You're working hard on your SEO, learning about keywords, adding title tags, and meta descriptions, and that's great. Your SEO efforts help increase your website's visibility online and boost your traffic.
But what happens when that traffic gets to your website? Is your site working to help your business, or is it actually hurting you?
Listen to this week's episode and find out what hurts a business so you can make sure you're not making any of these website mistakes.
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Podcast recording and editing - Descript
Episode Transcript
Hi there, and welcome back tothe podcast.
I'm so glad that you are herewith me today.
So today's episode is a littlebit different.
We're not just talking about SEOtoday.
Today we're talking about ourwebsites and conversion, because
this is part of the entireprocess, part of the equation,
SEO, search engine optimizationis going to boost our
(00:22):
visibility.
And bring traffic to ourwebsite.
Now we need to make sure thatour websites are set up to do
their job and that they are ableto help convert that traffic
that comes to visit, or thosepeople who find out about us and
come visit the website.
And I had.
This.
I kept seeing this come up againand again and again in a couple
(00:43):
of entrepreneurial groups thatI'm in, and it was like, you
know what?
I wanna write a blog post onthis.
I wanna do a podcast episodebecause I believe very strongly
that there is a correlationbetween our traffic and our
conversions, and if we startincreasing traffic and we do not
see an increase in conversions.
It's because there's somethingwrong with our website.
(01:04):
We are not set up forconversions, and that means our
website is hurting our business.
And I see so often peopleasking, Hey, I have my opt-in,
I've got my webinar page.
Nobody has signed up.
Would someone take a look at itand you look at it and it's very
definitely hurting them and theydon't know it.
So let's talk about what couldpotentially be hurting your
(01:26):
website just to make sure thatyours is set up in a way that
that traffic that you'regenerating from your SEO work is
going to pay off.
So what we see, what I see morethan anything is it sites that
struggle.
Have a problem.
There's five problems.
I see.
(01:46):
Number one is it is notimmediately clear what your
business does, who you help, howyou help them.
Maybe you haven't quite figuredout who your ideal customer is,
like we talked about last week.
Maybe you're still kind ofstruggling with that.
Maybe it's just not clear.
Maybe you're not using the rightlanguage, you're not using the
(02:06):
words that they're looking at.
Maybe it's kind of cluttered.
It's hard to tell.
There's a lot of information.
There's a lot of graphics.
It's hard to know where to look,how to focus your eyes.
The other thing that can just beis that it's hidden, like your
message, your text is hidden onmobile, and most people are
(02:27):
gonna initially start searchingon their phones.
So what I want you to do todetermine is this a problem, I
want you to go to your website,on your computer, and on your
phone.
I want you to look at yourhomepage.
No scrolling, no movementwhatsoever.
Is there a sentence that tellsme exactly what you do and who
(02:50):
you help?
Is there information about that?
Like if you go to mine, it'sgoing to tell you.
It used to say, I make SEO.
Easy to understand.
Now, I believe it says, I helpyou be visible online because
I've had to change my messagingslightly because of all the
shifts with Google.
But you want something likethat.
One sentence, who are you?
What do you help with?
(03:11):
And stay focused on them, on thevisitor, not yourself.
This is not about you.
This is about them.
How do you help them?
Because what I want you toremember.
Every person visiting yourwebsite is asking the same
question.
What's in it for me?
Why would I trade you myinformation?
(03:31):
Why should I trust you?
Why should I buy from you?
Because they have a question.
They have an issue.
They need something, and theyneed to be convinced that you
can help them.
And when they're first coming tosee you the first time.
They're gonna be skeptical.
They're not going to justbelieve that you can help them,
and it's very likely they're notgoing to come back to your site
(03:53):
again without additionalprompting.
So it's really important thatwhen they come on their phone or
on their desktop, they can seewho you are and what you do and
how you help them immediately.
So that's your five second test.
Can someone tell and.
If you aren't sure, ask yourmom, your cousin, somebody who
(04:14):
knows you, who doesn'tunderstand what you do for a
living.
We all have them.
Ask them to look at your websiteand see if they can understand
without scrolling in fiveseconds or less what you do.
If not, you need to make anadjustment.
You need to change your openinghero section on your homepage
because most people are notgonna scroll.
(04:36):
So it's really important.
The next thing we need to lookat is.
Are you getting traffic?
But your email list is notgrowing.
So if you are getting traffic,your SEO is working.
