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In Episode 4 of Grow and Convert Deep Dives, we argue against the prevailing wisdom that landing pages convert better than blog posts. We share conversion rate data from two different clients of ours - both a mid-market/enterprise demo based SaaS company and a B2SMB self service SaaS company- and show how we're getting 2%+ average conversion rates on our blog posts and compare those stats to how their sites convert overall from organic.
Then we share data on what we've seen for average blog conversion rates and share what we think a good conversion rate target should be for each individual blog post.
Lastly, we share 3 examples of us outranking landing pages with blog posts and debate why we think landing pages are usually better to go after high intent keywords with-- and how we think they may have higher conversion rates (even if the landing page were to rank higher than our blog post).
This one gets pretty nerdy into the numbers, hope you enjoy it.
We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.
_
So today we're gonna talk about this
concept that we've actually written a full
post on called about landing
pages versus blog posts,
specifically conversion rates.
Because this versus like, why would anyone
want to care about landing pages versus
blog posts is all about this idea that
has come up in our client work, which is,
okay guys, so you're gonna go after
this like product related keyword,
this bottom of the funnel keyword,
um, like, you know, best,
whatever software shouldn't, why would
we rank for that with a blog post?
Shouldn't these really product
centric keywords be,
attacked with a landing page or a feature
solution page or something because it's
product centric? So, and in fact
it's summarized here we are post,
which is this one, Should you target an
SEO keyword with blog post or landing page
where we go into all this,
um, we actually show data.
Cause we did this analysis here, with
one of our clients that happened to have a
good example where they had like landing
pages that were topically extremely
similar, similar to blog posts.
It's actually really hard to
do this kind of analysis, right?
Because you can't theoretically,
like how do you like take a keyword,
the same keyword and rank two different
things for it in the same spot?
You can't. Um, so we had to find a
client where we had very closely related
keywords, some of which they
were using a landing page,
some of which using a blog post.
And the thing we argued that the blog
post convers rates are actually surprisingly
high. Um, that is summarized in the post
that's ranking above us only because it
has the featured snippet, which is
hilarious because it's, uh, like what,
what is a featured snippet
on this nuanced argument?
But it says here, while a blog post
offers a glimpse into your company's
personality, a landing page
converts readers into customers.
Yeah, side note, this is
why I hate featured snippets.
Why is this outranking us with, It's
just such a stupid statement and yeah,
it is a nuanced topic.
So we have a whole post digging
into arguing both sides and,
and trying to come to some conclusion
yet this simple sentence outranks us,
which is really frustrating.
Yeah, feature snippet should be
for like a definition of something,
but this isn't like, this is a verses
two concepts that have a lot of nuance in it.
I just, I don't know what's going on.
But anyways, this sentence in this post,
in this post, which is sort of like,
I don't know, like build,
build your blog.
What, why do, Wow, if you click
on this, it just opens it full screen.
Um, yeah.
So this is the entire post.
It's from here to here.
And, and what it argues is this prevailing
attitude that we're hoping this video
convinces you is not right or is not right
the majority of the time with evidence.
So we're gonna show actual data, which
is that most people think like this.
They think the blog is for, you know,
this kind of like brand building,
top of the funnel stuff.
Actually summarized pretty well in
this sentence offers a glimpse into your
company's personality.
Like, blog should stay away from business
like conversion and a landing page
converts readers into customers.
Argument: In this, in this
video is, that's not true.
We're gonna, let's talk about blog
posts, converting readers into customers.
If you've read or heard anything from
us, you know that that's kind of what we
believe. And so we are, we
have come prepared with stats.
Comments.
Lots of stats.
Okay, so
Lots of stats and yeah, so we just
wanna start with conversion rates.
What, like, what is a good
blog conversion rate?
Correct?
Yeah, so we'll start by just looking at,
we're gonna do a deep dive into this one
client. We've anonymized the
client for obvious reasons,
like most companies don't want their
conversion rate, publicized everywhere.
It is a B2B SaaS company and it's
one that kind of does, I don't know,
is it fair to say Benji Enterprise
deals, but like large 10, 20,
30k annual deal size type deals?
Yeah, I mean I would say
it can skew larger than that.
So yeah, I would, I would
say that's fairly accurate.
I would say average deal, deal size is
somewhere in the $20k to $30K range and then
can go all the way up to a $100 k plus.
Yeah, the, the point is
this is not self-serve.
It's like you have to request a demo.
So it's that kind of SaaS flow versus
we'll show a quick thing at the bottom of a
B2SMB SaaS, which is totally self-served,
like at these costs, right?
Take your credit card out
your company, you know,
if you have 10 employees gonna
be 30 bucks a month type of thing.
Um, this is not that.
It's like request a demo and then have
like an annual contract that's pretty big.
So.
As you said, um, Benji, so the first
thing is, if we're gonna counter this idea,
landing pages are for conversion blog
posts, just to give a glimpse to your
personality, I'm so offended by this.
Uh, is the first
thing is like, okay,
so like what are good conversion rates?
Like, let's just quantify it.
If we want to attack this with data
or prove or disprove it with data.
So first thing is here we have
the leads that our blog posts only.
So leads, this is I think
demo request, demo
Demo request. Yeah.
So let's define that.
Yeah. Demo request, uh, talking to sales
From our blog posts.
And again, there, let's define what
does that mean from our blog posts.
Um, and, and we have articles on this.
We have not done a video on this, but
we're talking about first click attribution
inside GA we, we use this thing
called the model comparison tool.
You can find it on the left hand side
of GA at the very bottom and the conversion
kind of dropdown in,
in universal analytics.
Um,
Yeah, and one thing to note on that
too is it's not a perfect measure.
And I've seen a lot of people
argue this lately that oh,
you shouldn't use attribution
tools cuz it's not perfect.
So this definitely undercounts,
but it gives us a guiding light.
Yeah, well that's important.
It's not perfect in the way that it should
not be perfect, which is it undercounts,
if anything. Yeah.
Because if someone uses a different browser
or something and or they read it and
their coworker ends up signing
up, but your blog post did it,
you're not gonna see that.
But that actually is even more.
But the point is our, the leads
have been, have been going up,
so just know that the raw number
of leads has been going up.
But this analysis we happen to do actually
a while ago, many, many months ago,
maybe a year ago because, and, and
you can tell the backstory, right?
