Conversion Rate
The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action - purchase, form submission, sign-up. The metric that actually matters. Traffic without conversions is just vanity.
Why It Matters
SEO exists to drive business results, not to win a traffic contest. A site getting 1,000 visitors a month with a 5% conversion rate generates more leads than a site getting 10,000 visitors at 0.3%. Too many SEO campaigns obsess over traffic numbers while ignoring whether that traffic actually does anything.
Conversion rate is the ultimate accountability metric. It forces you to think about what happens after the click. Are you attracting the right people? Is the page experience good enough to convert them? Is the content matched to their intent?
In Practice
Track conversions at the page level, not just the site level. Know which pages convert and which don't. A page that ranks well but never converts might be targeting the wrong intent.
Optimise for conversion alongside rankings. Clear CTAs, fast load times, trust signals, and content that matches search intent all improve conversion rate. Sometimes a simple layout change or copy tweak doubles conversions without any ranking change.
Set up proper attribution in Google Analytics. Know which keywords and landing pages drive not just traffic but actual business outcomes.
Common Mistakes
Celebrating traffic growth without checking conversion data. Optimising for informational keywords when the business needs transactional traffic. Ignoring page experience factors that kill conversions - slow load, poor mobile design, buried CTAs.
Related Terms
Glossary
Organic Traffic
Visitors from unpaid search results - traffic that doesn't stop when the budget does.
Glossary
Landing Page
The page a user arrives on from search - where intent matching either works or fails.
Glossary
Search Intent
The reason behind a search query - matching it is more important than matching keywords.
Glossary
Bounce Rate
Percentage of visitors who leave after viewing just one page on your site.
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