• How to edit the post “slug”
• How to insert hyperlinks
• How to upload and insert pictures
• How to resize your pictures
• How to reveal the “kitchen sink” toolbar
• How to create subheadings in your posts
• How to paste in text from Word so that it looks nice
• How to split your posts so they’re continued after a link
• How to select categories for your post
• How to enter tags
• How to set the post publish date into the future
• How to enter information into the All-in-One SEO Pack area for better post search optimization

If you can’t see the video in your email or reader you can watch it on Viddler.

Conversion is when a website visitor does what you want them to. A website’s conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who do what we want them to do, or, convert. Your site’s conversion rate is a very important way to measure the effectiveness of what you’re doing.

Are You Throwing Your Money Away?

If visitors don’t take actions that result in profits, you are wasting your time.

You can do all the SEO work you like, but if nothing happens when visitors show up, you did it for nothing. You can pay tons of money in advertising, and you have thrown away every penny if nobody buys anything or signs up for your newsletter. You can write comments on other blogs and work through social media to attract visitors, but if those visitors just bounce right back out of your site without doing what you want, you’re leaving money on the table.

Two Kinds of Conversion: Content and Design

I see two kinds of conversion: content-driven and design-driven.

1. Content-driven conversion is nothing more than good ol’ copywriting. By itself, it is a powerful tool.
2. Design-driven conversion has to do with where elements are placed on the screen, their size, color, and visual qualities. Did you think that “design” for blogs was only the theme or template you chose? No, my friends, it is much, much more than that. By itself, without changing a word of your copy, you can improve conversion by changing your design.

You magnify the power of both kinds of conversion by combining them together for a hard-hitting one-two punch that really gets results–results you can measure.

Conversion Goals

You can’t achieve higher conversion unless you know what you want to accomplish. Do you want visitors to make a purchase? Fill out an inquiry form? Sign up for your newsletter? Decide what your primary and secondary conversion goals are, because everything you write and your entire blog/site design should move to meet these goals.

Tips for Improving Conversion and Increasing Response Rates

• Measure and Test. Take the average number of visitors for your services or products pages and the number of clicks for links that are the result of conversion, such as a buy button or a contact form submission. Calculate the percentage of conversion clicks out of visits, and that is your conversion rate. A conversion rate doesn’t have to be for an entire site, it can be for specific pages or set of pages. After you make a change to improve conversion, test again and look for improvement.
• Learn copywriting. In spite of all the blogging “how to” advice out there on the web, the one thing you should do to dramatically improve the quality of your content (and therefore the response to it) is to learn and apply copywriting. Understanding your audience, getting inside their head, and writing persuasively to them without sounding like barking salesperson are what good web copywriting is all about. There is no better place to learn the basics than Brian Clark’s Copywriting 101 series of posts on Copyblogger.
• Make conversion links prominent. This is the number one thing you can do to experience improvements in conversion immediately. My own site is an example: clearly, I want you to check out my free ebook, investigate my services, and visit Gateway Blogging. Those boxes are in your face. And they work wonders. A link that is buried in the overall design will not stand out and it will not get clicked. When I redesigned the Cosmetic Dentistry Guide, conversion rates shot up 200% for blog and forum visits.
• Place conversion links above the fold. Above the “fold” is a phrase borrowed from newspapers: the main headline and part of the picture were always above the fold in the paper. You’d get sucked in by the headline and want to see the other half below the fold. On a computer screen, above the fold is what you see without scrolling down. Visitors are more likely to see–and therefore click–on prominent links above the fold.
• Clearly communicate the benefit of clicking the link. Write in clear, simple terms what the visitor is rewarded with if they click on the link. My link to my services above invites you to learn more, and the page which follows delivers on that promise. For the cosmetic dentists’ site, visitors are invited to discuss cosmetic dentistry issues in the forums. Simple!

Where Conversion Fits into the Big Picture

There are four general stages a blog visitor who converts will go through:

1. Finding and getting to your site (usually via search, which is why you should learn SEO)
2. Pre-conversion investigation/research (for blogs, this often means subscribing, a secondary conversion goal)
3. Conversion
4. Post-conversion/follow-through (once a visitor has converted on something, it’s easier for them to do it again, but it’s also easy for you to lose them)

If you found this post useful, consider subscribing for free to get updates when new posts are published.

If you want professional help improving conversion for your blog, contact me for a free phone chat to tell me what your goals are and we’ll see what I can do to help your blog succeed.

Comments are content.

And, as we all know, content is king.

I first heard comments are content from Liz Strauss at SOBCon 08. Here’s how it applies to what I’m talking about:

• If you would link to something in a blog post, do it in a comment
• After the post has been read by most of your readers, the comments are where the action is–you still have eyes on it, so take advantage of that and extend the life of the post
• Readers often just skip right over the “related posts” at the end of the post in order to get to the comments, so put your real related post links in there
• Most bloggers never do this, so if you do it, you will be way ahead of other bloggers in your niche (who are all gunning your audience’s precious attention)
• It helps build audience loyalty and trust–which is the foundation for monetization efforts or selling
• If you’re using the DoFollow plugin, you’re creating more internal links to your content which will benefit your blog search engine optimization efforts

So… that’s it?

Yup. Just one thing: link to older posts in your comments where it will help readers, answer commentator questions, or otherwise further the conversation and extend the life of the current post.

Not a bad return on investment for a little bit of extra effort in your comments section.

I’ve done this a few times in the past, but nowhere near as much as I should have. What inspired me to write this post was noticing that Harrison McLeod from Men With Pens did it on this post about website content writing that converts.

Don’t do it if it isn’t a natural fit for the comments on a post, otherwise you will appear to be the overly aggressive salesperson and turn off everyone. Do, however, take some time once in a while to add links in to appropriate anchor text in old comments (anchor text are the words that you click on, and Google pays attention to it).

have you ever linked to your own posts in your blog comments to help others? What do you think of the idea? Is it worth the effort? Please add your comments below so I can shovel into them as many internal links as possible to my older posts.