The client was worried about
their organic conversion rate.
Yeah. They, they were questioning why
their organic conversion rate on their site
kept dropping in was really low compared
to what they thought was good.
Uh, but then I think I asked what
was good and they didn't really know,
but they just felt like
the, the number was low,
which I feel like is actually
typical for a lot of companies.
Yeah. So oftentimes
you, you look at your,
your blog conversion rate or your overall
organic conversion rate and you're
comparing it to let's say
a paid conversion rate.
And so your numbers are gonna be like .
1% .2%, 0.
3%, something like that compared
to let's say 3% on, on the paid side.
And so you look at those channels
and you're just like,
our blog or our organic is really
low converting, Why is that?
Um, so yeah, let's dig into that because
I think part of it is just a function of
the way that people are measuring this
and not segmenting out different parts of
their site and, and, um, different
mediums of traffic, uh,
which can skew the numbers and make them
seem lower and or higher than they should
be. Uh, so we want to kind of just dig
into how we did this analysis here, uh,
talk through the different conversion
rates once we segmented different parts of
the site. Uh, and yeah,
So the first thing is, okay, well
so what are they talking about?
So the first thing is we just looked
at overall conversions from organic traffic
and looked at the conversion rate there.
And so what they felt was
low was in this range .
1%, and I guess this last
month that we did it, um, 0.
42%. So this is kind of 0.
1%, I should say from 0.
1% to 0.
42%. But the vast majority
of months are just 0.
1 to 0.13. Okay. And
Again, I think we should define what
the conversion is and it's a demo request.
A demo request. And we're looking at this
only from organic traffic to their entire
site. So, so then, um, as you said this,
the first thing that we wanted to segment
out to like dig into what's
behind this is extremely common.
And I've seen a bunch, we've had a bunch
of clients kind of run into this issue,
which is, okay, well where is the
majority of this traffic coming from?
So, so we know if, again, if you've seen
any of our other videos or read anything
on our site, everything is
about bottom of the funnel.
And so we know first things first, look
for the like few pages that are getting a
massive amount of organic traffic.
Cuz it always has some 80/20 or really
like 99/1 type of rule where there's gonna
be some behemoth thing.
And typically those don't
convert really well.
And there was, uh, and I'm calling
it for privacy sake, top of the funnel,
mega post, you know,
It was, it was, yeah, it was essentially
a microsite that they created to rank for
a search term and it was a way
for them to try to generate leads.
As we've mentioned it, it does
generate a ton of traffic,
but the conversion rate for
this entire site is really low.
And so it really skews the numbers
on what's working on the organic side.
And look at this, I mean, that's
the majority of their traffic.
Like 200,000 of the 2 41 comes
from this thing, this top
Of line. Also a side note, cuz I do
think that we should bring this up, Um,
A big reason for doing this
analysis too was because I,
I believe it's once a Google Analytics
property goes over a hundred thousand
sessions per month.
And I'll have to double check
that in the background, but I,
I think that's the metric.
Google Analytics starts to sample the
data and so it doesn't give you an accurate
representation of what's
actually happening.
Yeah. And so even to do this analysis,
what we had to do was then go into ga,
go into short time periods.
So I, I think either two
weeks or one month, um,
because that a hundred thousand metric
is within the timeframe that you're,
you're viewing in.
And then do all these calculations.
So segment the data, um,
organically and then, uh,
these different segments looking
at only the microsite,
only the homepage and that kind of stuff.
So just wanted to let you guys know that
because if you have a lot of traffic to
your site, your, um, both your conversions
and your traffic and your organic
traffic, if you're looking at ga, um,
sometimes it gives you different numbers when
you look at the data in different ways.
And a lot of people don't know
that that could be the reason why.
So check that if, if your
site has a ton of traffic.
Okay, so then going back
in here, um, this, so,
so this thing had like
ultra low conversion rates,
which I'm trying to signify
with like a darker red color.
So one, I mean this is the majority of
traffic is converting at 0.06 or this month
0.12% was the conversion rate.
The majority of that organic traffic via
this one microsite was converting at 0.03,
meaning the rest of the traffic must
have been converting much higher to get that
0.03, up to 0.12.
So when we look at our posts, again,
these bottom of the funnel posts with this
many leads per month, and we look
at our posts, it's converting,
which is green here, really
high, 2.4, 2.7, 1.5, 1.8.
So it's dramatically different now.
I mean, one thing I want to be clear about
and not give the wrong impression is the
raw number of leads is still lower.
So like in this case, their top
of the funnel thing, as you said,
is not just a post, it
is an entire micro site.
And even though their conversion
rate is so low here,
the volume is so unbelievably high that
it's still generating a good amount of raw
conversions.
And I, and I think this is a
bit of an aside, but these videos,
we love to do these asides is I think
there's sometimes a misconception,
at least in conversations we get
into on Twitter or some reactions, um,
to the stuff we say of like, grow and
convert thinks you should never do top of the
funnel. And it's like, that's ridiculous.
We're literally doing YouTube videos,
um, like this that are not ranking for our
own business for just like content
marketing agency, right?
So like, it's not that we don't believe
in that there is a place for it,
we just think you should quantify it.
And I will say the vast majority
of companies do not like,
will not have a single content asset
like a microsite that generates hundreds of
thousands of organic visitors
every month to it.
I have almost never seen it.
So this is absurdly high traffic
for a single asset and yeah.
And so if you can produce that
and produce this many leads a month,
even though the conversion rate is low,
all the power to you, you should do that.
But just keep in mind, for
the majority of companies,
your top of the funnel asset is gonna
be going after these like general beginner
tip keywords, like 10 tips for this
and how to do this beginner level.
And you're like, well, it's a b2b, uh,
client and their advanced, and you're like,
it's none of anonymous, it's
not generating anything.
The majority of top of the funnel posts
we see in client analytics produce like
zero to five signups, sales form fill
outs, demo request fill outs or whatever a
month. So this is definitely an anomaly,
but we should call it out for what it is,
which is it is producing a good number
of raw conversions even though it has an
extremely tiny conversion rate.
Is that fair?
Yeah, that's fair.
And then the flip side to that, and also
what led to this analysis is then if you
just look at our lead numbers compared
to overall total conversion numbers, um,
besides September, on the overall
side, that seems like an anomaly.
