ContentHow to Increase the Profitability of Your Content

How to Increase the Profitability of Your Content

Do you have pages that drive conversions but aren't as prominent as they could be in the site structure or user's click path? Boost the profitability of your top performing pages by giving them even greater visibility on your site. Here's how.

rich-uncle-pennybagsMost site owners and businesses know exactly which pages on their site are the most profitable (i.e., the content that drives the most leads and/or revenue). If you run a site and you don’t know, then you really should figure it out today.

And since a primary goal of most organizations is to grow revenue, they might work to increase the profitability of their top pages with tactics like:

  • Hiring a conversion rate optimization specialist.
  • Using a fantastic A/B tool like Unbounce to test and iterate.
  • Conducting user tests to increase conversions, using an insanely affordable tool like UserTesting.com.

But another, often overlooked way to boost the profitability of your top performing pages is to give them even greater visibility on your site. Here’s how.

Move Your Top Content Higher Up in the Site Structure

When auditing a site’s analytics, we often come across pages that are driving conversions but aren’t as prominent as they could be in the site structure or user’s click path. Entrances to these pages come predominantly from organic search, so visitors rarely navigate to this content from other pages on the site.

This is a big opportunity. Even through these pages are performing well, we know they can perform even better if they were exposed higher up in the site structure.

Let’s use an apartment finder site we worked on recently a real world example throughout this post.

With this particular site, a large percentage of the leads came from organic search for apartments in local ZIP codes, like “apartments for rent in 02134.” The site had dedicated ZIP code pages with lists of apartments in that area, but these ZIP code pages were buried at least three clicks away from the home page. To reach them, you had to drill down through a click path of Home > State > City > ZIP Code.

By moving these ZIP code index pages higher in the site structure, we were confident they could drive even more conversions. Why? Because when your top content is easier to reach (for users and for engines):

  • It gets seen more often by visitors.
  • It gets crawled more frequently by search engines.
  • It sends a clear signal to engines that you place more value on this content (since it’s featured prominently across your site).
  • It earns a larger share of PageRank because it’s fewer clicks from the home page. And more link equity improves performance in search results and drives more traffic.

The steps we took to increase the visibility of the ZIP code index pages across the site included:

  • Adding a “search by” list of links above the fold on the home page with “ZIP code” as an option.
  • Adding a “search by” list of links in the site-wide footer with “ZIP code” as an option.
  • Adding a content box above the fold with a featured list of “popular ZIP codes” on all city and state pages.

Expose Your Top Content on Pages With the Most Visits

Another way to generate even more revenue from your top content is to expose/feature it on the pages that get the most traffic on your site. Doing this allows you to get your content in front of more eyes, more often, which can exponentially increase visits and conversions on those pages.

To find your most viewed pages in Google Analytics, go to Content > Overview and click the “view full report” link in the lower right. Then sort by “Unique Pageviews.”

unique-pageviews

Let’s use the apartment finder site as an example again. One of the top performing assets on the site was a beginner’s guide to renting an apartment. The free download signup for this guide drove a ton of leads, yet the guide was pretty much orphaned on the site.

As with the ZIP code pages we talked about previously, the majority of traffic to the guide came as first touch from organic search. So this seemed like another great opportunity, and our goal was to expose the guide as a soft offer on the site’s most highly trafficked pages to capture “top of the funnel” leads.

Steps we took to increase exposure for this asset were to:

  • Drop a banner offer/sign up for the guide at the end of the most viewed articles and blog posts.
  • Add a persistent offer/ad to the sidebar that was exposed across the site (exposing it site-wide meant it was present on the most trafficked pages).
  • Add it to a “most popular” box on the home page with a link to the guide.
  • Test a persistent pop-up box on key pages that mapped well to user intent.

Add Contextual Links to Top Content on Relevant Pages

Internal linking is an extremely effective but a notoriously underused SEO tactic. From an SEO standpoint, strategic internal linking can:

  • Reinforce semantic relevance for a page (via keyword anchor text), helping it rank higher for target searches.
  • Flow link equity from your “link rich” pages to your money pages.
  • Boost additional page visits and time on site (potential engagement signals).

When it comes to visibility, adding inline links can help get even more exposure for your top content assets and thus dial up profitability. The keys to doing this effectively are to ensure you’re placing those links on the right content and in the right context.

Let’s revisit the apartment finder site and their beginner’s guide to renting an apartment example once more. We wanted to identify the right pages to add inline links to the guide on, so we:

  • Audited the site and pulled a list of articles, guides, and blog posts that were the most relevant and best aligned with intent of the guide. Don’t aimlessly insert inline text links on irrelevant documents. It will only distract, annoy, or frustrate users.
  • Grabbed the report of the most viewed landing pages on the site that we used in the previous step.
  • Pulled a list of the most linked to pages on the site (the most linked to pages are often the most visited, but also contain link equity we could tap and flow the guide, thereby scaling our efforts). We used both OSE and Ahrefs for this.

We then weaved in links to the guide, with a goal of adding them above the fold so they’d get seen sooner and more often. We also prioritized placement on pages with the best user intent and paid close attention how it aligned with the guide’s subject matter. Finally, we added links in a manner that supported or helped the user get more information or find a solution, using descriptive and engaging anchors.

Taking the steps above ensured the contextual links to the guide would be seen as useful, and thus generating a high percentage of clicks.

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