How to Quickly Identify What Is Killing Your Blog Conversions

Blogging is one of my favorite marketing tools. There are many benefits to blogging—that’s why all my websites have blogs.

But honestly, I enjoy it as well. Writing blog posts keeps your finger on the pulse and helps you stay connected with your audience. I’m not saying you have to be in love with it, but it definitely makes things easier if you like to write.

If you take care of your blog, your blog will take care of you in return.

Those of you who have a blog up and running are headed in the right direction. But if your posts are not generating leads or getting readers to convert, it’s a problem.

First, it’s a waste of your time. Think about all the time and effort you put into these posts. If nobody’s reading them or converting, you’d almost be better off not writing at all.

Second, it’s a huge missed opportunity. Blogging is basically free marketing. The only cost to you is your time writing.

If you can learn how to write content that converts, you’ll have a huge return on your investment.

The problem is people writing blog posts don’t know why their blogs don’t help them convert their readers. If this sounds like you, you’ll definitely benefit from this guide.

I’ve outlined how you can identify the elements, or lack thereof, on your blog that are crushing your conversion rates.

Once you recognize the problems, it should be an easy fix. Here are the factors you need to keep an eye on.

Infrequent posts

You can’t expect high conversion rates if you’re not constantly posting new content on your blog. Those of you posting only once or twice a month need to step up your game.

Here’s how often the average blogger publishes posts on their website:

As you can see, the majority of websites publish a new post on a weekly basis or at least several times per month. That must be the best approach, right? Think again.

Although there is a higher percentage of bloggers posting at this frequency, it doesn’t mean it’s the best option.

In fact, 66.7% percent of bloggers who publish content more than once per day report strong results based on this frequency. Only 31.5% of bloggers who post on a weekly basis feel the same way.

So for the most part, it’s safe to say the more often you post, the better your conversions will be.

On average, it took bloggers 3 hours and 20 minutes to write a blog post in 2017. I’m not saying that’s fast, but it really isn’t that unreasonable.

Let’s say you work five days per week. Can you dedicate two hours a day toward writing? If you can find the time, that’s three new posts per week.

Try to start there and see what kind of results you get for the next couple of months. Posting more often increases the chances of you getting a steady audience of regular readers.

As a result, the increased traffic to your website and the growing number of people becoming familiar with your voice can lead to higher conversions.

Large blocks of text

Analyze your writing style for a second. If you’re writing huge paragraphs that are five, six, or even seven lines long, you’ll need to cut that down significantly.

You’re writing a post for a blog. Don’t think of it like a college research paper. Try to limit your paragraphs to just two or three lines at the most.

Add images to help break up your content and make the posts look more appealing. This strategy is highly effective if you’re directing your readers to do something:

That’s because visual content is easier for most of your readers to understand. In fact, 65% of people are visual learners.

Images resonate with people. Adding them to your blog makes your content easier to comprehend and retain. As a result, you’ll get higher conversions.

If you’re currently writing large blocks of text, you can use my posts as a guide to help you change. Scroll through this post to see how short my paragraphs are and how I use images to let the text breathe.

Brief sentences and short paragraphs also make your content more conversational. This is much easier and more enjoyable for people to read.

Here are some other tips and tricks for breaking up your large blocks of text. Add bullet points and lists to your blog posts.

These will stand out on the page and make it easier for your readers to scan. Only 16% of people read blog posts word for word—79% of readers scan it.

Scannable posts will appeal to your readers, making it more likely they’ll consume more of your content.

Your call to action is unclear

What’s the purpose of your blog posts? If you don’t know the answer to this question, that’s probably why you’re not seeing high conversions rates.

How can your readers know what action you want them to take if even you don’t know what you want them to do? Go back to the drawing board, and come up with clear CTAs.

Check out this blog post written by Ian Blair at BuildFire:

In this section of the post, Ian is talking about the fact that businesses need to spend money to develop a mobile application, which can be expensive.

He then offers a solution to the readers who may be looking for a more cost-effective way to build an app. He recommends they contact the BuildFire custom development team.

The CTA is set up perfectly, and he even hyperlinks the text so his readers can go directly to the contact page instead of having to search for it.

A quick side note. Notice how this blog post also includes short paragraphs and images to break up the content, which I have discussed above.

You can incorporate a clear CTA in your blog posts in many ways. You can follow the example above and work it into the text. Or you could  have large CTA buttons in the middle or at the end of your posts.