Um, we, We somewhat get uncomfortable
about our own results because we're saying,
okay, if we're only generating 34 demo
requests and the whole site is at like 200,
is that making a meaningful difference?
And I think the answer becomes clearer
then once you start segmenting this,
this data and starting to see where
the conversions are coming from.
Because if you're not segmenting
out branded search,
so people that already know
about the product Yeah, it,
it can make your data look a lot worse
than it actually is because the majority of
these total conversions are
coming from the homepage.
Yeah. And so if we're trying to isolate
our marketing channel or campaign or
whatever it is and, and say, how are we
doing relative to all the other marketing
activities and you're measuring compared
to just branded search, I mean,
everything's gonna look a lot worse.
But when you look at the numbers
like this and you're saying, Okay,
we're generating, let's say 20 or 30,
um, compared to a hundred, 110, okay,
now we're making 20% of overall
site conversions, maybe 15%.
It, it, it actually does
make a meaningful difference.
Yeah. Uh, so just depending on the marketing
savvy level of the people listening.
So just let me just define a few things.
So by branded search, um, Benji
means like looking at conversions if
People search for a grow and convert
and ended up on our homepage.
Yeah, that would be basically what's
in this blue column right here.
Yeah.
Yeah. Which for an agency that
sounds like a little bit silly,
but like you can imagine
for product based companies,
if you're QuickBooks and on the marketing
team and you are and you're looking at,
um, organic conversions and conversions
of different channel and you're comparing
to overall and a huge chunk
because you have so much click,
something like QuickBooks, Salesforce,
Airbnb, I mean these brands have so much
brand clout, but this also translates
to smaller brands, branded searches,
any term organic terms that involves
that word, QuickBooks in the search term,
QuickBooks versus this QuickBooks
pricing, QuickBooks, this and that.
Uh, if you're looking at signups from
that, of course signups from that is gonna be
huge. It's people that are already
aware of your brand, right?
Some of them might just type it in and
press enter too early without pressing .
com and it might as well
have been direct traffic.
And so that, that's what Benji
means is like, that is so high.
What, I mean you could say it's almost
unfair to compare and you say, well unfair,
you're just trying to make your job easy.
No. Like literally the
rest of the job of,
of marketing is of course
the people that know us,
there's gonna be a decent
conversion rate.
What we're doing as marketers is trying
to get signups from everyone else and from
an SEO perspective, then
our job is literally like,
well what about the people
that don't know us?
Why don't we rank for keywords
that they would Google?
And so if you're then comparing to people
that already know you, that's ridiculous.
And so when we segmented that
out here for this client,
it was homepage organic
traffic, We, we figured it,
it's not easy in GA or possible in GA
to segment out all branded search cuz GA's
not gonna show you all keyword, um, all
keywords that are inside organic, right?
If you go into organic
and look at keywords,
the majority will always
be parentheses not set.
And so you can't really see like
exactly what keyword, how many people,
what landing page, how many conversions.
But as a proxy we can use organic
traffic to the homepage.
Why? Because the majority of organic
traffic to most companies, in this case,
SaaS companies homepages
is branded search.
So that's kind of like a proxy of that.
Yes. Some people's homepage also will
rank for some non-branded category term,
Right? It'd be like QuickBooks
optimizing their homepage and that.
Yeah. And, and some of the people that
go to the homepage and type in your brand
name might have read an article first.
So it's not a perfect measure,
but I think it just,
But it's something.
And so the homepage itself is generating
a hundred off of this amount of traffic,
a hundred signup demo requests a month
off of this amount of traffic leading to
like a conversion rate
range between what?
1.3 and like in one month, basically 2%.
But the majority of these months
are like 1.3, 1.6, 1.8%.
And so if I plotted the two down here,
we can zoom in, zoom in, um, and here.
So people can see it.
These bottom of the funnel blog posts
are converting right on the same level
between one and two and a half percent.
And in fact we have three months,
4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 months where
we're higher than the homepage.
Meaning like these terms written
for and ranked for by blog posts,
not landing pages are converting at
or above by conversion rate perspective.
The homepage where, which gets mostly
branded search traffic homepages,
organic traffic conversion rate because
mostly gets branded search and is a
homepage, meaning there's like a big
request demo button in the hero unit.
It's like there's like
CTAs all over the place.
And so this, going back to the
beginning of our conversation,
this idea from this post of a blog
offers the glimpse into personnel,
your company's personality while a landing
page converts readers into customers is
not true. It's just not true.
Yeah. Yeah.
, it's just not true.
It's like this blog post
is actually converting well.
And then if you look at these numbers
by conversion rate versus the other things we
talked about this top of the funnel,
mega post and all organic traffic.
I mean it's just tho those are
like just blips on this radar,
again from a conversion rate perspective.
Now, um, we can then
do a final example here,
but before we get into what we we're
gonna do in this video that's pretty
interesting is we're gonna
look at specific keywords now,
not from these clients cuz we don't wanna
identify like clients whose conversion
rates we're showing, but we'll look at
examples from other client work we've done
of individual blog posts ranking at the
top or near the top and then versus other
people's feature solution landing
page style post ranking elsewhere and,
and talking through that.
But before we do that, just
to show a separate example,
we're talking about B2SMB here, Client
number two still SaaS much lower price
point, much higher lead numbers.
So this, we're talking about a free trial
sign up and right now averaging something
on the order of 200 from our blog posts
alone directly attributable to our blog
posts is 200.
So the actual number
is much higher there.
We see conversion rates blog wide.
I mean we're talking at
this point for this client.
I mean how many must we have?
Like 60 posts?
Yeah, probably something like that.
Yeah. And just like, I don't
know how much traffic.
Um, so this is solid like numbers
behind it between two and 3% overall.
There are individual posts
that convert much higher.
For example, in our, you know, well known
pain point SEO post in this screenshot I
show on almost every one of these videos.
The bottom post here that I always talk
about with the high conversion rate shows 4.
3% conversion rate.
So individual blog posts
can be even higher.
But I wanted to show this as an example
to say like there are many, just like, I
Think there's some for this company
that are ranking 10 plus percent.
Yeah. Um, and so let's get into
those specific, but I, but yeah,
like the whole point
is this one to three,
two to 3% conversion rate
from traffic to blog posts
To free trial signups or demo requests.
And actually we should
pause there for a second.
