What is an SEO conversion rate, and how do you calculate it?

Attracting traffic through search engines is only the first step. The real measure of success in SEO is how effectively that organic traffic converts into meaningful actions, like purchases or sign-ups.

In this article, we’ll drill down on what an SEO conversion rate is, how it’s calculated, and concrete steps you can take to improve yours.

Let’s go!

What is a conversion rate in SEO?

An SEO conversion rate is the percentage of desired actions (conversions) taken when people visiting your website organically do something you want them to do versus those who simply stopped by your website and then moved on, uninspired to “convert” (take any of the actions you want).

For example, if 100 people land on your homepage page today and two of them buy a product before leaving (and that’s the only action you’re tracking), your SEO conversion rate is 2%.

The desired action can refer to many different things. Here are a few common examples:

• Submitting a form
• Clicks
• Purchases
• Sign-ups
• Installs/downloads
• Creating an account

How do you calculate an SEO conversion rate?

To calculate an SEO conversion rate, divide the number of conversions (the desired actions taken like purchases, form submissions, etc.) by the total number of visitors to your website, then multiply the result by 100 to express it as a percentage.

For instance, if your website received 5,000 visitors in a month and 150 of those visitors made a purchase, your SEO conversion rate would be calculated as follows: 

(150 conversions / 5,000 visitors) * 100 = 3% 

This means 3% of your website’s visitors took the desired action(s), indicating the effectiveness of your SEO efforts.

Why should you track SEO conversions?

Understanding and then optimizing conversion rates is key if you want to maximize your content and turn website visitors into leads. Focusing on conversions can improve your bottom line in several ways:

What is a Good Conversion Rate?

A “good” conversion rate can vary widely with an average of 2.9%. However, what’s considered good depends on your specific business objectives and baseline metrics.

Multiple factors can affect what marketers consider a good SEO conversion rate:

What does an average SEO conversion rate look like?

The answer here is: it varies a lot, and for several reasons. A better question here would be, “What does an average SEO conversion rate look like for my industry?” That’s because people use search to connect with SaaS companies, legal services, or automotive websites for very different reasons or motivations.

Matching search intent for a travel website requires an SEO approach that highlights visually appealing, fast-loading images on landing pages. In contrast, optimizing conversion rates for a healthcare website focuses more on practical elements like clinic locations, service lists, and accepted insurance types — details far more relevant than glossy photos.

SEO conversion rates by industry and page type

As a starting point, we can compare averages based on industry, but we must keep in mind that even then factors like niche, target audience, your individual SEO strategy, etc., will affect individual results (good or bad) compared to averages.

For instance, what may be considered a good SEO conversion rate for an inexpensive global fashion brand (high-volume, fast fashion, runs PPC campaigns as well) will be different from what a local, high-end boutique (sole proprietor, relies on organic search only) would call a good conversion rate.

Of course, regardless of industry, one of the biggest factors affecting conversions is the landing pages on your website as well. Each page type will have a different conversion rate — product or service pages will gain attention for reasons unlike what draws people to blog posts, case studies, etc. 

This is because of different types of user search intent and the end goal of targeting as many potential customers as possible through optimizing engagement via matching SERP queries.

Rather than use the following percentages as your benchmarks, consider them as guidelines. With that in mind, let’s review a chart from Ruler Analytics that displays the average conversion rates for organic search by industry:

How to maximize SEO leads with conversion rate optimization (CRO)

We’ve covered what a conversion rate is, how to calculate it, why it matters, and aspects of what a good one looks like.

Let’s now drill down on concrete conversion rate optimization efforts you can make to increase sales from SEO.

• Boost page speed: Fast websites keep visitors. Use an audit tool to find elements that are slowing down yours, such as uncompressed images, a lack of caching, or bloated JavaScript.

• Optimize for mobile devices: With most searches conducted on phones these days, ensure your website is responsive and performs smoothly on all devices.

• Match search intent: Use keyword research tools to align content with what visitors seek, and always be agile enough to adapt as needed. For example, when writing a blog post on how to create an electronic signature, don’t go astray explaining what e-sign is and what benefits it offers, because the reader is probably well aware of those. All they are looking for is detailed guidance on how to sign their doc electronically — so give it to them right away. 

• Sharpen your on-page SEO elements: Make sure title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags accurately reflect the content on each page with on-page SEO checkers. This not only helps with ranking but also improves click-through rates by delivering relevant information upfront. 

