Most teams obsess over rankings and traffic but fail to ask the most important question: what happens when those visitors arrive?
I’ve seen sites triple their organic traffic with no impact on revenue. The missing link is a conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy to turn traffic into leads, sales, or signups.
In this post, I’ll share the CRO framework I use to connect SEO to business results. You’ll learn how to build a UX funnel that matches your buyer’s journey and optimize performance for revenue growth.
But first, you should read part one to gain context before going any further.
Understand the lower half of the acquisition model
I want to revisit the acquisition cost model, specifically the bottom half. This is where small percentage changes can have a massive impact.
If your site converts at 3% and you lift that to 3.5%, that’s a one-sixth increase in revenue without a single extra visitor. Those fractions of a percent add up fast, and they’re hidden leverage most teams overlook.
Here, we’re talking about the fundamentals, things you can address with your developers to improve results:
- Brand and visual design that builds trust
- UX that reduces friction
- Site speed that keeps visitors engaged
We’re not discussing deep CRO tactics like A/B testing or redesigning components based on pooled data from hundreds of sites. My focus is on practical, high-impact changes you can make right now.
Benchmark conversion rate for your industry
Before you start optimizing conversion rate, you need a realistic benchmark for your industry.
Unbounce publishes useful conversion rate data, but there’s a caveat because their numbers are often skewed toward paid traffic.
Here’s how I approach benchmarking conversion rate:
- Professional services: Aim for 2.5%–3.5% conversion for organic traffic. Higher than that often means you’re over-reliant on brand searches and lower points to website issues.
- E-commerce: 6.5% is the best I’ve seen from organic traffic in competitive, non-branded spaces.
- Events & entertainment: These can exceed 12%, but that’s often because visitors already know what they want (think Taylor Swift tickets or Glastonbury passes).
Treat these as starting points, not absolutes. Benchmark against your sector, focus on non-branded organic traffic, and measure consistently so you can see real improvement.
3 CRO strategies to drive more conversions from organic traffic
These CRO strategies will help you turn organic visits into measurable revenue, without rebuilding your entire site.
1. Map your user journey with the conversion funnel
Every page on your website should move visitors toward a goal. To achieve this, you need a funnel that matches how your audience makes decisions.
Start with your sitemap and keyword assignments from the SEO strategy. For each page, decide which funnel stage it serves, and make sure the copy, visuals, and CTAs match that stage’s job.
I use a five-stage model to map the user journey to a conversion stage:
- Align: Within the first second, visitors should feel confident they’ve found what they were looking for. This immediate connection is the opposite of bounce rate and sets the stage for deeper engagement.
- Qualify: Demonstrate that you meet their essential requirements. This is often feature-led — if a visitor is looking for a specific capability and you don’t clearly show it, they’ll move on to competitors.
- Validate: Prove quality to back up your claims. Use detailed examples, relevant use cases, or measurable outcomes addressing what they may not have considered.
- Reassure: Remove any final doubts with trust signals. Ratings, reviews, testimonials, and well-known client logos all reinforce credibility and make it safer to proceed.
- Convert: Provide a clear, low-friction way to take the next step. Whether it’s a form, signup, or purchase button, it should be obvious, easy, and compelling.
2. Create pages that resonate
Here’s the process my web design agency follows when creating highly converting landing pages:
Start with brand alignment
Before touching copy or layout, decide how you want your audience to feel. Do you want them to feel excited, reassured, inspired, or confident that they’ve found a steady pair of hands?
Your design system must reflect that and match the expectations of the customers you want to attract. For professional services, that alignment drives the right MQLs. For e-commerce, it turns interest into sales.
Define personas and archetypes
Go beyond broad audience definitions. Create detailed personas and business archetypes to understand who you’re speaking to and why they would choose you.
Avoid the trap of trying to appeal to everyone. When you water down your message, you lose resonance.
Position yourself in their top-right quadrant
Map your audience’s priorities into a positioning quadrant. It could be price vs. quality or something unique to your sector, like delivery speed vs. customization. Identify the “top right” where your strengths and customer priorities align.
Then, build your brand messaging, content, and page structure to own that space. It becomes the anchor for your marketing strategy and conversion optimization.
Show trustworthiness
Brand identity should run through every touchpoint. Simon Sinek’s Start With Why is a great reminder to root your design and content in your core values, then show those values visually.
Demonstrate trust through:
- High-quality design and smooth UX
- Clear client examples and case studies
- Fast-loading, technically sound pages
Small details like load speed and polished visuals act as subliminal trust signals. If you can’t get these right, visitors may doubt you can deliver your service.
For Bond Global, the target audience was highly technical, so the solution was:
- Futuristic aesthetic with tech-focused imagery
- Bold, modern color palette
- Razor-sharp page-level specificity
Every element from layout to messaging spoke directly to their audience in the way they needed to hear it.
3. Optimize code and speed for conversions
Site speed isn’t just a technical SEO metric; it drives conversion. Research by Portent shows that a site that loads in 1 second converts 3x better than a site that loads in 5 seconds.
Another research from NitroPack revealed that a delay of 2 to 3 seconds increases drop-off by 50%.
Small percentage changes have a huge compounding impact on your bottom line. Here are some tools that I use to diagnose and fix performance issues:
- Core Web Vitals (Google Search Console): See how your site performs in real-world conditions and get a prioritized list of fixes.
- Google Lighthouse (Chrome DevTools): Run audits for performance, accessibility, and SEO on both desktop and mobile.
- NitroPack or similar caching tools: For WordPress/WP Engine, this can dramatically cut load times.
What to look for in your audits
- Pages that jolt or cause layout shifts
- Errors that make it harder for users to navigate
- Render-blocking scripts, unused CSS, and large image files
You don’t have to overhaul everything at once. Use the reports to work with your developers, first tackling the most impactful changes.
Each small gain in speed nudges conversion rates higher, and as we saw in the acquisition cost model, even a half-percent lift can deliver significant revenue growth.
Concluding thoughts: Build a conversion pathway that ties SEO to revenue
Driving traffic is only half the job — you still need to convert that traffic into sales. Use this CRO framework to benchmark performance, design pages that resonate, and streamline your user journey.
The author’s views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.