There’s a really popular sentiment in the online world that power is in the list. If you’re not building your email list, then you’re missing out on the opportunity to convert prospects into customers. And frankly, it’s pretty much still true today. But one of the things that I often find people make the mistake of is not optimizing their website to capture the most traffic from who is already landing on their site.
So today’s article, we’re going to be taking a look into Brian Dean from Backlinkco’s website and a few things that he is doing so effectively to easily capture more folks into his email list. By the end of this article, you’re going to be able to take these principles for yourself and quickly see conversion increases for your own websites.
Digging into Brian Dean’s homepage
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Brian Dean is very well-known in SEO. He has great videos on YouTube that I definitely recommend you check out. But the first thing we want to look at here is we want to look at exactly what’s going on with Brian Dean’s homepage and why is it so effective.
So the first thing he’s doing on his homepage is he’s delivering a clear value proposition and why you would want to join that value proposition or take the action, get exclusive SEO tips that I only share with my email subscribers. So right off the landing page, above the fold, we have a clear call to action where it’s clear that Brian wants you to input your email here, and he does a few things from a psychological standpoint to help improve conversions here.
The first thing he does is that he clearly communicates what the value is for joining this list. He creates a clear in-group versus out-group. There’s people that are just visiting his website and then there’s his exclusive SEO tips for his email subscribers. So he’s creating this email subscribers group that you definitely want to be a part of in order to get the exclusivity.
The other thing that he’s doing is he’s going ahead and adding some social proof. He’s got the VP of marketing from HubSpot talking about how this blog is good, but you know what’s even better is the newsletter. So notice how he’s providing this immediate social proof that confirms or validates the statement that he put above in his header.
So what can you take away from this? If you are looking to improve the conversion on your overall homepage towards your email list, make it so that the reader or the prospect is going to have some sort of clear outcome from join your list. Maybe it’s a freebie, maybe it’s getting smarter five minutes a day as the Morning Brew website says, or it’s some sort of clear desired outcome that your prospect cares about a lot. And then from there, if you can, ask your existing list for some sort of testimonial that supports the clear outcome that the the new prospects are going to get for opting into your list.
How he make opt-in really easy
It’s something in which it’s just an email address. He doesn’t collect your name at all, and he makes the call to action really risk-free in which it’s just try it. So it’s something in which, it’s not like I’m locking you in forever. It’s just like, put in your email, try it. Right.
You can definitely test this out
The other thing he’s doing on the right-hand side that you can definitely test out, and you’ll see this with a lot of online course creators, is he has this nice, bright, smiling face that’s clearly showing that, you know, he’s trying to position himself as an authority in the SEO space and that he really welcomes you into this list.
So right off the bat, this is one of the first things that Brian is doing so effectively in terms of building his list is. His homepage is optimized towards his email subscribers and adding to that.
Other things to notice on the homepage
There’s a couple more things, but notice here how in the bottom of the home page, now he’s got this other call to action, which is getting a free guide in terms of the SEO definitive guide for 2022. So why is this useful? Well, it’s really useful because in the case where that first call to action did not really draw your attention, now he’s giving you an alternative offer to still get towards that email opt-in list of joining his subscriber list.
So lessons from this homepage. Make it really clear what the outcome is for your reader. Make it with social proof and make it really easy or risk-free to join that and then give another offer at the bottom of the fold if the person scrolls down and they didn’t convert at the top of the fold. Just some simple basics that you can do on your homepage to really start increasing conversion.
You also notice how there’s not too much on this homepage. It’s pretty straightforward, honestly. So visually, it’s not really cloudy in terms of what he’s trying to get you to do.
How he optimize his about page for conversion
Now, let’s go ahead and take a look at his about page to see what he does here in order to optimize his about page. So here you can see he talks about how you might be wanting higher rankings and more traffic. As you scroll down, what you’re going to notice is he gives some general stuff about his background and what this site is all about.
