Creating a blog is simple enough for most people to achieve, however, optimizing that blog to attain the highest possible levels of traffic and conversions isn’t nearly as straightforward.
The fact is that you could pump out three blogs a day, but if they’re not achieving the purpose you’re writing them for - attracting customers and subscribers - you’re effectively wasting your time in a business sense.
We don’t want you to waste your time, so our eCommerce SEO experts collected a list of 5 effective ways in which you can increase traffic to your site and in turn, get more conversions and sales. Get your notebook and pen ready, and we’ll get started.
Method 1 - Use A/B Testing
A great way to determine what’s working and what isn’t when it comes to your blogs is A/B testing, as it allows you to delve down into why your blogs aren’t having their desired effect. It essentially involves creating different blogs containing roughly similar messages but written in differing ways. Then you’ll gain an insight into which ways resulted in the best conversion rates.
The benefits of this are two-fold in that you get to see what’s working for you right now, but also it will assist in your efforts to create content strategies over the longer term. Understanding your readers is key to blogging success and A/B testing allows you to do so.
Method 2 - Tell a Story In Your Blogs
Another key element that your blogs need to contain is an engaging storyline that grabs the attention of your reader and keeps them reading all the way to the end. Whatever it is that you’re writing about, you need to keep the person reading it hooked until the last word, but we’re not talking about a fairytale or work of fiction here, rather your content needs to offer value.
What do we mean by that? Well, if you’re directing people to read your blog via social media, it needs to ‘talk’ to whatever issue it is that they’re experiencing. The kind of story we’re talking about should illustrate to your readers that you have the skills and expertise required to solve their problems.
Create a story and weave it into your topic somehow and you’ll go a long way to engaging the person reading it. It’s all about entertaining the reader whilst demonstrating the value of your product or service, as it can boost your traffic and conversion rates considerably.
Method 3 - Make Your Blogs Easy to Understand & Read!
Whilst you don’t want to make your blog super-skimmable, it still needs to be nice and easy to comprehend and to get through. Some bloggers can be quite precious about their blogs, but the fact of the matter is that most readers who visit you are primarily there to find the nuggets of wisdom within the text.
The thing is, if you make it easy to read, there’s a chance that they might decide to read it in full. Of course, there’s no guarantee that this is going to work, but when you make a point of highlighting the most critical parts, you create the conditions for it to happen. Breaking up the text into easy-to-consume chunks with clear headers and subheaders is a great way to achieve it.
It’s also a good idea to use bullet points and italic fonts to highlight certain pieces of text you want to draw the reader’s attention to. And of course, you shouldn’t forget to include some eye-catching images to ensure the page is visually interesting.
Method 4 - Use Targeted Keywords In Your Blogs
One of the primary reasons why people create blogs is to enhance rankings on Google and other search engines, as well as to raise the number of people visiting your blog. This is why it’s important to include targeted keywords that people might use to find blogs or businesses like yours.
It can be a complex equation finding the right ones, which is why using professional services to carry out the necessary keyword research is often the best route. Without these terms included in your text, there’s pretty much no chance of your blog being picked up by people who aren’t already aware of your blog or your services.
If you have no idea about which keywords to include in your blog, there are a few ways to approach the problem. You could look at your well-performing competitors to see what they’re using or use one of the many keyword research tools that exist. That said, it is important to get it right and it’s easy to get it wrong, so we’d recommend using professional services to nail down these keywords.
Method 5 - Include a Call to Action...Every Time!
There are a lot of great bloggers out there that don’t get the success they deserve because of the fact that they don’t include a call to action (CTA) in their blogs. It could be something as simple as telling people where to find out more about you or your product or as direct as literally encouraging people to BUY NOW!
Be sure to include a number of CTAs throughout your blog too, as you really don’t have to wait until the end. The natural place for most writers is to include the CTA at the end, but if a person is just skimming your blog, they may not make it to the end and as such, will miss it.
Better Blog Conversion & Sales Are Closer Than You Think!
When all is said and done, there is a multitude of ways that you improve the traffic to your blog and the number of sales that it creates. Some take up a bit more of your time than others, but if you just use the tips we’ve given you here today, the chances of your blogging conversion improving will increase dramatically.
As part of your ongoing blogging efforts, you should keep trying different techniques and methods to see which works for you. Don’t forget to document your findings, as you’ll gain yourself an ever-growing database of things that work and that don’t, and before you know it, you might just see those conversion rates shoot through the roof! For some great examples, check out this resource on the top blogs for marketing and advertising.