You are more visible in AIsearch.
People are finding you, they'recoming to you, but they're not
signing up for whatever it isyou offer as your freebie.
(04:57):
That's a problem.
Because we want them to convert.
The only way they're gonnabecome customers is if they
become leads.
Somebody who's just coming toyour website to visit or to
check it out the first time,they're not yet a lead because
you don't have their contactinformation.
You cannot nurture them, youcannot engage with them.
You can't really do anything.
So what you need to make sureis, is your.
(05:20):
Opt-in.
Your freebie, your valuable freeoffer, whatever you wanna call
it.
Everybody calls it somethingelse.
Is that easy to see?
Is it clear what it is?
Is it easy to get and torequest?
You want to have as minimal arequired number of sections to
(05:40):
fill out to get your freebie.
Truly the only thing you need istheir email address.
So on my freebies, you'll noticeif you go to my website, I ask
for your first name.
It is not a requirement.
I do that because I like to beable to personalize my emails.
I like to be able to know whoI'm talking to, especially when
you send me questions.
You reply to emails.
(06:01):
I go look and pull it up and seeif I have your first name so
that I can reply back with thatbecause it just is nicer.
Then I require the email addressbecause I cannot send you the
freebie that you're looking forwithout having your email
address.
So that is the only thing thatis actually required.
What you wanna look at is, doesmy opt-in, like is it prominent?
(06:24):
Can I see it without scrollingon my homepage and on my phone?
Really important that you cansee the opt-in without any
scroll on your phone because youwant them, when they come to
your website for the first time,they need to see that so that
hopefully they'll sign up for itbecause the reality is if they
don't sign up for it, then theymay very well forget who you
(06:44):
are.
They may not come back.
You may miss out on that person.
So make sure that it's reallyeasy.
Not only what do I do.
But where is my opt-in?
And then from there, I want youto look at some of the opt-in
performance.
I had this conversation with astudent recently because she
wasn't sure if she had createdthe right opt-in.
(07:05):
She had a new opt-in sequence.
And people were signing up forthe freebie and they were like
signing, it was a free class.
They were signing up for it, butthey were not scheduling the
consult call.
And so she was really confusedas to why they weren't.
She'd had 200 people comethrough and request the freebie,
but nobody had requested aconsult call.
(07:26):
So we talked about that just tosee, and we looked at it and
it's like, okay, 200 people sawthe freebie page.
80 of them signed up for thefreebie.
So she had approximately a.
35% signup, which is okay, it'snot amazing, but it's not bad.
We wanna see 30 or bettergenerally on your freebie like
lending page.
But then when we went from those80 people, not one person had
(07:50):
signed up for a consult call,which told me something was
broken at that stage of thefunnel.
The actual lead capture wasfine.
It was something in the followup.
So then I looked at it with herand I realized it was, I believe
the way that her follow-upsequence was formatted because
her call to action was buried.
(08:10):
It was very hard to find, whichmoves us into item number three
that I see, and that is thatthere's a problem with your call
to action button or call toaction phrases.
In her case, she had a videosequence to kinda warm people
up, bring them into her world,and rather than sending people
one video each day with a bigcall to action button to book a
(08:32):
consult under that video, shehad one landing page with five
videos on it.
And it wasn't till you got allthe way to the bottom of the
page that there was one call toaction button.
So I had her, you know, if thiswere mine.
This is how I would do it.
This is what I would dodifferently.
So she's in the process ofchanging that, so hopefully
that's going to increase herconversions.
(08:52):
The other problem I see issometimes it's almost impossible
to figure out what you'resupposed to do.
There's pictures behind, likethere's pictures with text on
top of it, or there's textthat's like white text on a blue
background.
That's almost impossible toread.
What I want you to look at withyour hot.
Call to action buttons inparticular is, are they high
(09:12):
contrast?
Is there a big contrast betweenthe button color and the font?
We're talking blue with white,dark blue background, white
font, um, white background,black font.
We want big, bold, easy to see,high contrast.
The other thing we wanna see isit, is it a color that is
(09:35):
unique?
I don't want you using the samepage that's in or the same color
that's in all your highlights onyour page as your call to action
button.
Your call to action buttonshould be.
One color and one color only,and it should be the only thing
used in that color on that pageso that it stands out.
You also wanna look at the textand the size even of your call
(09:57):
to action buttons.
When I worked at the firstagency I was with many years
ago, we actually did a wholetesting series.