• Streamline the user journey: Simplified navigation equals reduced friction! Make it easy for your visitors to find what they’re looking for by presenting clear menus, prominent CTAs, and intuitive layouts. Run usability tests with tools like UserTesting or Hotjar to see if your visitors are struggling to find specific products or information on your website.

• Test and tweak: Regularly A/B test headlines, buttons, and forms using platforms like Optimizely, Crazy Egg, VWO and AB Tasty. To make the most of your conversion rate optimization process, combine these tests with insights from behavior tracking tools to see which variations lead to higher conversions.

• Build trust: Use testimonials, reviews, and trust badges to reassure visitors and encourage conversions. According to Medill Spiegel Research Center’s research on consumer engagement, displaying reviews can increase the conversion rate by 190% for lower-priced products and by 380% for higher-priced products.

• Engage with visuals: This is a trade secret hiding in plain sight — high-quality images, videos, and infographics make your content more engaging. Use them! A Venngage survey found that over one-third of marketers allocated at least 50% of their budget spend on visuals for 2024, a sharp increase over previous years.

• Refine your CTAs: Your calls-to-action should be clear, compelling, and strategically placed. For example, HubSpot allows testing multiple variants of CTAs to measure the effectiveness of different wording, colors, placements, etc., to see what generates max impact with your audience.

8 other conversion-related metrics to track

Let’s highlight a few data points that exist in tandem with your SEO conversion rate, since tracking multiple metrics and dimensions will give you a much more accurate read on website performance.

1. Click-through rate (CTR)

This is the starting gate in the race that is getting visitors to take those desired actions on your website. For organic search, your click-through rate refers to how many people click on your website’s link after seeing it in SERP (search engine results page). 

When they see your link after making a query, that’s an impression. Once they click, they’re headed to your website, ready to be wowed, have their questions answered and their needs met — and convert!

A higher CTR indicates that your title and meta description are compelling and relevant to the searcher’s query. Always monitor your CTR — doing so helps your team assess the effectiveness of your SEO efforts and identify opportunities to improve your visibility and engagement in search results.

Calculating this metric requires the same approach that we outlined above for conversion rates; this time, we’re just dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions for a given interval: 

(Total number of clicks / total number of impressions) * 100 = your CTR.

2. Bounce rate

The bounce rate of a web page shows how many visitors leave after viewing just that page, rather than clicking onto a second page. A high bounce rate means most visitors leave after the initial page, while a low bounce rate suggests they continue exploring the site. Generally, a lower bounce rate is better, but this isn’t always the case when analyzing conversion rates.

For example, if the page is a product page where users can make a purchase directly, a high bounce rate isn’t necessarily negative — you still made a sale. However, if it’s a blog post linking to a product page, a high bounce rate indicates that few readers are reaching the product page.

When content is optimized with commercial or transactional target or long-tail keywords, it better aligns with user intent, attracting more qualified traffic. This increases the likelihood that visitors will click through to another page and engage further with your website. 

For SEO conversions, the goal isn’t just traffic; it’s targeted, high-quality traffic that matches search intent and is more likely to convert.

3. New vs. returning visitors

Conversion rates for new visitors can be very revealing because they tell you what users’ first impressions are when they land on your page. When you combine them with other metrics, like bounce rate, it can answer one important question: Are people seeing the value in what we provide, or do they quickly lose interest? 

As an example of how you can apply this, consider comparing two landing pages on your website. Which one converts more new users? Use that insight to improve the other page. 

While you might have a harder time converting new visitors, returning visitors should be another story. If people keep coming back to your landing page over and over again, it’s a good sign! It means they’re interested. However, if they don’t ultimately convert, something’s off. 

Returning visitors are immensely valuable. Every time someone returns to your page, you’re nurturing that lead. Make sure you’re continuing to move them toward a conversion. You can do this by recommending content based on their previous behavior, running a retargeting campaign, or sending them a follow-up email with an exclusive offer.

4. Time spent on page

Do users spend an average of two seconds on a page before leaving? There’s not a whole lot they can accomplish in that amount of time. In other words, the conversion rate will suffer.

If they’re spending more time on the page — maybe a few minutes — there’s a better chance that they’re getting to know and trust you and will take some sort of action to convert (like sign up for your email list or purchase a product or service).

The longer you can get people to stay on your page, the better — as long as, at some point, they take action. If you notice that users spend enough time on your page but don’t convert, something about your conversion flow could be problematic for them.