It's clear now, but I want to emphasize
when we talk about conversion rates,
we're talking about two product
signups, demo sales form free trial.
We are absolutely not talking about what
I'm gonna call like content conversions,
which is put my email in to get a white
paper or an ebook or join the newsletter.
A lot of brands and marketing teams count
that as like a conversion and then like
some SDR or sales team like works that
list like basically emails people a thousand
times asking for a demo.
No, that's a much more
low intent conversion.
So we're talking about product conversions
one to 3% and that's great and I think
majority of people assume
that that's not possible.
And then this first graph here and this
first example compared to the homepage
saying like, that's pretty good.
That's actually really good to prove
this statement like blog is only a glimpse,
glimpse into your personality
is not true commentary Benji?
Otherwise. Let's get
One, one other thing on that spreadsheet
that we might wanna cover,
cuz it's something that I noticed and
I'm sure people are gonna wonder this too.
If we go back to the other example,
Uh,
The la Nope.
down the last one.
Yep. I, I just noticed someone might
ask why is the conversion rate dropping over
time? Uh, and that, And that's
also just because of our strategy.
So we.
We say we're gonna go after the really
bottom of the funnel post first,
and as we start to exhaust those,
we'll move up the funnel.
And so naturally as
you move up the funnel,
the conversion rate will drop because
you're gonna start generating more traffic
and the conversion rate per
blog post will be lowered.
So that average drops.
So just wanted to mention that cuz it's
something that caught my eye and I'm sure
other people are wondering like, oh
well you had 4% conversion rate or near,
near 4% some of those months and
now it seems to be dropping below too.
Why is that? That's why.
And in those early months, conversion
rate is just kind of settling to the mean.
I mean you're, this is based on small
amounts of data, like a few conversions,
but yeah, over time you
accumulate more traffic.
It's not gonna be quite as
targeted as the beginning.
But you see that despite
that conversion rate drop,
first of all I would say this is holding
pretty steady minus some issues in the
last month. And then the overall
number is increasing, which is awesome.
Yeah. Also, something that we didn't
cover, um, that I think we should cover in
this is just what is
a good conversion rate?
We didn't really talk about that because
we get that question all the time.
What are some of the averages
that we, we see across the site?
Just what is a good conversion
rate for a blog post?
I'd feel pretty comfortable saying
a good conversion rate is 1% plus.
And so we typically see our bottom of
the funnel blog posts convert at 1% plus.
Whereas when we've measured conversions
site wide, so companies that have a mixed
strategy or tend to focus more on
bottom of the funnel, I mean, sorry,
top of the funnel, we, we see conversion
rates site wide of 0.25%, uh,
from organic, uh, fr from a blog post.
So when we measure blog conversion
rates and and that or
Less
Sometimes. Yeah.
Or less. And so that's pretty dead on
with what we saw here when we analyzed their
whole site conversion rate was
somewhere in like the 0.1 to 0.25.
That's pretty typical.
And so I know we get that
question all the time.
What is good plus 1% is, is good for
a blog post and then sub like 0.5% is pretty
typical.
Yeah, I mean I I would agree in fact,
but maybe I would be even more harsh.
Like I think if you're targeting a buying
keyword bottom of the funnel keyword,
like if you're under a percent, like 1%
is like for me it's almost the expectation.
Yeah. And like good
would be like two plus
I'm being conservative here, you're
Talking about is blog wide
even for this first client,
I mean how many blog posts
have we produced for them?
Like over
50? Yeah, a lot.
Yeah. So across 50 blog posts we're
doing like 2% plus in this last month.
But even here 1%.
So for an individual blog posts, I mean
the majority of people that we talk to,
whether it be companies, clients or just,
um, people in our course in our community
that read our blog and are doing this
individually or for their own clients or for
their own employer, they're
just starting it.
You know, they're like, okay,
what should be the first, you know,
the last video we did was like, what
should be your first few blog posts reports?
Few blog posts should be some of
the most high buying intent keywords.
, because otherwise then why, why
aren't those the keywords you're doing for
those? I would expect at least 1%.
I mean, for example, this
screenshot, this was 4.3%.
Um, so yeah.
And then, and then the other thing is
this graph I was thinking was to help answer
this question of what is good because
it's using this homepage organic traffic
conversion rate as a benchmark.
So if your blog posts are going off to
after non-branded terms are getting organic
conversion rates of at least that.
So it's like this has two disadvantages.
The green line is blog posts
are going after non-branded terms,
whereas we know majority of homepage
organic traffic is branded for almost every
company. Second disadvantage,
this is second supposed,
let's put it quote unquote disadvantage
that people think as per, you know,
that where we started in the video
is that the homepage is built to convert,
it will always have a CTA at the top.
It's like sparse language, like selling
features and people think blog posts are
not converting.
That person thinks the blog posts are
about showing your company's personality.
So it's two supposed disadvantages
and yet it's converting on that order.
You know, that's my argument
is that that's pretty good.
Yeah, that's perfect. Cause I also think
this is a perfect tie in to then the
landing page versus blog post
debate because I don't know,
I don't know where this number came from,
but I've always heard the same number
since I've been in marketing, which
is landing pages convert at 3% benchmark.
Like, is that number even true?
I, I don't know because I don't
know where the data comes from,
but that's the number I've
heard for 10 plus years now.
And so if we're saying landing pages
convert at on average 3% and our blog posts
are somewhere in the
two to 3% range plus,
because we're saying average across
everything, um, again, that,
that kind of disproves, that landing
pages convert better than blog posts just
alone, just in the data
that we've shown so far.
Yeah. But I want to keep the conversation
going here cuz I think there's a lot of
nuance to this debate.
Uh, for example, can you even get your
landing page to rank for the keyword that
you want to target? Uh,
does it convert better?
There's all these different
questions that we need to answer.
So, so that's a perfect segue into looking
at some examples because if you're,
you know, what you just said is no blog.
I mean, we just are proving that blog
posts can convert at this two, 3% plus.
So now the next question is, well why?
So I think what's behind people like
this guy's statement of blogs are not for
conversion. When it's time
to convert, use a landing page.
It is, you know, let's unpack
the assumptions there.
Um, what, what are the assumptions?
