Conversion Matters: Branding And Tips

Conversion Matters sports the tagline “Analytics, blogging, search engine optimisation and social media marketing”. It is written by Adam Taylor, a fellow Brit who is 1 year a head of me in life and has started Uni. I am glad to see he boldly stuck to the .co.uk domain whereas I flimsily flopped for the American dot com for ‘catchiness’ purposes.

While I am spending my gap year blogging and working on independent online ventures, Adam worked as web developer at a search conversion agency in London.

The Strong Point: Content

In terms of content Conversion Matters boasts some great articles. For example 5 killer tips for starting a search engine optimisation business contains much more information than the expected 5 killer tips. In addition, Adams’ post called Relative vs. absolute links revisited contains info I admit I was completely ignorant about.

Conversion Matters But So Does Traffic

Conversion Matters has been up and running since the end of May, making it older than Blogging Fingers and so there is plenty of reading material for a first time visitor. However, too many of the posts have a worrying 0 comments. What can be done to increase that all important conversion rate to retain visitors?

Blog Building Tips

1. Header graphic and theme customisation. I have nothing against using free Wordpress templates (in fact Blogging Fingers is using one), but for a blog to stand out a unique header graphic/logo is needed. Adam is using the clean yet generic BloggingPro theme and there is no header graphic. It’s like it has no face! There are so many blogs about SEO and social media having a nice original header and a logo is essential for blog branding. A great place to get a cheap logo, which could double up as a header with a few tweaks is at the Buy Sell or Trade section of the Digital Point Forums.

2. More frequent and consistent updates. I understand that not everyone can post every day but keeping the frequency consistent is something that with enough planning is possible for anyone. I noticed sometimes there are posts every other day, or sometimes a few days in a row and then another few days without a post. If the purpose is for Conversion Matters to be a “flagship blog” as opposed to a small niche blog then posting more consistently would definitely help build a loyal readership and grow RSS subscriber numbers.

3. Show The Full Post. Some very successful blogs only show the title and a few sentences of a blog post and then ask the reader to click through to read more. This works for them because they always write something with real depth and analysis. This seems to be done ‘part-time’ on Converersion Matters with some posts being long and some being short. The variation in length makes me hesitant to click because I don’t trust that there is more to read. Showing snippets also puts a lot of amount of pressure on having a fantastic title.

4. Use the space better. I’m not sure what the BlogRush widget is still doing up after it was openly stated that only 2 clicks were received. The credits earned are still used up by the system if the widget is taken down. I would move the Mybloglog widget lower down to where to BlogRush one currently is and put a list of the best posts where the Mybloglog widget is. The “meta” links in the sidebar don’t really serve a purpose either.

Conclusion

Adam is clearly a smart guy (not only for buying a review on Blogging Fingers!). The content for making Conversion Matters a more popular blog is there. The main improvement is to do with branding and making the site unique.

Why not head over to Conversion Matters and subscribe to his feed.

Good luck Adam and keep up the good work with Conversion Matters.

Technorati Tags: web developer, Conversion

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