In emails for one of ourclients, and it was a large,
they're at your house.
They're delivering packages toyou every day.
They were one of the majordelivery companies, okay?
And we tested in their emails,did turquoise or yellow or
(10:19):
orange work better as a call toaction?
Which one got people to clickmore?
Once we established that it wasorange, by the way.
Once we established that orangeworked better, then we tested
placement of the call to actionbutton.
Did it matter if it was at thetop, if it was in the center, or
if it was at the bottom?
And I'll be honest, I can'tremember exactly what was the
winner for that,'cause it's beenabout 15 years since I did that.
(10:41):
But what you want to look at is,is it clear?
Is it easy to read?
Is it high contrast?
Do you know what it looks like?
Like what you're supposed to do?
Is it.
Cutesy or is it straightforward?
Get the free guide.
Take the free class, learn here.
Like tell them what they'redoing.
Give them that little MicroConconversion, because that's going
(11:03):
to help.
The fourth one we've kind oftalked about already, and that's
that your site looks good, butit's hard to use on mobile.
So we've talked about how itlooks on mobile.
Now we need to talk about theactual functionality, the actual
usability on mobile.
So sometimes we see sites thatare beautiful.
But are not super mobilefriendly.
(11:26):
What I want you to do is go toyour site and look at each of
your core pages.
On mobile.
You should most likely have whatwe call a responsive design
website.
At this point in time, they'vebeen around for a long time.
All that means is that yourwebsite template is designed to
look nice at any size.
(11:46):
So whether it's on a phone, it'son a tablet, it's on a computer.
It's designed to adjust, so youwanna make sure your screen
size, your content looks good.
I had a situation recently withone of the pages where it looked
great on the computer, but whenI went to double check it on my
phone, the text and the imagewere actually overlaying on top
(12:07):
of each other, and you couldn'tread the text on one of the
pages.
We ended up having to remove theimage on mobile only so that.
It still was easy to read.
You do not wanna have anythingjumbled up on mobile.
You wanna make sure that it's areally easy user experience on
mobile.
The last thing is just, is yoursite hard to read or understand?
(12:31):
Are you using text that makessense?
That's easy to understand?
Are you using words that youraverage fifth grader, fifth
grader, so approximately 10years old, understands because
they say, when we are creatingour content, we need to write to
a.
Fifth grade comprehension levelto make sure that we are really
(12:52):
working with the generalpopulation.
We don't want to have contentthat is above our reader's heads
that makes them feel intimidatedor like they're not smart enough
to work with us.
We absolutely don't want that.
We want them to be feel seen andheard and understood and see how
we can help them.
The other thing is just makesure that you don't have issues
(13:16):
with the text overlay and thingslike that on your mobile site.
Just make sure it's easy toread.
Look at your opt-ins.
Don't have a big picture withlots of like, I saw one
recently, it was a picture witha mountain and then it had small
text in white and it was like awebinar opt-in and I'm like, oh
my gosh.
First off, this has nothing todo with the webinar.
(13:37):
Second off, that text isimpossible to read on top of
that picture, like put a boxbehind it.
Make it easier to see.
Make your text stand out.
Use a bigger font so it's easierto read.
There's so much you can do, butyou really wanna make sure.
If you're getting traffic toyour site, let's make sure that
your site is geared to help youconvert that traffic.
(14:00):
We need to make sure that yourfreebie is front and center.
Your call to action button iseasy to read.
It's high contrast.
It stands out.
People are going to be morelikely to make that conversion.
We wanna make sure you have theinformation that they're looking
for and that it's really easy toread and see and work with On
(14:21):
desktop, mobile tablet's, not asimportant, but I'm not saying,
don't worry about tablet, justin general.
We don't see as much trafficfrom tablet, but we wanna make
sure that it is a good userexperience no matter what type
of device they are on.
We also wanna make sure that.
Your website is optimized so wecan get the traffic in, but
we've gotta do more.
We've gotta get, once they cometo the site, we need to make
(14:43):
sure we're doing what'snecessary to build that email
list, generate those leads, andmake those sales.
Otherwise, we are wasting oureffort with our SEO and I don't
want you to do that.
We gotta do both parts of it.
Alright, that's it for today.
I will see you back here nextweek.
Go take a look at your website,make sure that you are not
(15:04):
inadvertently or accidentallyhurting yourself.
I wanna make sure that yourwebsite is working for you.
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