So you invested hundreds and perhaps even thousands of dollars on SEO. Your blog is attracting traffic like public transit during rush hour. Your traffic stats are high, and so is the bounce rate. Apparently, people who visit are not hanging around to read your posts, subscribe or follow. Essentially, despite the traffic, your conversion rate is embarrassingly low.
The cold hard truth is that spending money solely on generating web traffic does not automatically convert into readers and ad revenue. You must also invest in techniques to drive conversion. A good majority of the time, blog owners only need to avoid making the following mistakes:
1. Your Blog Doesn’t Have a Compelling Headline
The traffic that comes to your site is redirected from places like search engines that often offer web users some options. Therefore, your blog must be capable of grabbing the attention of a potential reader immediately with the headline, subheading, and titles of posts. The subtitle that appears below the name of your blog should be able to communicate your unique selling proposition in a handful of words.
Recommended Reading:Â You Should Test That: Conversion Optimization for More Leads, Sales and Profit or The Art and Science of Optimized Marketing
If the titles shown on your blog are not that impressive, visitors will simply leave. Think about what makes your blog stand out from the rest. That will be your unique selling proposition. Then spend some time crafting a headline and a subheading that can immediately hook potential readers.
2. Your Blog’s Theme is Not Optimized to Improve User Experience
Are you using a design theme that’s outdated, cluttered or laid out for your convenience rather than a reader's? If so, that is a major reason why your conversation rate sucks. The theme of your page should be easy to navigate. Don’t make it so that users have to scroll down forever to find the information they need.
Find a stylish theme that is clean, visually appealing and is easy to navigate. Components like subscription forms or follow buttons should be very easy to find. It is also important to make it easy for potential readers to browse your blog posts without a hassle.
3. Your Blog Takes Forever to Load
Have you ever counted the seconds it takes for your blog to load? You really should because your conversion rate could suffer if your blog takes longer than 2 seconds to load. Each second that adds to the blog loading time takes a significant percentage off the conversion rate.
Your blog could load slowly because you have cluttered it with bulky and unnecessary plugins and widgets. Also, if you do not compress your images, that will increase the loading time. Choosing a minimalist layout and compressing images before uploading will bring your blog’s loading time down to normal.
4. Your CTA Buttons are Not Convincing
You need compelling call-to-action buttons on your blog to convince visitors to become followers. If you do not keep adding followers, your blog will fade into insignificant. Therefore, you need to get to work and start designing highly convincing CTA buttons.
The CTA buttons on your blog should stand out from the rest of the content. If you give the button a bold color and leave some white space on it, visitors will immediately notice the CTA button. Then, you should have short, simple but to-the-point CTA button copy to drive conversions.
5. Your Landing Page Content is Weak
When a potential reader first lands on your long, what does he or she see? Is it a blog post you wrote five years ago that is not at all any good? The content on your blog's home page must be absorbing. A new visitor will evaluate the rest of the content by the first two or three posts he or she sees.
Your blog's life will depend on how compelling, well-written, timely and error-free the content is. So, if your conversion rate is bad, it could simply be because the stuff you post is subpar. You can quickly improve the content of your blog by committing to writing high-quality posts instead of spending all your time doing SEO.
6. You Have Never Actually Tested Your Landing Page
You will never know which changes work for your blog and which don't if you never check it! You must collect customer feedback data to improve the user experience. Otherwise, you are running a blog blindly.
Testing is the best solution to find what's ailing your blog that keeps the conversion rate so slow. There are several ways to test your blog and your landing page, including conducting surveys as mentioned above. You can also try sampling different design layouts with audiences.
7. You do not Have an Email Marketing Campaign
What does email have to do with your blog’s conversion rate? Well, a lot. Email marketing is the best way to engage with people who are already your readers. At the end of the day, these are the people who are truly driving conversions.
You must be in touch with all your readers via email. Send new post notifications and greetings whenever necessary. The point is to keep readers engaged, so they are compelled to return to your blog.
