So, you have started your blog. Every week or so you sit down and type away at a blog post. It could be a quick update, a how-to in the same vein as this article or just a little bit of a rant. Whatever the case may be, no doubt you put a lot of effort into your blog. And yet it still doesn’t seem to be doing much for you.

No one is interacting with your content or sharing it on social media, nor are you generating much interest in your products or services that you mention in your blogs. The problem: you are not optimising your blog posts for audience conversion.

What is a conversion? Well, it depends on what you want to happen. If you are lifestyle blogger, then people sharing your content and getting your blog to a bigger audience would be considered a conversion. Whereas, if you are selling a product then obviously an enquiry into buying or a full sale would be your conversion. First things first, decide what a conversion would be for you and your blog. Then you can move forward with conversion rate optimisation.

With that in mind, here are some of the best ways to ensure that you write a high-converting blog post every time.

1) Easy to Read

Every blog post that you produce is beautifully written, the Shakespearean prose of the blog world in fact. Yet, if your audience finds it hard to read then it will be deader than Hamlet’s pet skull (more commonly known as Yorick the jester by all you Shakespeare fans out there).

Here are a few key pointers to improve your blog readability:

• ●Short paragraphs are a must - 5 or 6 lines at most.
• ●Use images or other visuals to break up blocks of text, while also giving visual context to your words.
• ●Include subheadings to highlight the flow of your points through your blog, letting the reader know what they are reading.

See what I did there? The inclusion of bullet points breaks up information into bite-size pieces. Another great way to improve the readability of your blogs and highlight your key points.

Overall, readability goes hand in hand with simplicity. Your audience is likely to bounce straight off your blog page if it looks dense and complicated, so it is important to keep it easy to read in order to prompt a higher conversion rate. If you are still struggling ask yourself this key thing: can a reader scan my blog and still walk away with all the key points? If the answer is yes, then you have a very readable blog post.

2) Beautiful Visuals

Blogs may be words, words, words. But that doesn’t mean that you should forget about the visual side of your work. Readers find blogs that have images, graphs or even infographics integrated within the piece to be much more engaging to read.

With 700 million monthly active users on platforms such as Instagram, it is no wonder that the internet as a whole is becoming a much more visual space. It may seem superficial, but it’s a proven fact. Blog posts with no images or very bad quality ones do not convert very well. Whereas, those with high-quality images improve their share rates by 121%.

So, how can you use images to make your blogs more convertible? Use free software such Canva to create striking banner images for your blog posts, while using photo stock websites to either buy or download for free striking images to break up your posts (Pexels is a great free resource for this).

If you want to try your hand at an infographic, then this can also be a great asset to your blog and something which is also very shareable on social media. Don’t feel like your design skills are up to it? Check out outsourcing websites such as Fiverr for a host of freelancers willing to do the design work for you, at reasonable rates.

3) Internal Links

So many people create a blog that goes nowhere. Internal links are vital on your blog, even if you think they just add a few hyperlinks in the middle of your text. For one, it helps your audience to navigate your website as a whole and can send them to higher converting pages (especially if you have product pages).

But, internal links also have a much more technical use. They help to define the structure of your overall site, giving your pages ranking power throughout the site. If you want to rank high on Google as well - and you do if you want your blogs to be high converting - then you also need internal links for the search engine’s spiders to crawl through. No really.

More officially known as Googlebot, this is a program that users a huge set of computers to fetch or crawl through the internet on a regular basis. This discovers new or updated web pages and adds them to the Google Index. Only through being on the index can your blog rank.

The key to successful internal linking is lots and lots of content. You need have plenty of web pages to actually link to in your blog posts. Ensure that these links use anchor text - usually a word from the title of the page you are linking to - whilst also making them as deep linking as possible. This means avoiding ‘shallow’ links such as the Homepage and Contact Us page, instead of linking to other blog pages or more other deeper subpages.

Of course, don’t go overboard with internal links. Your audience should still find your blog posts readable, not a sea of links. Averaging 3 to 4 per post is generally the optimum number. 

4) Social Share Links

One of the best tools to grow your blog and make your individual posts higher converting is social media. It’s using all of the usual suspects such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even LinkedIn to grow your network and spread your content far and wide. But, you can also use social media within your blog posts.

Prominent social sharing links or buttons can be a great way to improve your conversion rate. Especially if a conversion for you is to grow your readership, as it puts your content in front of more people. Statistically, readers are more likely to share an article if they read around 25% of the article rather than get to the end. Depressing? Yes. Also, something which you can use to your advantage.

To take advantage of prime sharing blog percentage, try to ensure your social sharing buttons are on the side of your blog rather than at the end. This way, your readers will not have to search far and wide to share your content. Nor will they have to finish the piece.

Adding prominent social sharing links to your blog posts is only one way to make it more shareable - there are six essential elements to make your social channels and blog work in perfect conversion harmony.

5) CTA

The final piece to the high conversion puzzle is your call to action. The final statement which finishes your blog off with a bang and leaves your readers wanting more. Plenty of times you will see ‘buy now’ at the end of an article and think: nope. It’s blatant and annoying, right?

Well, in a lot of cases that is what a CTA is. To avoid causing a ‘nope’ in your audience, however, you need to be a little more creative with your closing remarks. For example:

• Use strong command verbs - such as ‘download’, ‘subscribe’ or ‘fill out a form’. Tell your readers what you want them to do!
•  Use emotional words - such as ‘download my eBook now for an epic adventure!’. Exclamation points also adds excitement to your CTA.
• Numbers are convincing, don’t be afraid to throw in statistics to your CTA.
• Spice it up. Find new ways to say the same old thing, your audience will appreciate it. Instead of “subscribe now for-up-to date blogging news” write “hit subscribe for constant blogging updates!”.

CTA’s that actually prompt a high audience conversion rate can be hard to master. But once you find the right formula that works for your audience it can make your blog posts a converting machine!

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A converting blog post isn’t out of reach, simply keep these key thoughts in mind the next time you sit to write your blog posts!

Do you have your own super awesome conversion techniques? Share below!