In this short episode, I’m spilling ONE thing you need to do to your website this week that will help you increase bookings, increase sales, increase your email sign ups, increase affiliate revenue — ALL OF IT. And the best part? Is that it will take you around 30 minutes (or LESS) to do. Sounds too good to be true? It’s not. I promise. But this is something I literally have never heard anyone else talk about YET is something I do regularly to improve my content. Let’s get into it!
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As this episode airs, I'm actually speaking today at Showit’s Spark conference about affiliate marketing! And this episode is actually a tip taken from that presentation. This tip, although shared in an affiliate marketing context today at Spark, really applies to ALL parts of your business. Here are the steps!
Here’s what you should do to your website to increase bookings, revenue, and email signups: Sign onto Google Search Console to find out which blog posts on your website are ranking well on Google and then improve those blogs drastically in some really specific revenue generating ways!
So, that’s the overview of what you’re doing. But I’m going to jump into the “how” for the rest of this episode but first, I just want to remind you that we want to work with what’s already working for you. Too often with content creation, it’s always “write a new blog”, “make a new Instagram post”, “record a new podcast episode”, etc. Most of the time though, we ignore the content that is already out there in the world working for us!
One of my best secrets to having a profitable business while working part time hours right now is THIS. Make what’s working, work better.
How To Do This to Your Website to Increase Bookings
First of all, use Google Search Console! It’s a great free tool by Google. Similar to analytics, but different. If you don’t have it set up, make sure to do that now!
Login to Google Search Console, and on the sidebar go to “Performance” > “Search Results” > then “Pages”.
Now, you’ll see your top ranking pages. For our purposes, you want to focus on the pages that are BLOG POSTS.
You can sort this to be top ranking blogs in whatever time period you want. I like to look at a longer timeframe, like over 3 months for example. You’ll see the clicks and impressions for each post, then you can click straight over to your blog post from there!
Now for how to update them.
Update Those Blogs On Your Website to Increase Bookings
Next, it’s time to choose which blog posts you're going to update. You can update all of them or just start with the first one. I get that updating them ALL starts to sound like a bigger undertaking.
I’d recommend starting with the one that relates most to actual things about your business. For example, you might have a post that ranks the BEST but isn’t going to be traffic that wants to buy from you at all, and that could be one to skip. Not always though, because I have a lot of motherhood/personal posts that rank well that I do make money from with affiliate links!
As you do updates, think about cold traffic versus warm traffic.
Here Is a List of Things You May Want To Update
1. Look at the images
Do you have more up-to-date or better photos you can add to the blog post since when you first published it? Look through the images, whether it's the featured images or just images that are in the blog post itself. Can you update any of them to make them better and more compelling?
Read more: How to Use Paid Stock Photography to Completely Up Level Your Brand
2. Affiliate links
So this was a huge part of what I talked about in my Spark presentation, but update any relevant mentions of companies you're an affiliate for with affiliate links. So maybe in this well-ranking blog post you're writing about Showit versus Wix and you actually did not use your Showit affiliate link or Wix affiliate link anywhere in the blog post. That's a great opportunity. Hyperlink the text for whichever company you're an affiliate for (or if you're an affiliate for both) to that through your affiliate link. And you can also add a blurb about whatever your discount code is for it.
Read more: My Top 3 Hacks for Making It EASY to Make Affiliate Income
3. Add a Call To Action To Work With You
Add a call to action to work with you somewhere in the blog post. Maybe it's at the end, maybe it's at the very beginning, maybe it's mid post and you do a little call out. Add in a call to action to go to whatever page makes sense for working with you.
4. Add a Call To Action To Your Relevant Paid Offer
This one is similar, but add a call to action to your relevant paid offer. So for me, it might be a blog post that relates to stuff for designers where I say, “Hey, you're a designer looking to build an in-demand branded website design business, check out my course Booked Out Designer.” Maybe it's through a graphic, or maybe it's just text.
5. Add An Email Form Directly Into The Blog Post For An Opt-in That’s Relevant To This Post
The next tip for your website to increase bookings is to add an email form, like an email opt-in form directly into the blog post, ideally towards the top. So basically, look at your posts and see if you have a freebie already that is relevant, even if it's not a perfect match. Do you have anything that someone coming from Google might want? I bet you do!
