 What's the difference between SEO and CRO? More than just the letters. We're gonna talk about it here on the journey. So what's the difference between SEO and CRO? Well, you know that amazing feeling you get when you just see on Google Analytics or whatever you're tracking your visitors with, you just get a ton of traffic to your website and pages. It's a great feeling, isn't it? Yeah, it's the best feeling in the world. But then all of a sudden you come to the realization that none of that is actually translating into actual purchases or conversions for you. There's nothing. So what's the point? That's basically the difference between SEO and CRO. So nearly let's start with the basics. What does SEO stand for and what does CRO stand for? So SEO, search engine optimization. Most people know what this is. It's essentially your rankings on say like Google or Bing and where you appear there. CRO, it's not mentioned a lot, but it's basically conversion rate optimization. And that's basically how often your website converts someone to either send you a message or buy your products or whatever your main goal of your website is. So think of these two as like peanut butter and jelly, right? They have to work together towards that same goal of actually converting people into buyers. So with GoDaddy Social, one of the things that I help, you know, our small local businesses do with our services is help them not only get seen on all these pages, but then make sure they get chosen, right? Because anybody can find you on these pages, but if your pages aren't set up to look great, then they're just gonna hit the back button and go to one of your competitors. Right, and that conversion rate optimization, it can be a plethora of things on your website. Maybe it's changing your buttons to have more of a vibrant color, so we go click on it. Maybe it's the text you use on your website. Whatever that looks like, it's just small little changes to start getting that percentage of people that convert, convert, convert and go up from there. Do you know grocery stores actually did their own little bit of a conversion rate optimization? What's a grocery store? What's a grocery store? Order dollar food. But basically, so you probably noticed it too, like all grocery stores are the same and they're there for a reason. The staples like milk and eggs that we have to get because they're delicious. They're usually in the very back because they want you to browse everything else. And then all the fresh, vibrant fruits and vegetable that looks just so tasty and delicious right there, directly to the right, they basically just recorded or they had their recordings of people in their stores essentially. And they noticed that everyone would be off to the right. So they wanted to have something nice and appealing right there. And then scents, like we all like just nice scents. They put flowers and bread right at the front so it just hits us right there. Those tricky grocery stores. Exactly, they did their own conversion rate optimization and you could do the same with your website and start to really convert people and follow their habits to hopefully buy more things. Now that I'm thinking about actual grocery store chips, I actually start out with the fruit, like you said. Directly to the right. And then at the end, you have to get the milk and eggs. You're in the back. That same thing with like the little kid cereal, right? It's not gonna be at the top, right? It's not gonna make sense. Little kids are gonna see it right there and say, I want these cookie crisp mom and dad. They're gonna cry and scream and you have to give it because they're adorable. They thought about everything. Everything. So one thing I know a lot of people did in the past was a tactic called keyword stuffing. And now what this is, whatever your search term was, whether it's maroon shirts or awesome shoes or whatever it looks like, they just added a bunch of just random generic keywords all throughout their site or they hid it. Like they had a white background and then a white text with all those keywords stuff. Wow. So just basically trying to beat the system. Beat the system. Google of course found out all the other search engines found out. And then now they're penalized for doing that. So any SEO person that says when you use keyword stuff on your site, probably not someone you're gonna wanna hire. So with the rise of voice search and everyone searching on their phones nowadays, short keywords are a thing of the past really. So you can try to optimize for a few words but it's gonna be really hard to beat out those giants whenever it comes to that. It's gonna cost a lot more and it's really hard to compete coming from that angle. Yeah, super competitive with those short keywords. And you also wanna look at long tail keywords. And essentially what this is, it's not something like running shoes. Cause if someone's searching running shoes, there's not really an intent. You have no idea what they're searching for when they search running shoes. Are they a new runner? Are they looking to purchase running shoes? Are they looking just to browse or do they actually wanna buy? Now a long tail keyword might be like white Adidas running shoes for men. That's a longer keyword search that you can basically optimize your website for and your pages for. There's not gonna be as much competition with that long tail keyword as running shoes would be. Because like you said, the giants, basically the big businesses that have way more money than those small businesses, they're pouring all their money into that. But that CRO is not there. Even the big brands are wasting their money, capitalized on those long tail keywords and beat them. And even though you see a lot more searches with those general terms like running shoes, it doesn't mean that those, basically those people are window shoppers. So whenever you're looking for a specific type of shoe, I know if there's a pair of Adidas that I want, I am looking for that specific type and I'm looking for those long tail keywords. And whenever you are looking for a specific type and you're more detailed, then you've actually done your research. You're ready to actually make a purchasing decision. So which one would you rather have? A more general search of people who are just gonna, you know, hit the back button and forget they ever searched for that. Or a more specific buyer that's ready to actually move forward and buy your product. Yeah, and I know something cool that a lot of people are doing now to figure out maybe awesome search words or keywords is start typing say running shoes on Google and Google will start to give you other suggestions of things people search for when they start typing running shoes. And those are just some cool examples that you can use to really optimize your website and optimize your keyword results. Now, if someone tells you to choose between SEO and CRO, run for the hills. Those things cannot be mutually exclusive. Yeah, you definitely have to have both working together. I mean, one of the things that drives me crazy is when I see small local business owners who are paying all this money to be at the top of the list whether that's with ads or, you know, certain words. And then you click on their actual pages or their website and it doesn't look good. I mean, consumers are way too smart nowadays. They know that people can pay to be at the top of these lists. So they're actually gonna make a decision for themselves after that point. So you can't just have SEO. You also have to have SEO and CRO. So start with keywords first. Figure out what your user's intent is going to be. What are those search terms that they're going to be looking for? And then follow it up with the copy and content on your site. That way you can really talk to their pain points, talk to them directly with what they're searching for. Yeah, so as we said earlier, step one, get seen, step two, get chosen. So now you know the difference between SEO and CRO. Be sure to like and comment down below. And hey, subscribe to our channel. If you got some value from this video and ring that bell, see these videos first. This is The Journey. We'll see you next time.