Conversion was a bit of a theme in the blogs I read yesterday.   That’s nice since it’s one of my favorite topics.  First Rand at SEOmoz announced the winner of their landing page contest, where they pitted 9 reader-submitted entries against their original page. 

The winning entry was aptly dubbed “scroll forever.”  When I copied and pasted it into Word, it came in at a whopping 32 pages! 

 I would offer four quick take-aways from the SEOmoz experiment:

1. Test.  Their conversion rate went from 0.5% to 2.5% with the new page.
2. Long copy does work (even very long form copy)
3. Keep testing.  I would be shocked if they can’t get another 25-50% bump with additional tests.
4. One size doesn’t fit all.  Remember that what works best for converting internal site traffic may be different from what works best for type-in traffic, brand keywords, generic keywords, banner ads, etc.

Another conversion related topic was launched by Brian Clark on Copyblogger.  He argued that writers should go ahead and link the phrase “click here” if that is what they would like the user to do.  While I don’t disagree with him, I think he missed the mark by not clearly stating that such a strong call to action should be reserved for instances where conversion is your only goal. 

I found myself in agreement with Lisa’s argument that in many instances well-written anchor text makes for better site usability, especially when you are linking to provide background for an article.