase, conversion rates will become even more important in the future. A business' ability to convert the traffic it already has into paying customers can and will be the difference between growth and extinction.

There is little reason not to engage in CRO. Which leads to the next question: Is CRO hard to do? Is it really that difficult to tell the difference between high and low converting pages? It's probably harder than most of us think it is. According ...