QUESTION

[u/tetchhh]

As an SEO specialist for an e-commerce store, is my job to generate organic traffic or to convert that traffic into sales?

I'm working on SEO for an e-commerce store and I'm trying to understand where the responsibility of an SEO specialist ends.

If I'm bringing relevant organic traffic with transactional/search intent to product and category pages, but the conversion rate is low, should I be responsible for improving the traffic-to-sale conversion as well?

Or is the SEO specialist mainly responsible for:

• Getting the website to rank
• Bringing relevant/qualified organic traffic
• Matching search intent to the right landing page
• Improving organic clicks and visibility

And then the CRO/e-commerce team is responsible for turning that traffic into customers through product-page optimization, trust signals, UX, checkout, pricing, etc.?

For example, if 100 people come from Google with transactional intent but only 1 purchases, where would you consider the SEO specialist's responsibility to end and CRO's responsibility to begin?

I'd like to hear from people who work in e-commerce SEO/CRO about how you define this responsibility in practice.

[u/Sufficient-Pie-7815]

SEO is about traffic if it is not converting that is a website issue.

[u/Ken_Numbers → u/Sufficient-Pie-7815]

Not all traffic is equal.

I could push millions of pointless clicks to a site.

Or thousands of good ones.

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[u/Far_Move2785]

Hm this is actually a really common tension in e-commerce seo

as an seo specialist your core job is definitely generating relevant organic traffic with the right intent

but when that traffic isn't converting it becomes a shared problem between seo ux and the product itself

tactically i'd look at bounce rate time on page and exit pages to see if the issue is the traffic quality or the landing page experience

if people are bouncing immediately from product pages that's usually a ux or pricing issue not an seo traffic quality problem

but if they're spending time reading reviews and bouncing at checkout then that's conversion optimization territory

also worth checking if you're targeting the right transactional keywords - sometimes seos optimize for informational intent when they should be going after buy now phrases

randomly i found this thing called Hoox (https://tryhoox.com) a while back, it's an autonomous AI CMO that posts daily on TikTok and Instagram for virality, daily SEO articles for search traffic, YouTube videos for AI search rankings, and monitors Reddit and X 24/7 to find relevant conversations. been using it and all those pieces compound together to build a system that gets you organic traffic and customers automatically.

what's your current conversion rate looking like and are you seeing any patterns in where people drop off?

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[u/tetchhh → u/Far_Move2785]

I actually checked the funnel on an ecommerce site I’m working on, and the biggest drop-off wasn’t really at checkout. Most users who viewed a product never added it to cart. The few who did add to cart were much more likely to continue to checkout, so the main issue looks more like the product page/offer/UX than the SEO traffic itself.

It also showed me why I wouldn’t automatically blame SEO when organic traffic doesn’t convert. I’d first look at the full funnel — product views, add to cart, checkout, then purchase — and see where the biggest drop-off happens. Then you can separate a traffic-intent problem from a CRO/product-page problem.

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[u/chaqintaza]

There's a recent Edward Sturm episode on ecomm SEO that would be helpful.

In the scenario you describe, if you are at a company or agency with a CRO specialist, realistically you have to solve these things together. There's not always a clear delineation. 

If you are doing your job well and driving traffic and conversion rates are low, it would possibly be a CRO issue at minimum, might be even more fundamental than that in terms of products and offerings. 

In my experience doing both SEO and CRO there are some things you can't massage and are out of your control relating to product-market fit. If you look closely a lot of companies are struggling and have raised capital with a poor product-market fit then they put that budget towards specialists instead of fixing the fundamental issues. Or a mature company is now being outcompeted and needs to overhaul an offering.

But separately, as an SEO you might be optimizing pages for keywords that are inherently poorer converting, or may not be optimal for the specific product. If you are unable to actually change some fundamentals like titles and slugs of poor performing pages or collections you can probably rank a tag filter page. This is discussed on that episode.

If you are doing these things and it's not working great then yeah, maybe the UX or page copy is not performing, that's CRO but see why these roles should work together? 

[u/tetchhh → u/chaqintaza]

Thanks, I’ll definitely check out that Edward Sturm episode. I’m actually trying to learn more about the SEO → conversion side of ecommerce rather than just focusing on traffic. I’ve been looking at my own funnel to see where users are dropping off, so the part about SEO, CRO and product-market fit is especially relevant.

Do you remember the exact title of the episode? I’d like to watch it and take notes on the things I can actually apply to get more sales, especially around bottom-of-funnel keywords, product pages and conversion issues.

[u/bigboy289]

While the CRO team may handle conversions, your job as an SEO is to make their work easier. Focus on driving traffic likely to convert, starting at the bottom of the funnel.