I guess he just, it's, it's like,
it's just like kind of a fake,
I think it, it, I think it's just,
I'm trying to think of the word, but, uh,
what inertia I it, or I don't
even know if that's the right word,
but essentially people
Have been, it's an old belief continuing
Or it's, Exactly.
So I don't, I don't think anyone has
really challenged these assumptions or done
the analysis themselves.
And so they'll repeat what they've heard
that landing pages are the best way to
convert someone. Yeah.
And I think that's likely true here,
that people just have historically produced
top of funnel blog posts.
They haven't really made up a
meaningful amount of conversions.
And so people assume that
landing pages convert better.
And having done this analysis
now and doing this analysis,
when we got challenged by a client, cuz
that's how this whole blog post came up,
was we had a client challenge us.
Some new person at a company
came in and said, Well,
why are you going after these keywords
when we could go after them with landing
pages because landing pages
convert better than blog posts.
And we're like, Well,
hold on, is that true?
Is that, is that true?
So we, we did the digging and got the
data and did the analysis and we came back
and we said, Well, that's actually
not true, or it may not be true.
And so having that assumption and going
down that path may not make sense here.
And so,
Yeah, I think in your inertia comment,
like I'll just say I think there's a reason,
which is it goes back to kind of the
fundamental difference of grow and convert
and, and what we say in,
in almost all of our content,
which is I think people are just in
the habit of using blog posts for non
conversion related marketing.
They use it to announce like news.
Yeah. They use it to do random
top of the funnel brand building.
So like sure if your QuickBooks and,
and instead of using a blog post to rank for
best small business accounting tools,
which is very high product intent,
if instead you use your blog, which by
the way accompany the size of QuickBooks
into it, probably does
use their blog like this.
If instead it's like QuickBooks, like
the, the blog on growing your small business,
and it's just like random
small business growth tips,
of course it's not gonna convert a lot.
Like of course the only purpose of that
is to show your company's personality.
So it's like if you continue to
use it for non-con conversion stuff,
it's not gonna convert.
It's not a surprise .
It's like that's the reason
there's an inertia is they're,
they're still using it in that way.
Yeah. But so now that's a good point actually
transition into these SERPs and say,
well what do the details look like?
How are these posts written and structured
when we are ranking via blog posts for
buying and product related search terms?
So first example from our client, Geekbot,
who by the way is also paying for ad
space on this term.
Um, The term is Slack retrospective bot.
Quick thing on Geekbot is it allows
us, we're also a user of Geekbot.
We have been using it for
years, uh, every single week.
But is, it allows us, allows teams to
do these standup meetings where they ask
these three questions.
What'd you do today?
What'd you do yesterday?
What are you gonna, what's,
what's your progress?
No, what did you do?
What did you accomplish today?
What are you gonna do tomorrow?
Or something like that. And then, what
are your obstacles that people used to do in
literal physical stand up meetings standing
up so it doesn't take a lot of time.
You can do that over Slack.
The Slack bot asks those
questions, employees respond,
and you can put all the responses in
a single channel so that managers other
employees and team members
can see and be like, um,
on the same page of what everyone's
working on and issues that they're running
into. Um, a retrospective is kind of
like that, but it's not a daily question.
It's when a project, um, or I guess like
some code push so comes from some agile
world, uh, is done, then you, you go back
and you ask this series of questions and
some recommendations of what
those questions should be.
But again, instead of doing it in
person or over zoom, um, with Geekbot,
you can do it in Slack it that
people answer it on their own time,
it's asynchronous and it puts it
into a channel for like record keeping.
So if we look at, so
this is a buying term,
like they're literally looking for
a Slack bot that does retrospectives.
They're ready to like
choose something, right?
They're not like researching or whatever.
I mean they're researching products,
but then it's not some how to,
if we look at it, obviously
the word slack is in the term,
there's Slack like app directory pages
that if we click into it literally just goes
to that apps.
Like you can like download it
and attach it to your Slack, right?
So this is not like a page, but uh, and
we're ranking our both blog posts ranking
above it. I'll dissect ours in a second,
but then we do have another blog post from
a competitor standup lead,
but we have now team retro,
just some other company with their Slack
integrations page to basically show the
same thing. Okay.
On the number what four
spot a GitHub, uh,
page of another like
retro bot retro rabbit.
io, which seems like they literally
do this exact thing is they help you do
Retrospective. Maybe the only feature,
so I mean this is actually a good point
right here because I think this
is how most companies think.
So the pushback that we would get to, uh,
producing a blog post for
this keyword would be, Well,
isn't it better to get my
homepage to rank for this?
Or isn't this, wouldn't it be better
if I could get my feature page on my site
that's conversion oriented
to rank for this keyword term?
And wait,
Hold on. Why, why do they think that?
Because,
Because they, Well, because they think
it's gonna convert at a much higher rate
than getting your blog posts to
Yeah. Cuz they think, look,
the homepage looks like this,
like it start a free trial like this,
this is the path in which we would want
someone to actually start.
So yeah, they assume better conversion
Rate, but there, but there's
two issues with that.
So one is, can can you even get your
homepage to rank number one for this query?
Right? And, and there's
a lot of nuance to that too.
There's, there's all different things.
So one thing I'll say on that is that
most landing pages and home pages are built
to convert and not to rank.
So they have somewhat competing objectives
in order to rank for this keyword,
you need to include certain content,
certain arguments on your page,
and most companies aren't willing to add
the content that might be needed in order
to get this page to rank for
the query that you're going after.
And so even just there, you're at a
disadvantage compared to many of the blog
posts. And then the second thing is,
is kind of the whole topic of this is it,
it might not necessarily
be true that the blog,
that the homepage or the features
page will convert at a higher uh,
rate than the blog post.
And why is that?
For me personally, I, I think blog posts
often that are focused around a specific
query argue how to solve a problem for
that specific query better than a general
homepage or a landing page might,
uh, they also add additional context.
There's a lot of different reasons why
a blog post may convert at a higher rate,
but I all we're trying to say is don't
necessarily make the assumption that if my
homepage, uh, ranks for this keyword
it's gonna convert at a higher rate and that
you can out outrank a blog post or a different
type of page with your homepage or a
feature page.
Yeah, I mean put simply, do you think
Google is algorithm is gonna put retro
rabbits homepage above slack, three
slack pages for Slack retrospective bot?
Maybe. I'm sure there are examples that
you could pull up where that happens,
but not likely.
