I was asked a great question, and it’s something I talk to clients about on a very regular basis:
“Should every page do all things? I’m struggling to work out which pages should be optimized for CRO and which should be to build the brand.”
Blog posts and informative pages (brand-building pages) are likely meant to inform, not be conversion tools. They bring in traffic to build an audience that subscribes, and you can remarket to via Meta and Google, etc. Product pages for converting sales aren’t 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 lead 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 [size 11 (insert brand) running shoe]. But those are exceptions, not a general strategy.
A way to apply what should get traffic, what should convert, and pages for both is to split the purpose of the pages into a document and try not to cross the boundaries by making a conversion page rank. Focus your time converting pages that are meant for conversions, and providing the best information experience for the ones meant for branding. This will make your life easier and give your website a better opportunity to grow in both traffic and revenue. It also allows the CRO team to do their job while you do yours. The goal is to learn how to work with CRO and other teams.
For this post, I’m combining brand building with traffic-generating (i.e., SEO) pages to make it simple. The concepts apply to both.
CRO And SEO Need To Work Together
The goal of conversion rate optimization (CRO) is to help 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 shopping cart, increasing pageviews, etc. While SEO and CRO can work together, they’re normally siloed, and a CRO specialist is not an SEO or required to know SEO, just like an SEO is not required to know CRO.
CRO strategies can include:
- Deleting blocks of copy.
- Weighing the page down with video and moving specific SEO elements that are needed.
- Reinforcing the brand in the headers vs. the topics of the section of the page.
- Pushing videos down on a page so images, reviews, testimonials, etc., can be present even though this stops the video SEO performance.
- Setting up split tests on live pages without checking canonical tags, meta robots, etc.
These are all things a CRO can and will do to help convert more traffic on the page, even though they can stop pages from doing well in both SEO and AIO/GEO. This is why educating and working with a CRO team to ensure they do not touch the content that matters, such as schema, internal links, site structure, positioning of specific elements, is important. It’s the way you approach the situation and how you can be proactive vs. reactive.
Pro tip: One thing that helps me when we get into a debate is reminding the CRO that without traffic from SEO, there are no users to convert and we’re both out a job.
How To Stop CRO And Branding From Damaging SEO
The first thing we do with clients that we do not do CRO for, and that are heavily focused on “brand” vs. marketing, is to create a help guide that includes:
- SEO and AIO/GEO best practices for page types like product, blog post, how-to guide or comparison, listicle, homepage, and category pages.
- A map of the pages or folders that are 100% off limits for CRO.
- An easy-to-reference tech SEO guide to common CRO tasks, like split-testing designs that won’t impact SEO so they can run their tests and we can continue to thrive.
The goal, especially at an enterprise level, is to have something quick and easy for other teams to understand and reference. If it gets too long or too complicated, it will get ignored, and your job becomes more difficult.
Page Type Guides
While we all want our wish lists to be present for pages that are being modified for conversions, not everything matters. Include the high-level items that are a must-have for the pages. If it is a how-to guide, your SEO must-haves could include:
- Specific keywords in section headers like “tools you’ll need” in a bullet list and “the steps to do XYZ” in a numbered list.
- How-To schema (deprecated for Google on mobile, but may be used elsewhere for mobile)
- No sales pitches in the opening or paragraphs about the company, as the goal is to provide a solution, then we can share we offer an alternative or a product and service.
Category pages on an ecommerce site could require copy, breadcrumbs, and possibly FAQs if relevant. And a blog could have restrictions on being self-serving, like a company picnic or short-term promotion vs. something evergreen that is a solution consumers ask about regularly.
Pro tip: When you say the blog cannot have X type of content, make sure to provide an alternative as a way to prevent pushback. Being proactive with solutions makes it easier to prevent self-serving content from impacting informative content that needs to rank.
Off-Limit Folders And Pages
One of the most important things we do with CRO and branding teams is create a site structure where we have our “SEO” or traffic content. There could be two or three blogs on the website, with one being for SEO, one for company updates and product releases, and another for support and help. The two that are not for generating traffic can be fair game, and you have IT either block them in robots.txt or use a meta robots noindex, follow on them.
Landing pages designed for partnerships that have statistics and information you use for backlink acquisition, or pages that are old but authoritative, can all be listed as off limits. Create a document or sheet with these pages and add a quick blurb with why they cannot be modified without SEO approval. A short bullet list of the negatives (in plain English) that are likely to happen if modified can help let the decision maker know the risks. This way everyone is aware of potential losses.
Be cautious with how restrictive you are. Not every page needs to rank. Product pages on an ecommerce site, for example, are rarely important for ranking as they compete with other products and category or collection pages. If the collection pages rank, you have more stability, as products can go out of stock more quickly, and if that product is never coming back, you lose the revenue if you don’t focus on collections instead. Let the team mess with the product pages and keep the categories safe if traffic is your goal. Then have requirements that must be kept intact for the product pages, like internal links and schema.
Tech SEO Guides
The last thing we do to balance pages for conversions and pages for building authority (SEO) is to have simple tech SEO guides available in case the teams are making decisions while you’re offline or on vacation. Have a header for each page type and a list of general guidance.
The list of general guidance could be a bulleted list with explanations.
- Any split-tested pages should have a canonical link back to the main and guaranteed-to-exist page.
- URL: yourdomain.com/product/XYZ is the main URL.
- yourdomain.com/product/XYZ1 and yourdomain.com/product/XYZ2 are the split test URLs.
- Both split test URLs should have a canonical link back to yourdomain.com/product/XYZ
- <link rel=“canonical” href=“https://yourdomain.com/product/XYZ” />
- H1 tags on category pages must have the main product category mentioned. Branding statements can go in regular paragraph format and use font size for formatting.
- Landing pages that are temporary and not for SEO should be placed in the test folder yourdomain.com/test/, which is blocked by robots.txt, so search engines do not crawl it.
- Long-term landing pages that are optimized and do not compete with brand-building (SEO) pages go into the proper site structure. If they are competing topics to a main page, place meta robots noindex, follow on it, or use a canonical link to the main page.
- Any tool that needs to be installed in the head of the page, specifically JavaScript, should be tested in Search Console to make sure it does not block page rendering (Google’s ability to see the page).
- Place the script on the page.
- Copy the URL and paste it into Search Console (insert screenshot of the place).
- Click View Test and then look at the screenshot.
- If the page displays correctly, we’re likely safe to run the tool.
- If the page does not display correctly, this could impact SEO, and we should place the script elsewhere or use a different tool.
Brand building pages to bring in SEO traffic and conversion optimization can both happen in unison. It’s a matter of working with the teams and making sure they have the tools needed so they can do their jobs without causing damage to your channels. These are three of the things we do regularly with our clients, especially enterprise-level or small teams where people are in a hurry and don’t have time to research.
More Resources:
- Building A Brand Is Not A Strategy, It Is A Starting Point
- From Performance SEO To Demand SEO
- Ask An SEO: High Volumes Or High Authority Evergreen Content?
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
