Don’t Rely on Sidebars and Headers to Guide Your Visitors

From SEO Book page 11:

If you want your site to convert, assume many site visitors will ignore the
global navigation. Actively guide people toward conversion from within the
active content area of your website.

I’m starting to realize the importance of using content-based links to guide my visitors to important pages in my site.

You’ve probably heard of the phrase ad blindness. This happens when internet users start ignoring your ads. They ignore the ads because they want to read the content instead of the ads.

I think there is a similar phenomenon with sidebar and header navigation. Sidebars and headers rarely change so oftentimes your visitors will ignore them. I know I often ignore sidebars and headers. If what I want is not in the content portion of a site, I usually close that Firefox tab and look for another site.

So, if you have an important page and want many people to see it, find a way to link to it within the content area of your pages.

For example, some home pages look like this (the links in the picture are pointing to internal pages):

Many people will ignore the header and sidebar links. If don’t find what they need in the two links in the content area, they will click the back button and look for another site.

But what if you home page looked like this?

By having more links in your content area, you give your visitors more options to explore your site. You show your broad knowledge in your niche because you’re pointing to many different pages. Your pageviews will increase. Your visitors will stay on your site longer. And you can guide your visitors to more of your best content or your best converting landing pages.

Obviously, you don’t want your home page content area to have too many content-based links. That looks disorganized and spammy. But don’t be afraid to add an extra link or an extra paragraph filled with 2-3 links.

What about blogs?

Since many of you are bloggers, here are some ways to apply this principle to blogs.

Within your posts, link to other related posts. For example, this post is related to blog design and usability and navigation.

Figure out your best posts through by looking at backlinks, traffic, and feedback in the comments. Find natural ways to link to these posts often.

I think category pages can be improved. I would aggregate your best posts for each category. Next, write a short description for those posts. Then, add those posts with their descriptions at the top of their category pages. When someone visits your category pages, the first thing they’ll see is your best posts for that category.

At the end of each month, highlight your favorite posts of that month with a montly wrap up post.

Write a series of posts that are thematically related and link them to each other. Darren’s blogging tips for beginners is great example. This method allows you to demonstrate expertise in a topic. You’ll build trust with your readers. At the end of the series, you can leverage that trust with an product offer.

Conclusion

Don’t rely on sidebar and header links to guide your visitors. Instead, use the content area. Add more links in the content area to guide your visitors to your best content.

Do you use the content area to guide your visitors?