But we got ours up there.
, Is that too cocky to say?
Like, and so anyway, so we have these
but, but Benji's point is, is um, good,
is like if this is your home page.
And you're like, Well listen,
Slack retrospective bot,
we're noticing that there's
intent and concepts.
You're maybe using a tool like Clearscope
or you're just like analyzing the SERP on
your own, the search engine
results page, page one.
And you're like, Okay, there's a, People
also ask and you just think, okay,
to really match the search intent
of this term, we need x, y, Z concepts.
You're gonna convince your CMO CEO directors
to add all that to your homepage,
which is like usually a really like
fought after thing where like real,
the real estate on your homepage, like
everyone's fighting over what to put on
there. Like no, they're not gonna add
a bunch of crap to their homepage to rank for
something, but you can add whatever
you want to a blog post.
So then if we look at what, what
did we actually write in our blog post?
How do we do it?
The big key, I mean, analyzing our blog
posts is probably gonna be either the next
video we do or one of
the subsequent videos.
So I don't want to get
into it in a large extent.
But the big thing I wanna scroll and
show you is our blog posts sell the client's
product. And again, I think behind all
of these assumptions is most people think,
well, blog posts are not supposed to.
And in fact, sometimes there's this culture
and content marketing that it's bad.
Oh no, that's too salesy.
We don't want to be too
salesy in our blog posts.
Blog posts are meant for education
and giving value, right?
We're like, No, they're not.
Not if, I mean it can be,
but if you're a whole,
if you're trying to rank it for a term
where someone is looking or comparing
products, your blog posts should
compare and sell your product.
Cuz that's literally
what they're asking for.
So the big takeaway here,
if we look at this,
is the whole concept is the title
is How to Use a Slack Retrospective Bot.
Okay, To Run Good Respectives.
But immediately we don't hide anything
we're saying We're gonna, this blog post,
we're gonna talk about how Scrum teams
use Geekbot and how Geekbot works.
And then as you scroll through the
post, it's literally a how to, like,
this is how this works, this is
why you can do this, check this out,
this is really cool.
And so it's a sales pitch.
I, I've said before, in other contexts
a lot of these blog posts will be write the
benefit of them is they to some extent
are a demo in written form that thousands
upon thousands of people who are Googling
things every month who are Googling
things that indicate they're in the
market for your product will be seeing,
It's like basically getting your demo
in front of way more people than the people
who actually request one.
So look at this screenshots and
I'm scrolling through the text,
but if you read these, um, the text,
like usually we sell things in a similar
format like here are issues, here's how
we do it, here's why we do it this way.
Here's how we design this product
this way, or do our service this way.
And, and so it, it sells
the blog post sells stuff.
So that's kind of key example number one.
Interrupt me Benji, if you have anything
else, say we can move to the next one.
I've lost Benji, you're back.
Are you there?
I can't hear anything you're saying.
You haven't been able to for a while.
I think it's the internet connection.
Oh no.
Can you hear now?
I have decent internet according
to the speed test.
But it says here your host
enabled low data connection.
But like don't worry, everyone is still
recording in high quality cause it's like
local or wherever.
Now I can hear you.
Hold on, try it again.
It said, the alert said don't worry everyone
is still recording in high quality or
whatever because it's like local for us.
Oh, this is really annoying.
I don't know what just happened Is
Headphones,
Maybe I can hear you now.
That's so frustrating.
I feel like we are on such a roll.
Well, I think you can still edit all
the stuff I said cause I think the actual
Riverside recording will keep
That. No, it, no, it will.
That's why I wasn't worried,
but, so, um, Speak again.
Vehicle routing software.
I dunno what is going on?
Try it again.
Vehicle routing software.
Okay. And by the way, even without
your headphones, I don't hear an echo.
I, I would need to turn
on echo cancellation.
Oh, it says I can't change
what we're recording.
Um, let me get my other
headphones super annoying.
I can hear you just fine.
Speak again.
Uh, Ghost Writing Service.
This is so frustrating.
You can't hear anything.
It's just, I just don't want
to do it without ad phones.
Otherwise it could, uh,
It could have Echo.
Echo. Yeah. I don't know if my side is
indicative of what the recording will be,
but even when you take
it off, it sounds the same.
Me take off sounds the same to me,
but yeah, I guess we run that risk.
Even the AirPods don't work
the regular ones airs don't work.
The ones, Oh, now there's Echo.
Yeah, I thought it was your internet cuz
it kept cutting in and out the whole time.
And then it just,
It could be, I mean, the
internet sometimes is shitty.
Here.
Feel like it's my computer, like nothing's
connecting to my computer right now.
So Norm
Testing echo?
Yep. There's a slight echo.
Literally, I'm trying to throw my phone
outside so it stops connecting to it,
but it won't
Oh, even if you choose the Bluetooth?
Yeah.
Why don't, why don't you go into
your phone and say disconnect
From this. I did.
And then it's automatically reconnecting
the second I do that.
Oh.
I've never had this happen before.
It must be something with my
Bluetooth settings on my computer,
because it's not letting me reconnect.
Take your time. You can always tell us.
Um, Or do you wanna,
I wanna like finish it.
We were just so
Close in re in red, Can you stitch two?
What if we close this start again
with echo cancellation on for you.
No headphones. And then
can you stitch it?
I mean, it'll be really annoying to edit.
Okay. Is it that the
big ones die battery?
No, they're, That's what,
I don't know what happened.
It was working and then
all of a sudden it just,
I couldn't hear anything you said
anymore and it was kind of doing that.
I thought it was your
internet cuz it was,
there were like ten second clips where
I couldn't hear anything what you said,
but it always reconnected and came back
and this time it just cut out for two
minutes and I thought it was gonna
come back and it just didn't.
Yeah. I only noticed when I stopped talking
and I looked at the Riverside window,
yours was like, there's no video.
Oh, yeah.
I, I did that because I thought I did,
I put on low data mode because I thought it
was your internet. Oh.
And I thought your sound would
come back and then it just
Didn't. Oh. Should I do that?
Maybe just in case that is
Also No, I did it for everyone.
Oh, I see.
Shit.
I don't know what is going on.
Why can I, I've never not
been able to figure this out.
Gonna turn off my phone.
There we go.
Why was it doing that?
There we go.
Speak now.
Hello?
Okay. Yeah, now it works.