But then you’ll notice how he plugs his newsletter once more. He says, what actionable SEO advice from me? Then hop on the newsletter. Why does this work? Well, it works because he just talked about some of people or folks that he has testimonials from, like Inc, Forbes, the Huffington Post. And what he’s doing now is he’s saying, Hey, let me give you advice and it’s free. And so here again, email address, try it. And he’s got that social proof in place.
So notice how whenever there is some sort of opt-in, he’s supporting it with social proof and he’s making it super easy to just go ahead and opt in.
How he uses what outcome you can get from joining his list
And as you keep on going down, he gives more elaboration as to how he might be able to get you to the outcomes. So he’s talking about how Backlinco will help you get higher rankings and more traffic. And then notice how right after he has the section where he digs more into what he does differently, he goes ahead and says, Hey, want higher rankings? Then join 110,424 others, including top marketers from X, Y, Z.
What is he doing here? A couple of the same things that I referenced earlier. He’s creating an in-group versus an out group. People that are subscribed to his list versus those that are not. He’s giving you an impression that he has a lot of clout or a bigger audience because there’s over a hundred thousand people that are already on this list, and he is, again, tying it to the key outcome on this overall page of why you might be on this website.
And so what he always is doing on both of these pages that we’ve seen so far in his home page as well as his about page, is that he’s creating a top of the fold opportunity for you to convert as well as a second below the fold opportunity for you to convert again and notice how this is at the very bottom of the page is honestly where he does the stuff that you would have expected from an about page.
This is where you have your basic biography and whatnot. But he saves that until the very bottom because he just wants you to take action first. And so those are some key lessons that you can definitely take away from Brian here, is that he’s really keeping it top of mind that he really wants to join this newsletter.
What a dedicated page for a newsletter does
And the third way that he really hits this home is with what his third top navigation link goes to, which is a dedicated page to a newsletter. What happened when I clicked through that? Well, you’ll notice how the top navigation went away. In fact, the only thing I can do is I can go back to the Backlinko site, but he got rid of all the other things that might distract me from getting to the next point of conversion, which is proven SEO tips straight to your inbox. Get access to exclusive tips, strategies, and case studies that I don’t share anywhere else.
So again, getting straight into the outcome in terms of the top of the fold here, and then also having that bottom of the fold sort of email address that you can plug in as well. Why is this super effective? What he is doing differently here is he is having a dedicated page for his newsletter. He’s removing the navigation to remove the visual stimuli that might distract you from converting, but he’s still taking the same principles that he had on all those other pages.
Another way to build your email list
Now let’s go back to his homepage and look at his final page of conversion, which is really going to be his blog. If we look at his blog from the homepage of his blog, he kind of skipped here just because he probably built that custom just because he knows that I clicked at it from the footer of the site.
But notice how the top section of his blog is again, pushing towards that conversion. Get exclusive SEO tips. So this is just another place where you might convert into his list. And then he starts to have your standard blog feed. So this is where it’s like, you know, the thousands of backlinks and whatnot.
And you’ll also see how he’s got this locked away content. So he starts to talk about different things that you might be interested in, and then notice how, if you want to unlock it, hey, this is an opt-in. So again, giving that alternative offer within the content itself. So this is a great way for him to stretch his content further and increase conversions because he’s doing that to every other post or so as you’re looking at this blog feed.
Big Takeaway
- The first thing is we can make your homepage way more higher converting by including and above the fold and below the fold clear call to action towards your list.
- The second thing is don’t be afraid to put opt-ins on your about page. Not too many people do it, but it can be a great place because that sort of person is demonstrating higher intent anyways because they want to learn more about you and what better way for them to learn more about you than joining your list.
- The third thing is to create a dedicated newsletter page because that can be a great place for you to optimize for conversions. And you could also redirect traffic towards that page in the case where you have some other offer that you’re working on with another partnership out there.
- And the fourth thing is don’t be afraid to also put conversion above the fold at the very top of the page in your blog feed, as well as to lock away your content in order to get even more conversions.
If you just apply these sorts of small tweaks and changes to the four major sections of your website, promise you you’re going to get a difference in your conversion. I know because I’ve applied this to several websites of my own just from studying Brian’s work, and I hope that you can get a lot of outcomes from this too.
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