7 ways to optimize your blog’s conversion rate
In marketing, the main goal of any content goes beyond amusement, entertainment, or education. The focus is to convert – convert visitors and readers into customers, users, and subscribers. A brilliant article may get a lot of attention, although it may not be worth much if it doesn’t have a high conversion rate.
Conversion rate is an essential blog metric that helps turn clicks into cash. It is defined as the percentage of visitors to a site/page that completes a desired goal. In blogging, the formula for calculating conversion rate is:
Conversion rate = (conversions/total visitors) *100%
Benefits of a good conversion rate
On average, a quarter of all accounts have a conversion rate of less than 1%. For this reason, marketing gurus define a good conversion rate as anything better than what you had last month. However, ideally, anything above 10% is considered a great conversion rate.
The most significant benefits of earning a good conversion rate are increased website revenue, higher ranking on search engines, and international recognition by global advertisers.
How to optimize your blog’s conversion rate
Luckily, in case your conversion rate is not up to par with the industry standards, there are techniques you can use to turn things around. Outlined below are tips on how to increase your blog’s conversion rate.
1. Write a catchy headline
Your headline is the first make-or-break moment for your blog post. Therefore, the first step is to get visitors to click through; the ultimate goal being conversion. This is where best headline writing practices come in. Here are seven tips for writing blog headlines to optimize conversion rate:
- Reflect on the actual value of the content
- Use words and phrases that resonate with your audience
- Ask questions
- Use numbers
- Play around with visual structure
- Be concise and to the point
- Optimize for keywords and search performance.
Additionally, you may want to be cautious in terms of including superlatives (i.e.best, hottest, smartest, etc.), since reliable statistics indicate that 51% of readers click headlines with zero to one superlative.
2. Create valuable content
Content marketing is a strategy that benefits both sides: on one hand, people are eager to consume crucial information for themselves, while on the other hand, the business creates those pieces seeking revenue. Conversions are somewhere in the middle.
The quality of the content can make or break the reader’s experience, and you could lose or win conversions this way. The secret to getting your readers hooked is by providing great value in every word. With great content comes lead generation, which plays a crucial role in the conversion.
3. Add content incentives
For conversion optimization, incentives are factors that motivate the visitor to act immediately. The tone of any piece of content, offers, and deadlines can all influence the need for a visitor to take action. A brilliant piece of content will leave the reader hungry for more, so offering a bonus is likely to drive more leads and ultimately increase your conversion rate.
You can identify opportunities to provide content incentives to further improve the conversion rate of content that performs well. For example, create content upgrades, or lead magnets such as e-books, courses, or checklists that are more likely to elicit an action because they provide value for your audience.
4. Split-test elements of your blog
Split testing allows you to test variations of elements in your blog alongside one another. It works by creating two (or more) versions of a piece of content. Any variable can be tweaked, although it is considered best practice to change one variable at a time. These pieces of content are then presented to similar-sized audiences, and the responsiveness and conversion rates of each group are recorded and analyzed. From the results, you can choose the best-performing option. Split testing your blog’s landing page is a great first step since it is where a visitor becomes a lead or an existing lead interacts with your brand.
5. Reduce barriers to conversion
When it comes to blogging, conversion doesn’t necessarily mean requesting your readers to pull out their credit cards for their money. It simply means asking your readers to take any of these low/no cost, logical actions:
- Email subscription
- Free trial
- YouTube subscription
- Following you on social media
- Downloading a resource
The more visual inputs and action options your visitor has to process, the less likely they are to make a conversion decision. Therefore, it is advisable to ensure distractions like unnecessary ads, product options, links, and any other extraneous information is minimized. Secondly, ensure that any sign-up fields are simple, clear, and precise. Lastly, ensure that the Call-to-Action is conveniently placed where it grabs the reader’s attention. A good example could be an eye-catching input box with: “insert mail to receive content regularly”.
6. Offer proof
Any product can sound great with a well-written description, but what matters is that you can back up your words with reliable results. To optimize your blog’s conversion rate, readers need proof that what you are offering is as good as it sounds. A great way of building trust and boosting conversion rates is through industry endorsements, testimonials, and referrals. For instance, if you want someone to subscribe, ensure you note on your blog that you have 200,000 subscribers since this is a form of social proof that helps visitors feel more comfortable subscribing to your list
Your conversion rate is what will ultimately contribute to business goals – another way to increase in-content testimonials is by placing customer testimonials within your blog content.
7. Include relevant calls to action
A CTA is a button that gates a relevant offer. When strategically designed and placed, it is essential in getting a reader to take the next step. If you create content, you can optimize conversion by adding a CTA to your blog post. You can also make it stand out by putting it in a brightly colored box and adding a clickable button for good measure.
To determine where to place your CTA, you can use a heatmap. It determines the intensity of activity on a page and translates data into colors. This displays where blog visitors are scrolling, clicking, and viewing most. A heatmap enables you to determine if there’s activity on your CTA or if you should change its location.
Takeaway
Your blog can be a great source of conversions, all you need, to improve its conversion rates, is to monitor what’s working and continuously improve and update your content assets, so they resonate with your audience.
