Stop Pogo-Sticking: 5 UX Principles That Skyrocket SEO & Conversions

Today you are getting user experience principles that you can apply to your SEO. So you get more conversions and less pogo sticking. Less pogo sticking that is a great SEO signal. So you get higher rankings, higher rankings, better sitewide quality which means other pages on your site rank even better and you are getting more conversions, more customers, more users, more leads. Five UX principles. That's what I am giving you. And I'm going to start with the least important to the most important. But the least important is also very important. So we're starting with number five. We're doing a countdown. We're counting back. Starting with number five. You want to build trust within seconds. What does this look like? And why? Why do why is it even important to build trust within seconds? Trust reduces anxiety. Searchers arriving to your content trust you more. They are more likely to stay, less likely to pogo stickick, less likely to go back to the search engine results pages and click on something else. That is pogo sticking. Search engines see that. They hate when that happens. You do not want people to pogo stick on your stuff. You want them to trust you enough so that they are willing to give you a chance. Easy fix for this. This is especially on conversionbased pages, but it can work on blog posts too. Include trusted logos like client logos, reviews and ratings, testimonials. You don't have to put all of this stuff above the fold before people start scrolling. You can put some of it directly below the fold once people start scrolling. That's directly below the fold. But you could have things like five stars above the fold at the bottom of the screen. Client logos as well. You see that all the time above the fold at the bottom of the screen. You just want people to trust you enough to stay. It could also be maybe the image that you use, the featured image is one of you holding an award that is related to the keyword that you are targeting or it's you just in a way that is related to the keyword that you were targeting. You could easily do this with a featured image. Could also be design. A cleaner design can build trust. Let's talk directly about design. Number four, moving down on the list, number four is reduce friction to action. Lower friction means higher conversions and less pogo sticking. Make your call to action buttons extremely easy to find. Put one above the fold. Put one at the bottom of the page. If you have form fields, minimize the amount of fields that you have. Ask only what is necessary. And be very clear with your call to actions. Instead of just saying, this is something that you see a lot. People will just say submit on their buttons. Don't say that. Say get my free audit or request a quote. Even something simple like try it for free. clear call to actions in predictable places that are easy to find because even if users stay, they will not convert if it feels like work. Number three, all right, this is something I know that you have seen this. I know that you've seen this way too many times. You've seen this on SEO pages that you've arrived on. People hate this. It's those block paragraphs that you see or block pieces of writing. Here's the thing. Most users don't read, they scan. I'm going to say that again. Most people who arrive to your site, they are not reading every word. They are scanning. They are scanning to see if this is appropriate for them. And even if it is, they still might not read every word. So what I recommend, and this really helps with converting too, but it helps with pogo sticking. Use very short paragraphs. I like to do two to three lines per paragraph. I keep the paragraphs very short. One to two sentence, one to three sentences. I like using bullet points. I used to use more bolding. I don't do it as much anymore because AI does it so often and I don't want my text to look like AI, but I still use I still will use bolding where appropriate to get a point across. And then I also use lots of H2 sections. When you think about it like this, okay, if someone is scanning, they're looking at the H2 section headers to decide, is this piece of content even for me? That's probably the first thing that they're going to look at is H2 section headers. Then they're going to start reading bits and pieces of your paragraphs. You want to make sure that their eyes are going to the right phrases so that they understand that your content is for them and they understand what you are offering so that they convert. So I'll use descriptive H2s, bullet points that get the point across that I want to make. If it's conversionbased copy, then it's like, okay, this is why you should convert. If it's top ofunnel and I'm explaining something, I explain it as clearly as I can with the bullets. Also, with shorter paragraphs, you're less likely to bury important things. When you have blocked paragraphs, if your most important sentence is in the middle, there's a good chance that people are not going to see that. A lot of people will read the first one to two sentences of a paragraph and then stop and then move on to the next paragraph. I'm sorry, that's just how most people are. So, follow those things so people don't pogo stick, so they convert more with your copy. Number two, there's a reason that I've been talking a lot about what is above the fold. Your above the fold section is the first thing that people see. And most people, I believe the stat was 60 or 70% of people don't actually go below the fold. You need to do your best to try to capture people right there. Right when they land on your page, users will decide within 3 to 5 seconds whether to stay. So your top section, it has to answer these three questions. When you make a page, you can use this kind of as a checklist to say, okay, am I answering these three questions? Number one is what is this page? Number two is, is this for me? So think about me as your target searcher. And then number three, what should I do next? That's why you have a call to action above the folder. That's why you give your answer. If it's top of funnel, you give your answer right away. And then you say, read on to find. And then you predict what your target searcher will want to hear next. So you want to have a very clear H1, very clear headline, one primary call to action. You don't want to have many call to actions that makes it confusing. You want to remove distractions. If you immediately have a popup, that can be hugely problematic. Very clear, few distractions, clear call to action, clear headline, right? As if you are talking to your target searcher. And the first most important thing, oh my gosh, is this important? It is. You want to match your search intent immediately. When somebody clicks to your page, they should instantly feel, they should feel, oh wow, this is exactly what I was looking for. Fantastic. Do this. Take your target keyword, put it in your H1, put it at the beginning of your first sentence. Make sure the core question that the searcher has is being addressed and answered within your first three sentences. Hopefully your first one to two sentences. Avoid any long introduction. Just get to your point very fast. This reduces pogo sticking so much because users don't need to hunt for relevance. They don't need to go and look throughout the page. People hate that. You give it to them right there. And then because you've now captured them, you can try to convince them why they should trust you, why they should convert with you. You can give them more, direct them towards other important pages on your site. You earn so much trust and make it so much easier to convert. When you think about who is arriving on your page from search and again writing for them and trying to give them what they want as soon as you can. There's the expression the customer is all always right but you know what the searcher is always right too give the searchers what they are looking for just immediately above the fold so they don't leave so our five UX principles apply to SEO on this episode of the show match search intent immediately make the first screen the above the fold make it crystal clear format your page for very fast scanning remove any conversion friction and show trust build trust early on. Honestly, even if you don't have logos everywhere and testimonials everywhere, just the fact that you are giving people the answer right away and writing in a clear way, using real images, not having a cluttered page, you don't immediately have a popup, all of that stuff builds trust, too. If you want to go deeper on all of this, my course, compact keywords, is specifically about doing search engine optimization that gets customers, that gets users, that gets warm leads. I give you my page templates both for single products or for multiple products. I show how to structure your site for these pages. I show how to do marketing that gets backlinks that brings relevant qualified clicks. Those are the most valuable backlinks. I show how to think about topical authority so that search engines understand what your site is about. And how to do a site audit to remove bloat. If you have a ton of bloat on your site and you are doing great offensive SEO, that bloat could hold you down. and you might not even realize it. I go into all of this in compact keywords and a lot more. Again, it is specifically for people who want to get customers from SEO. That is at compactkeywords.com. I hope you will check it out. And that is all for episode 991 of the Edward Show. 991 days in a row doing this podcast. I am out and about with some crazy insanity around me and I have a nice Americano that I am finishing that is pouring energy into my veins. I hope you enjoy this episode. I enjoyed recording it. If you watch this on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcast, thank you so much for listening. And I will talk to you again tomorrow.