Yeah, my phone was competing
with the computer for some reason.
That is very odd.
So I had clicked into, we're
just recording this whole time,
so you just have to cut all this.
Yeah, I mean that's easier.
Um, let me see.
Is this showing? Okay, so I
Would say like, sorry, like sorry
for weird transition or something.
We had some technical difficulty
and then just go right back into it.
Okay. Well just for your editing's sake.
I had before
I marked the clip, like when
I started having issues, so
It'll start. No, but I'm
gonna change something.
So, Okay. So at the end of my rant I had
finished Slack retrospective Bot and then
moved to circuit.
But then while we were paused, I was
just looking at this and I think actually I
don't even want to go to the,
maybe I go to at the end.
This memoir Ghost Riding
is a really good example.
So I wanna move here.
Um, okay, so you're saying after the
first example, just cut everything else?
Yeah, when I, when I'm like, okay, so
vehicle routing, like, just cut before that.
Okay.
Um, okay.
Okay. Uh, sorry for the weird transition.
We had some technical difficulties,
but we're good to go now.
So as a second example, I wanna look at
something we did, um, for a former client,
Scribe Media who writes
books, uh, for people.
It's like ghost writing is
one aspect of it, actually.
It's a huge aspect of it.
But if you want to get your book written
and you're not a professional author or
any kind of author and you're just
like someone who did something cool or a
business owner that wants to
use book for marketing purposes,
they can help you write your book
in a variety of different ways.
So a definite bottom of the funnel
keyword for them is memoir Ghost Writing
Services. Because the majority of their
clients, their books are memoirs of sorts,
right? Someone accomplishes something
great, uh, or what have you and wants to use
a book to grow their brand.
Um, and that's a memoir of sorts.
We're ranking number one for them for
memoir Ghost Writing Services with this book,
How to Choose a Memoir of
Ghost Writing Services for
that Blog, By
The way, with that blog .
Yeah. With this entire
book we wrote for them.
Um, but if we look at the other things,
and I'll go in and dissect this and look at
it, just the way we looked at the Geekbot
example is we have a bunch of other
services with I believe
all feature pages.
So this is Ghost Writing.
Services Oh, this is kind of a blog post.
I dunno
What you call this. It's landing
Pages. The wordy landing
Pages. Yeah, it's a landing pages.
This is one of those landing
pages where they,
they did make that concession where they
decided to add more content to the page to
try to get this rank.
Yeah. And it, and it seemingly worked.
So this
Is not a horrible idea.
Like, I don't know what you think.
I mean I think this is
a good compromise for
Sure. Cause
Like in the end, what
does it really mean?
Like this definition, Whoa,
they have a lot of popups.
Um, but wow.
Okay. This is so funny.
Yes, I do.
What? That's so funny.
Okay. That's annoying.
But, but oh my goodness.
Okay. That's not, I don't know if that's
helping their conversion rate or not and
is literally making noise, but
like, I'm not even gonna keep it up.
But , that was great.
What this, it's a decent concession
because in the end,
like what is it landing
page versus blog posts?
Like at, at some point
those things can merge.
If you just take a landing page
and you add a bunch of texts to it,
like is it really that different?
Does it really matter if
it's on slash blog or not?
No, it's a page on your site that's ranking
for a term that has conversion intent.
Okay. Yeah.
And, and we've done that for some clients
where we've produced a blog post.
Yeah. So written content that we think
needs, needs to be on the page in order to
rank. And then the company then took
all that content and reorganized it in,
in the format of a landing page.
Yeah, that actually begs a good question.
I don't think we've sat down if we have
the data, or at least I haven't seen it,
of whether the conversion rate actually
goes up when they have done that.
That would be great. That's
kind of, that was, um,
but I just while you were saying that,
so I just opened up these three and it's
more of the same.
It's like ghost writing founder.com.
Um, and again, this is
a landing page, again,
it's like decently wordy for a landing
page, but it's selling the services.
And this is by the book what
SEO firms would tell you,
what marketers would tell you.
And this is for sure
a landing page, right?
It has like quintessential
stuff on the left form,
right on the right all
above the hero unit.
Like someone looks like they
ab tested this, They were like,
let's put some security logo on there.
Um, wow. They got some text effects.
What is this? 1994?
Wow. Why is it all flying at me?
Um, so for sure, uh, writing a landing
page and then ghost words.com,
I will make a point about the conversion
rate on a page like this.
If I was just researching different companies
and I came across a blog post that
gave me a bunch of information on
what to look for in these services,
tried to help me make the decision,
sold me why they're the best,
I would probably be more likely to fill
out the form after reading that than I
would if I knew nothing
about the company.
And they just have some
basic info and a form.
I don't know that I'm ready
to talk to someone yet.
I I'm still probably in the research
phase and I, and I think,
think that could be another reason why
the conversion rate on a blog post could be
higher than just a landing page.
Yeah, I I've seen this debated in CRO
circles and like anything in marketing, like,
it depends, right?
Like I think what you're saying makes
a lot of sense in this case because look at
this like, scribe what we're gonna get
into here, so let's look into our post.
But case in point, I think in the
post it says somewhere it's like $50,
000 or something, it's like $48,000.
So like, you know, and this is a purchase
where you're not gonna be writing a bunch
of memoirs, you're only
writing one memoir, .
So it's a big decision.
So what you said makes a lot of sense.
Like you gotta be damn sure you're going
with the company that like you want to go
with, that's gonna help
ghostwrite your memoir.
But like for some of these, like, I'm
gonna request a demo of five different SaaS
companies because I was told by my boss
that we need to pick a new, you know,
like content management software
or something like, you know,
like those paid search landing pages.
Maybe you don't need to say
a lot and you just put that on.
Whatever. So, but I, I
hear what you're saying,
and I think there probably are a non-negligible
amount of businesses in particular
services like this, not like products
or like Me Too products that you,
it is more compelling to read about it.
And so again, here's ours,
How to choose a memoir,
Ghost Writing service for your book.
So first things first, we're ranking number
one, as you pointed out on the Geekbot
example. Like, yes, they have these,
but let's just think about it.
Like most people say what the number
one listing gets on average, 34% it clicks,
and then I think it goes to like 15, 9 8.
Like, and it drops significant,
I would say, especially when you're
above the people also ask too.
So basically we're on an island up there.