Another thing you could even consider is whether or not you could make a freebie that compliments this well ranking blog post. Maybe you look at your freebie list and you're like, “wait, that would be awesome but I don't have any freebies that relate whatsoever to this blog post.” Maybe you could make one that compliments it (like a checklist or a workbook that goes with whatever the content is).
Adding the email form directly into the blog post has been one one website tweak that has just skyrocketed email opt-ins for me. And again, it's just making what is already working work better for you. I literally just add the opt-in and then you can literally see that web traffic and email opt-ins are coming from those blog posts.
6. Add An Exit Intent Pop Up Using a Tool Like BDOW!
An “exit intent pop up” would be when someone comes from Google and starts reading the blog, and then they go to leave for whatever reason, and then you have a pop up that's super specific to your blog post that encourages them to read something else or opt-in for something. BDOW! is a great tool for doing this (and not just this, like you can set something to pop up once they've scrolled to a certain percentage on a post, for example).
Real quick, I am an affiliate for BDOW!, and if you want to use my code, ELIZABETH, you can get 20% off your subscription. PLUS, I created a new form template for BDOW!. So if you're interested in trying this awesome email marketing tool, I made a form template so you can just add it to your account and customize it and have your first form. This could literally be the base for your exit intent popup. Head here to get it!
7. Add a Graphic To Promote An Offer
Graphics just embedded within the blog post can be really huge for making people take action towards something else. So again, this would open a new window, but maybe it's for an affiliate of yours, and the graphic is saying, “Hey, get 20% off,” you could embed that in the blog post. This could promote anything! But the idea is, the graphic stops the scroll and gets people’s attention.
8. Link to other relevant and more updated blog posts
Link to other relevant and more updated blog posts. So maybe this blog post that's getting a lot of traffic is not your most recent thing on this particular topic. You can link within your blog post “if you want to read more click here.” Encourage people to go other places and then maybe those blog posts better sell your services and things like that.
9. Update The Words
So first, I would encourage you to read this blog post. And then maybe as you read it, you realize like, wait, I have things to say on this topic that I didn't have to say back then. And again, this will vary depending on the post itself. But read it and decide what you could shift within your writing without hurting the SEO. So likely you'd want to avoid updating any major headings, but within your paragraph copy, see if there's something you can add or update.
This has actually been one of the biggest things I've done when I've gone and updated my old blogs that are ranking. Sometimes I will feel like, “Wait, I have a new perspective on this because I've changed as a person because my business has grown and I'm different than when I first wrote this thing that's ranking.” That’s normal and encouraged!
10. Add a Blurb About You
Add a little blurb about you to your blog posts on your website to increase bookings. So this could again be an interrupter within the copy or be something that happens at the very end of the post, but just add some information about you. Even something simple like, “Hey, thanks for reading this blog. My name's Elizabeth. Here's a bit about what I do. Click here to work with me,” with a photo of you. I think that can be really powerful.
To take it up a notch, you can also think about linking out to your social media. Or link to your About page or work with you page. But just adding some information to encourage this new “cold traffic reader” that came from Google to get to know you and your business better.
11. Link to Your Podcast or YouTube Channel
Next, link to your podcast or YouTube channel if you have one to encourage people to go over there too. So again, this could be at the end, this could be a button, this could be an interrupter in the middle of the post that says, “Hey, enjoying this blog post. You'd love my YouTube channel.” That sort of thing could be really, really awesome (and so easy to do!).
12. Add Images To It That Someone Could Easily Pin to Pinterest
Last but not least, add images for someone to pin to Pinterest. So this could be something you add just at the very end of the post (like one or two long vertical images) that are meant for someone to pin to Pinterest. Because again, if this post is ranking well, this might also be something where people are wanting to save it and pin over to Pinterest. So that can just be another way to optimize it.
Ready to Improve Your Website to Increase Bookings?
Finally, I want to just encourage you that you do not need to do all of those. In fact, if you actually did ALL of this in one post, your blog post would probably start to look kind of crazy. For me, I do have a wide variety of things that I do to update well-performing blog posts and what I do depends on the content that does rank well in my business.
Also know that this list isn't extensive. You might, as you start looking at your blog posts, think of something that I should have had on that list. I just want to encourage you to try this, set a timer for yourself and go update the content piece and then count it as done for now.
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