You’ve written a knockout blog post, and it’s getting a ton of traffic—yet, there is one thing missing: conversions.
How do you optimize your blog posts so you can increase the number of conversions and achieve your business goals?
Luckily, there are a few different ways you can encourage visitors to do what you want them to do—whether that’s making a purchase, signing up, or downloading content.
Let’s look at some of the optimizations you can try on your own blog posts.
Calls to Action (CTAs)
Without a doubt, calls to action are a must if you want to increase conversions for your blog posts. CTAs come in all forms: links, buttons, stickies, slide-ins, above the navigation bar, and so on.
Why are CTAs an effective way to optimize blog posts for conversions? They tell visitors what to do next. More importantly, they tell them what you want them to do.
Instead of placing your only call to action at the end of a blog post (research shows most readers only get 60 percent of the way through an entire post), you can try adding another one at the beginning, the middle, or a sticky button that stays with the reader as they scroll through the post. A CTA banner above your top navigation can also be effective without being intrusive.
You can also try different text on your buttons, or change the color of a CTA button, to see if one version works better than the other.
Content Offers
Oftentimes, blog posts are used as tools to gently nudge visitors through the marketing funnel. In those cases, a conversion might be downloading another piece of content, rather than completing a purchase. If you find that’s the case in your business, then you may want to consider a content offer, depending on the search intent.
Content offers include downloadable content that’s relevant to the blog post, or content upgrades that allow readers to download a PDF version of the blog post they’re reading. Both are excellent ways to measure interest, which can help you engage the reader with other types of content down the road—and to increase conversions.
Keyword Optimizations
Even if your blog is already getting a lot of traffic, you can increase that number even more (and thereby increase conversions) by optimizing it for the keywords people are using to find your content organically.
For example, let’s say you do a bit of keyword research and discover your blog post is ranking highly for the keywords “how to write a blog post” and “blog post tutorial”. You can apply those keywords to your on-page SEO efforts, and you should see a boost in traffic. With keywords integrated on the page, visitors will see it as more relevant to their search, too. This can help you improve conversions.
Links to Relevant Content
Is one of your goals to increase the time visitors spend on your site? Then you may want to try providing links to another relevant blog post, or the post that came before or after the one they’re reading.
The idea here is to keep their interest by making it easy to navigate to other interesting content. You can do that with a little slide-in CTA or pop-up to get their attention, which boosts the chances of keeping visitors on the site for longer and helps raise conversion rates.
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Social Proof
Another effective way to optimize blog posts for conversions is with social proof. When your content displays positive social proof, potential customers feel good about doing business with you and are more likely to follow along if others are doing it.
Social proof includes:
- Reviews and ratings
- Testimonials
- Influencer recommendations
- Media/client logos
- Social connections and social shares
Wrapping Up
Blog posts can be your ultimate conversion machines, if you have the right pieces in place for your audience. The best way to see if one of these optimizations works for you? Try it out, test it, and see if it’s helping to improve your conversion rates.
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A robust digital marketing strategy is essential for anyone business today. That’s why professionals with the right skill sets are in such high demand. If you want to boost your career in this exciting field, check out Simplilearn’s Digital Marketing Specialist Master’s Program. You can learn everything you need to know to excel in your career, including how to turn content into conversions.