Yeah. So first things first.
If you think it's converts
higher, how much higher?
Because you're probably getting
three x the clicks here at number one,
so you're getting three x the traffic
then number five, number four, and I,
I'm just, that's a ballpark.
You can look up, There's a bunch of SEO
companies that like publish this data on,
on the clicks by position, but
it's something on that order.
I think the first one's
like 30 something percent,
and I think down here you're
in like definite single digits,
maybe low single digit percentages.
So if you are like landing page only
makes it to position eight already,
you're like, well, it better convert
like five x better than a blog post in order
to make up for that traffic loss.
Then when we look into the blog
post, just like the Geekbot example,
but this one goes even more explicit
and more educational because it's a service.
Um, It outlines what should you be
looking for in a memoir ghost writer.
And it like carefully outlines
this, and this is not BS fluff copy.
We do extensive interviews with the actual
experts that do ghost writing or manage
the process at the client organization
in this case scribe and write down their
thoughts. Um, you know, I mean we
turn it into a post, the two types.
So this is like now educational,
like you were saying, if,
if you wanted to actually
find a ghost writing service,
this is actually helping you understand
like what's at your disposal as opposed to
this. And then the best part that I
wanted to get to was how scribes memoir,
ghost writing service is different
and what it includes.
There are five core things that separate
Scribe's, ghost writing service,
number one, number two, number
three, it costs this much.
So like, again, I want to emphasize
what I said on the Geekbot example.
A good bottom of the funnel blog post
is like a demo or a sales call in the form of
a blog posts. Yeah.
So that's why That's a great point.
A good chance of converting.
Yeah, that's a great point.
Think about the conversion difference
between someone who's read this entire post,
understands the cost and all the differentiators
who's filling out the form versus
that other landing page that
had the 50% off discount.
Like it doesn't give any
context about the service.
You still, the still the person
might be still in research phase.
So it doesn't indicate necessarily
buying intent that it could just be,
I want to talk to a salesperson and
could be turned off by the discovery call.
So the quality of conversion is much
higher coming from a post like this.
Yeah, exactly. That's what what you're
saying is reminding me of is that's actually
an analytics challenge, is we're
looking and even we're not doing this,
like we're looking at this whole thing,
this whole video today is about counting
the number of leads, like conversion
rate, We mean like how many,
We're not even talking about the quality
of them, but you make a good point.
If someone just comes in and fills out
a little form above the fold with a bunch of
random logos and crap all
over your landing page,
like what's the quality versus someone
who read about everything that you're like,
differentiates your service,
why, what it includes.
Or in the geekbot example, they read
all those, see all those screenshots,
see exactly how to do it.
Like, and they sign up.
Likelihood is pretty good that
they're like a, a, a decent lead.
So at this point we can, I mean
I can share one of the last examples,
but it's gonna be more of this.
So this is, uh, I think a blog post that
I actually worked on or edited with one of
our writers.
Um, for a longstanding client Tapclicks
which makes marketing analytics software,
but for enterprise marketing agencies,
and here we're ranking number one for
omnichannel. Reason for omnichannel, then
that's a really good keyword for them is
because enterprise marketing analytics,
what they specialize in is for firms being
able to handle and easily digest and analyze
data from when you're doing like radio
ads and podcast ads and TV broadcast
and digital, Facebook, Google, you know,
this and that. So you have
a ton of different marketing.
The stuff affects itself, like whether
you're doing radio ads and a geography
affects how your like Facebook CPC is
and your client spending like a million
dollars a month. Like there's
just this mass of data that is the,
not the same as analyzing like your
three campaigns on Google search,
like Google ads. Um, and so omnichannel
reporting, uh, is there, and you know,
again here we have like amayo.
com.
We have Salesforce apps in the Salesforce
app exchange ranking here.
Um, and we're, so first
things like, again, nuance.
com, nuance insights, like this
is clearly a product solution page.
Wow, McKenzie. is in here, But anyway,
the point is there are again,
a bunch of landing pages
ranking below us.
We're ranking number one.
Of course we're, you know, we're, we're
showing you they're ranking number one.
Doesn't mean you're gonna rank every
time, number one with the blog posts.
That's ridiculous. But again, this
is an example on a product side that does
something very similar to the
scribe post we talked about, like,
just like the scribe post
starts off often is like,
let us help you understand the market,
what you should basically be looking for in
a memoir ghostwriter.
This says like, what is this is, you know,
because the SERP demanded it and then it
lays out kind of the, the struggles
why most the pain points,
like what the situation is, why
most reporting tools struggle with it.
So what do most reporting's tools have?
Why is that hard?
And then it says basically here,
there's three characteristics.
A good tool, just like memoir, ghost
writing says must have qualities.
It says a good tool needs to be able
to do these things and it sells the heck out
of Tapclicks.
This is what we do instantly connect
screenshots videos like YouTube videos from
tap clicks, factor number
two YouTube videos.
And because this is an account that I
actively work on with or worked on with some
of our members of our team, Oh, you know
the conversion stats better than I do,
but I'm pretty sure omnichannel reporting
is converting for them like decently
well, yeah, it's one of the ones
that bring us in conversions.
Yeah. So I mean those are
the extents of the examples.
But I think, I hope if you've
made it to the end of the video,
like this idea in this featured snippet,
which pisses Benji off of a blog post,
offers a glimpse into your
company's personality.
A landing page converts
readers into customers.
You see that,
That that is one not true and
two old fashioned thinking.
And it's really about what converts
is any page that is ranking highly for
conversion focused keywords.
And I hope we've convinced you
that we've made an argument.
You can do that with a blog post and
one, it gives you a lot more room to rank.
Cuz if you're not ranking
in the top few spots,
you're not getting much
traffic from it anyway.
It doesn't matter what
your conversion rate is.
If you're on page two of Google,
I wanna say this clearly,
if you're on page two of Google, I don't
care what your page looks like or what
it's conversion rate is, because a great
conversion rate times zero traffic is
still zero .
So that doesn't matter.
So that's number one.
And number two, so one blog posts give
you a great chance of ranking cuz you don't
have these restrictions of
what you can put in there.
And number two, you can sell the heck
out of your product or service in a blog post
and you can basically turn your blog
post into a written static demo or sales
meeting and just sell it
and it'll convert well.
And we've shown you the data for that.