Adding a blog to your website can increase traffic by around 424%.
However, writing a quality blog post isn’t enough.
You have to ensure that your blog posts convert into leads or sales. So, how do you do that?
The prerequisites are of course to understand your target audience, goals, and the search intent to determine the type of content.
We’re breaking down one of our best converting blog posts – QR Code Menu and what we did to increase our clicks 67x in the last 6 months.
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Table of Contents
8 tips for writing a high converting blog post
1. Choose the type of content based on the search intent
For the keyword, “QR Code Menu” and other related keywords, Google typically ranks guides on how one can create a QR Code menu. There are some landing pages that try to sell you the solution outright as well that make it to the first page.
Based on the search intent, we decided to update our blog post that mentioned QR Code menus briefly to make it the prime focus and present it as a complete guide for restaurants.
2. Change the Title and Meta Description
This isn’t just for SEO. The Title and Meta Description can also play a pivotal role in getting more users to click on your blog post. Higher the CTR, better the rank of the page.
We changed the Title and Meta Description to include the main keyword and nudge users to click on the search result.
The Title originally read: Successful step by step QR Code Strategies for Restaurants and we kept tweaking it until we decided on the current Title
3. Add a Table of Contents
Again a pretty straightforward hack but adding a table of contents with jump tags to their corresponding headings helps Google add these jump tags to your search result. This is also a pretty good way for users to know what’s in your blog post before they click on it. Often users click on a blog to skim through to see if the information they seek is present in the blog post. If they don’t find it, they click off almost instantly which causes a huge bounce rate.
This is what it looks like in the SERP results:
4. Place value above your CTAs
The best way to increase conversions is to provide value to your readers. Whether these come in the form of unique insights or interesting use-cases or even detailed research, the idea is to write for your target audience.
Yes, the algorithms matter. And yes, you do have to optimize your blog posts. But if you’re not solving a problem for your customers, it’s highly unlikely that you will see an increase in conversions.
Going back to the blog post in question, we tried to include the crucial information that restaurants need to know right in the introduction. The first paragraph tells them why a contactless menu is required, how it’s better than paper menus both in terms of safety and economics and how they can create one for themselves.
Ahrefs does a fantastic job at catering to their audience and delivering value to them before doing a subtle plug of their products.
Here’s an article by Leadfeeder that explains this strategy in detail.
5. Monitor metrics till you get it right
Writing a great blog post isn’t the end of the road. If you fail to monitor how well your post is performing, it’s unlikely that it will yield the kind of results you are looking for.
So, what metrics should you be monitoring? It all depends on the kind of blog post you’re writing. If your overall goal is to generate leads, then check the clicks and emails collected from your lead magnets.
For us, with this blog post, we were interested in the trials and customers and kept a close watch on the queries that this blog post appeared for on Search Console. This helped us update the blog post with the right key phrases and add more content.
We also used heatmaps to understand how visitors read the blog post and quickly realized that our top CTAs are the ones that are highly converting.
The SERP rank was also important to us so we ensured we had the right internal links for the blog post and enough external backlinks. Since the post was old, it had collected organic backlinks of its own and we also ran an outreach to get more backlinks.
6. Start with a compelling H1
Statistics report that a user’s attention on the website stays for around 5.59 seconds, brands have a limited amount of time to capture and retain the customer’s attention.
A quick scan of the website’s design, content, readability, and user experience should compel the user to stay and read the blog. So how can you achieve that?
The first thing that readers notice is the headline. CoSchedule’s Headline analyzer is perfect to test out variations and come up with a headline that is interesting and has your keyword(s).
Using power verbs, odd numbers (if it’s a listicle) and shorter headlines work the best.
7. Check the readability
What makes a content piece great? Is it the use of an extensive vocabulary that doesn’t necessarily resonate with your target audience? Is it diving into the complexity of the technology in a way that your competitors haven’t?
If you didn’t guess already, the answer is no.
Dave Gerhadt, one of the best B2B marketers out there, completely rejects the notion that you have to write differently because a content piece is geared towards enterprises. Or that, there is a difference between B2B and B2C marketing. At the end of it all, you are writing for a very real person that will read your content. You’re not writing for a building or Google’s crawler.
If I could sum up his advice in 4 words, it would be: ‘Write how you talk.’
Keep your value proposition easy to understand, your choice of words ordinary and use abstraction when talking about complex technology.
You can use Hemingway Editor to make sure you aren’t writing convoluted sentences.
The other thing you can do to ensure readability is to break up chunks of text into bite-sized pieces. Perhaps, you noticed that while reading this blog post?
There’s a lot more white space and that helps readers digest information easily.
While tools such as SEO optimization and call to action taglines are important, focus more on the flow of the article.
Use headings and subheadings wherever possible and breakdown paragraphs into bullet points or flowchart graphics.
8. Include visual elements
Think beyond images.
Do you have a quick video on the blog post’s topic?
If not, use tools readily available to you to shoot one. Videos convert better, keep readers engaged and help them retain 95% of the information compared to 10% when they’re just reading it.
Animated videos, customer reviews in the form of videos or storytelling based tutorials are some strategies that can be used. Besides video, including charts and graphs instead of outbound links to the statistic page can eliminate the need of opening another website to check facts.
Also, remember that readers skim the contents of the blog post before deciding to read it. So, adding visual elements is the best way to decrease your bounce rate and keep them hooked.
Some other elements you can add are interesting GIFs, a click to Tweet option, an interactive prototype of your tool (use Marvel!) or a fun and interesting quiz.
Your content CTAs can also have a compelling image designed to get users to click on it.
If your readers primarily use a desktop to view your content, you can also include QR Codes in your content. How can you use QR Codes?
If you’re promoting your app, QR Codes are the best way to get users to download your app on their respective app store.
Or, if your primary goal is to get more inbound interest, then use a predefined message tied to the QR Code. It can be sent as a text message on SMS, WhatsApp or email.
You can also use QR Codes to offer exclusive content or share a coupon for offline purchases.
Creating a custom QR Code with a logo is easy. We have a no-code platform that lets you accomplish this in minutes.
Bridging the gap between potentials leads and conversions
Write. Update. Repeat.
If I had to summarize the mantra to write a highly converting blog post, that would be it.
While there is a plethora of marketing tools, tips, and tricks available for brands to increase conversions, a brand’s image is defined by the content it creates. That’s why when you think of SEO, you think Backlinko or digital marketing brings Neil Patel to mind.
The eventual goal is to become an expert and offer unique insights into your domain to stay ahead of the competition. So, while your competitors chase short term success, you can reap the long term rewards.
