This is a guest post by ecommerce expert and former Slingshot SEO external consultant, James Paden. James is currently Vice President of Product for Compendium, an Indianapolis-based provider of enterprise content marketing SaaS solutions.

What is CRO?

“Conversion optimization is the science and art of creating an experience for a website visitor with the goal of converting the visitor into a customer.”  - Wikipedia

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is normally implemented through conversion-focused design and copywriting in combination with on-going A/B and multivariate tests. With testing, marketers can systematically prove that Version C of a website increased conversion and Version B decreased conversion over the original, Version A. After a series of tests, which individually demonstrate incremental improvements, revenue and leads can be dramatically increased. CRO is consistently used at high-performing companies such as Amazon, Zappos and Intuit, to name a few.

How does CRO improve SEO results?

While CRO does not directly improve search engine rankings (yet), CRO indirectly impacts several metrics which do affect rankings and the successfulness of an SEO initiative. Read more »