SEO copywriting checklist: Are you making this conversions-killing mistake?

Welcome back! Are you selling a product or service online? Then you’ll want to pay close attention to this second video of Heather’s SEO Copywriting Checklist series – where she pinpoints website content that is ripe with SEO copywriting opportunities.

Using her recent experience with the Feedly website, Heather addresses the conversions-killing error of making your call to action hard to find. She then discusses how to optimize the placement of your call to action to maximize conversions.

Tune in as Heather describes her “where’s Waldo?” website (mis)adventure and the lessons it holds for SEO copywriters:

How do I sign up?

I was inspired to discuss the mistake Web writers make of burying their call to action by my hide-and-go-seek experience with trying to sign up for Feedly. Like a lot of people using Google Reader, I knew I needed to migrate to a different service, and I’d heard great things about Feedly.

This screenshot is of Feedly’s home page above the fold.

I’m looking at the copy and thinking “huh…I’m not quite sure where to sign up…” Then I spot that little hyperlink there at the bottom of the paragraph and decide that has to be it, as it’s a hyperlink and prominently positioned above the fold.

So I click on that link and…

Oops! Not here!

…Bam! I’m taken to a blog post that talks about keeping the site up, listening and adding new features.

So by this time I’m highly confused about how I would actually be able to use Feedly!

I back out of the blog post and go back to the home page, then…

There it is!

…I discover that if I scroll down below the fold, that’s where the CTA is! Buried beneath the fold.

I went back to the blog post and noticed that had I scrolled down past it, I would’ve seen “Note 2.” And although it is not necessarily a very strong call to action, technically it is a call to action.

But again it was buried beneath the fold, hiding under the blog post, so I didn’t see it immediately.

Takeaways

There are some lessons to be learned here:

Don’t hide your call to action and stick it below the fold.

If you want people to do something – especially if it’s an instant type of thing like “get Feedly” – you want that front and center. So…

Consider the main action you want people to take, and make that action easy to take.

Don’t make your prospects play “where’s Waldo?” with your call to action – because it’s also very easy for them to think “nevermind”, back out of your site, and go to a competitor’s.

When you make that call to action easy to find, then you’re definitely going to increase your conversion rates!

Thanks for stopping by! As always, if you have any questions at all, please let Heather know. You can email her at heather@seocopywriting.com, or find her on Twitter @heatherlloyd.

See you next week with another installment of the SEO Copywriting Checklist series!

photo thanks to denverkid