Making even one of the mistakes listed above can make your blog's conversion rate suffer. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, merely driving traffic to your blog is not enough. You need to increase the conversions to profit.
Hey Christopher,
Spending the dollars can’t bring the traffic to any blog. People pay for the SEO of their blog. They should know that the quality content is the only thing which can improve the SEO.
The factors including the attractive headlines and landing page are there. Always go with the quality over quantity.
~Ravi
Thanks for the comment, Ravi! And definitely — quality trumps over quantity all the time.
Hi Christopher,
Well said dude! #2 and #3 are huge in today’s mobile mad environment 😉 I had my entire theme re-done to go mobile. Light, fast, speedy, and responsive on mobile sites. I also bought a CDN to speed up my blog. Doing these 2 things makes it easier to consume, share and yep, to buy from my blog/covert regularly, which helps both parties. Me and my bank account and my readers who seek my emails, products and services 🙂
Thanks for sharing!
Ryan
That is true, Ryan! It is imperative nowadays to have a mobile responsive web design for your blog so your audience can view your content seamlessly without compromising on loading time.
Big time Christopher 😉 Mobile is the way to go. Then people can pop in, read and enjoy- and yep, click thru 😉 – easily.
Hey Christopher,
Landing pages are one of the most proven ways to build our list. They’re pages whose sole purpose is to accomplish one action to be it a purchase, a share,for our case or a sign up. Social media streams are filled to the brim with items users don’t mind being seen publicly. It’s extremely important to have goals for our blog or website but it’s also important to make sure that they change if they need to.
If something isn’t working and we’ve given it a lot of time and effort than it’s sometimes better to be strong and let it go and try something else. Just because we have a mailing list doesn’t mean that people will automatically subscribe. We need to let people know what’s going on. Our products, services, and information should separate us from our competition. Our company should have undeniable value, and our website and social media need to boast that. Hooking our email audience with compelling offers and info is exactly what we need to keep them interested. Thanks for sharing your worthy thought with us.
With best wishes,
Amar kumar
Spot on, Amar! Creating value for your target audience is the best way to build trust with them, which helps increase your conversion rate. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I personally think website speed and content strategy are two factors that decide the fate of your blog. If they are not good, you are not going to convert people into subscribers or sales.
So make sure you are investing money and time into both of them to make your blog a success. Also spend time in analyzing what’s working for others. See their monetization sources and find out what you can offer to your audience to convert them into sales.
Great post!
Hello sir, what type theme should be used, because i am using free theme on my site and i noticed that loading time is very slow so how to increase my website loading as well as how to choose best theme for any website.
Hello, Sourav! The theme for your site/blog depends on you, and this can be determined by choosing a theme that you find easy to use and comfortable in using, loads fast, and matches your branding, among other factors. You can try premium themes like Genesis, Divi, and others because they not only offer the three factors mentioned above but also provide security and SEO functionalities. Personally, it’s best to research starting with a resource like these:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/selecting-the-perfect-theme-for-wordpress/
https://colorlib.com/wp/best-personal-blog-wordpress-themes/
Hope these help!
I would like to add that it is very important to add breadcrumbs with schema. That will increase the CTR of the website.
That is true to an extent, Ibiza! I believe breadcrumbs are idea for ecommerce sites, but may not be too useful for blogs that are not deep in subcategories, although I could be wrong 🙂
Hello Christopher
Great post ! All seven of those mistakes can definitely hurt your conversions. I would say especially #3 because if your website speed takes too long most people are not going to wait. Hey Christopher thanks for sharing this helpful post.
Thanks, Darrell! It is imperative to build a fast-loading site to engage your audience and keep them from leaving.
Nice post, Christopher! Thanks for sharing these tips with us all. I am glad I found your post today, learned a few new things today! It’s so easy to miss out on small details that end up creating bigger problems. Cheers!
Glad you liked the post, Gagan!