5. Average session duration and behavior flow

This is the average amount of time a visitor spends on your entire website, which helps track overall engagement metrics.

Behavior flow shows you the path your users take from page to page and where your main conversion page is located on this path. It’ll help to reveal where you’re losing leads and generally how website visitors navigate through your website.

6. Exit pages

The exit page is the last page a user visits before leaving your website. Knowing your exit page can help you understand why your conversion rate is soaring — or flatlining. For example, let’s say that in order for a user to purchase a new pair of pants from a men’s apparel company, they have to go through four pages:

1. The initial product landing page.
2. Their cart.
3. The purchase page, where they input their details and card number.
4. Thank you page.

If the brand finds that the cart is the most common exit page, probably something is off technically or in terms of UX, which prevents users from completing a purchase. In this case, these potential customers are never going to convert.

7. Audience demographics

What is the average age of your users? What about other target demos like education level or income? Do you notice that they’re primarily located in one specific area over any others? 

Understanding your audience can help you determine their needs, what inspires them to convert, and thus how you can best reach them.

8. Value Per Visit

This refers to what a user’s single visit is worth. Let’s say that your shop page gets 100 visits a day, your conversion rate is 2%, and the average shopper spends $75. This means that each visit is worth $1.50.

100 visits/day x 2% (0.02) conversion rate = 2 visits/day that convert

2 visits/day x $75/visit = $150

$150 / 100 daily visits = $1.50/visit

To make the calculations on a larger scale, you may need to use special tools. For example, SE Ranking’s SEO Potential tool allows you to get income estimates for all your target keywords. 

All you need is to set the conversion into a sales rate and the amount your average shopper spends. The tools will calculate the number of visits from Google for all your target keywords and will provide you with estimated income data. 

By further dividing your estimated income number by the SEO traffic forecast, you’ll get a sitewide value for visit metrics.

Measuring organic conversion rates in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

In GA4, all interactions are tracked as events. Identify the key actions on your site that are conversions you want to monitor (e.g., form submissions, purchases), as these will be what you mark as “conversion events.” 

Here’s how you can set up and track conversion rates in GA4:

1. You first need to go to Admin and select your Property.

2. Navigate to Events → click Create event →Create. 

3. Give this new event a name.

4. Configure the Matching conditions for when you want this event to be triggered (a parameter to describe details of the event).

5. Navigate to the Admin panel located at the bottom left menu. 

6. Under your Property, click Events and you will see a list of existing ones that can be toggled on and off. 

7. Click the toggle to turn the desired event into a conversion event under the Mark as conversion column.

GA4’s custom reporting features let you create SEO-specific dashboards. You can track organic traffic, website conversion stats, and user behavior.

Once you’ve set up conversion events to start tracking, you can begin creating custom reports:
Navigate to Reports → Life cycle → Engagement → Conversions.

GA4 will show the total number of conversions by default, so you will need to add the conversion rate:

1. Click the Customize report pencil icon.
2. Go to Metrics.
3. Click Add metric and select from the following: Session conversion rate or User conversion rate (the number of visitors or sessions with conversion divided by the total number of sessions, times 100)
4. Click Apply, then save the report.

You can extrapolate more conversion data over time, as GA4 has a better chance to learn about the people visiting your website with each passing day, including the actions that they’re taking.

To further optimize all the data Google Analytics ingests and stores, you can integrate GA4 with SE Ranking to have all the key data on conversions in relation to traffic sources, audience, and website pages conveniently placed on a single dashboard.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Choose your project from the list under All Projects.
2. Head to the Analytics & Traffic module in the left sidebar.
3. Open and click the Connect Google Analytics button.
4. Choose your Google account.
5. Select your Google Analytics account, Properties & Apps, and click Connect.

You can also use SE Ranking’s SEO report generator to integrate GA4 data into detailed SEO reports. Just click More in the top horizontal navigation bar and select Report Builder in the dropdown menu. 

You can create a report from scratch or use a ready-made template.

The Bottom Line

In this blog, we’ve covered the essentials of SEO conversion rates: what they are, why they matter, and how to calculate, track, and continuously improve them.

By focusing on these strategies, you can ensure that your SEO efforts not only attract traffic but also convert it into valuable outcomes for your business.

Written by

Megan Grant

Megan has been writing and editing professionally since 2011. Writing is, hands down, her favorite thing to do. Her chihuahua, Peanut, often steps in to help with edits.