Here’s another example from a Hubspot blog post about Instagram marketing:

There is a popup on the bottom right side of the screen that encourages readers to check out their customizable Instagram templates.

At the bottom of the post, there is another pitch for the same 25 templates. They are free, and the CTA clearly says, “Download Now.”

This is a great strategy because the blog post is about Instagram. It wouldn’t make sense to have these CTAs here if the content was about Facebook or Snapchat. A clear and relevant CTA will have higher conversion rates.

The content doesn’t speak to your audience

Take a minute to think about your website and brand. You already know how to identify your target market. Make sure your blog posts speak to this group of people.

For example, let’s say your company sells customized skateboards. Your target market is primarily teenagers and young adults living in Southern California.

You’ve got an ecommerce site as well so customers can place orders online. You add a blog to your website to try to get even more conversions. Great idea.

But it’s ineffective if your blog posts aren’t appealing to your target market. There’s no reason for you to be talking about household appliances or travel arrangements in your posts.

You may think that example is extreme, but you’d be surprised how off topic some blog posts from certain websites are. It’s shocking.

That’s because people seem to run out of ideas. They don’t know what to write about, so they pick a random topic or go off on a tangent in one of their posts.

This is a fast way to lose the interest of your audience.

Your blog isn’t mobile friendly

Did you know 85% of adults in the United States read news on their mobile devices? With mobile trends on the rise in 2018, your blog needs to be optimized accordingly.

People are viewing your website from mobile devices. It’s a fact. Ignoring this is a huge mistake that’s crushing your conversion rates.

There are roughly 5 billion unique mobile users across the globe.

If you don’t provide such a large group of people with an enjoyable reading experience, you risk alienating them.

Those of you who don’t have a mobile-friendly blog need to address it immediately.

In addition to optimizing your blog for mobile devices, you need to pay attention to your writing style. It needs to accommodate mobile users by offering them small bits of information at at time. Recall the earlier discussion about removing large blocks of content from your posts.

Five-line paragraphs on your desktop site will look twice as long on mobile devices.

You’re forgetting about Google’s algorithm

Understand the way people find your blog posts. You can’t expect that people visiting your website will automatically navigate to your blog.

You need your blog posts to be top hits on Google when people search for related terms. If they click on your posts after a search, you’ll increase your chances of getting more conversions.

To make sure you’re on the first page of Google’s search results, you’ll need to learn the basics of search engine optimization.

Posting new blog posts on a regular basis, which we discussed earlier, will definitely help you increase the rankings. You’ll also want to make sure you don’t have any broken links, errors, and large images, taking too long to load.

But one of the best ways to optimize your blog posts for Google’s search algorithm is with keywords.

Think about the words or phrases people would type into a search bar. Include those keywords into your posts. Adding long tail key phrases increases your chances of getting higher conversions:

That’s because when people search for something on Google, they typically use a phrase rather than one word.

In fact, the average number of words for an Internet search query in the United States is five words.

The more descriptive you can be, the more likely your posts will come up as top search results.

Your posts are not being shared on social media

Besides SEO, you’ll need to come up with other ways to drive more traffic to your blog posts. Social media websites are perfect for this.

The reason why I love sharing blog posts on social media is because it kills two birds with one stone.

First, you’ll get more traffic to your blogs.

But second, these posts give you an excuse to post new content on your social platforms, keeping your feeds fresh.

Post on a daily basis if you want your followers to stay engaged—that’s why this strategy is a no-brainer.

If you look at my Twitter profile, you’ll see I use this strategy to promote my posts:

In addition to sharing these posts yourself, you should also encourage your readers to share your content.

The easiest way to do this is by including social sharing links within your blog posts. That way, your content can be shared with just one click.

Here’s how I implemented this strategy on my website:

Take advantage of your social media platforms. By driving more traffic to your blog posts, you’ll ultimately get more conversions.

Conclusion

Blogging is a great way to drive traffic to your website and increase conversions.

Those of you who are blogging but not happy with your conversions rates will need to make some changes.

Post more often, and get rid of large blocks of text. Make sure your content speaks to your audience and has clear CTAs.

Your blog posts need to be mobile-friendly.

Use keyword optimization to drive more traffic to your blogs.

Leverage social media platforms to drive more traffic to your blog posts as well.

Once you’ve identified what you’re doing incorrectly, it should be easy to fix these mistakes.

After you implement these changes, you’ll notice much higher conversion rates from your blog posts.

What elements of your blog need to be updated to increase your conversions?

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