Best tips . Email marketing is essential . is there any free service for beginners .i tried few . they are bit complex
They are definitely some of the factors, but I believe the most important factor would be, the ability to create valuable content such step-by-step, list, and drive traffic, promote the content. Bottom line is without traffic, placing the form at the top converting spot and still no one sees it.
I’m facing similar issues with my blog loading time. I’m planning to move to better host and also opt for CDN. I’m getting good traffic but due to bad website loading time. Visitors tends to exit my blog immediately.
Also i’m planning to redesign my blog which will be more branded and appealing. Thanks for detail explanation.
Hi Christopher,
One of the main reason a blog doesn’t convert is because “it doesn’t look and sound authoritative”.
When a user searches for some information, it visits at least few websites before it comes to any conclusion or makes a purchase.
What will happen if someone visits few websites and all of them offer the same kind of information and nothing new?
People trust the website which offers in-depth information about a subject. That is the reason niche websites converts so well.
Regards
Tauseef Alam
Excellent Post with Great Advice especially for Newbies. Personally, I use Short Tail Keywords in my Domain and Site Name. Long Tail Keywords in all H1 and H2 Headers. And lastly, populate my posts with Anchor Text.
Yes.. I’m a big believer in unique content that adds value. This will get readers to spend more time on your page and to come back for more!
Do you have any tips on how to write snappy titles for blog content that’s on the serious side of things? I write about end of life care, terminal illness, mental health, etc. I strive to make the content user friendly, as in plain English, as opposed to complicated and hard to understand. Any ideas are welcomed!
I personally follow your above steps to drop a comment and try to not make any mistakes and Its really bring me good result for my blog. The number of visitors increasing to my blog. Thanks for this awesome post.
Hey Christopher !
Very valid points.
Headlines, of course, are most important part of a blog post. A well-written headline can encourage readers to read the post (Human Curiosity).
Anyway, thanks for the post, mate.
Hi Christopher,
Indeed a great post. I agree with all these mistakes due to which blog readers never get converted well. Outdated blog design is something which bloggers should take care of.
Improving website design can surely help in improving conversions and without a doubt, website loading time is the major issue If your readers aren’t getting converted.
If the blog load slow then nobody wants to buy anything from such blogs and which results in, readers will leave the site and will find the another alternative.
So You have shared some valid points. Thanks for sharing it with us. 😀
What about the content part. From my experience it says you need to have high quality content , otherwise people will run away
Hey
Really helpful information. lol Now i’m looking for these mistakes in my blog. It will make my blog more effective.
Best Regards
Rajeev
Hi Christopher!
Content, speed and layout of a website matter a lot. Nice post. It will definitely help lots of people.
Hi Christopher,
You have hit the nail on the head there, especially with load times, these days 2 seconds is an ageto wait, I remember the old days of bulletin boards, pre-internet! 1 minute was considered ok back then!
With regards to content you are also right on the money, if you cannot engage with a captivating title then you will most likely lose them before you can even get to your carefully crafted article.
Without split testing landing pages and CTA links and buttons how will you know what is working? So true!
Again great article! many thanks for a well deserved wake up call for us all!
Heya,
All of these points are very necessary. I think configuring CDN is the best idea to boost a blog speed. Also, before choosing any Theme, must test the speed in Google Pagespeed.
Thanks for this tips.
Hey Christopher,
Well said, awesome article 🙂
you can as well promote your blog using infographics
like http://visual.ly/6-email-marketing-practices
It can be really efficient approach to seo.
Great list Christopher. I would also add that your posts should solve a problem. If you solve a problem for you readers, they have a reason to stay and find out what you have to offer.
But more importantly, it should be obvious what problem you are solving or what value you are providing within the first few lines of each blog post.
If readers have to read through blocks of text to find out what benefit there is for them on your blog, they’re probably going to leave before they find out what it is.
Good tips. After reading this I went back to my site and noticed a few things that I can improve upon. Thanks