Understand how to use the sidebar to improve your website's SEO

[shammis606]

Known in Spanish as a sidebar, the sidebar is a very important element in the structure and for the SEO of a website, just like the header, footer, pages and contact forms.

It is also present on Windows or Mac computers as a navigation and experience feature. But, in this article, we will talk specifically about the bar present on websites or blogs.

You will discover that optimizing the sidebar for SEO can overseas chinese in usa data generate positive results for a Digital Marketing strategy . Therefore, to understand this resource and find out how it can help your site, continue reading!

The importance of SEO for the success of a site
The elements that influence SEO
The role of the sidebar and why you need to structure it on your site
Fundamental elements of a sidebar
Secrets to maintaining an optimized sidebar
The importance of SEO for the success of a site
When we talk about Digital Marketing, Inbound Marketing is a very present figure and SEO is one of the main pillars for the success of a website. But why?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is a set of extremely useful techniques for optimizing websites and thus achieving good positioning in search engine results.

In other words, these optimizations are intended to achieve good rankings and generate organic traffic and authority for a website or blog.

Website modifications are essential to an SEO strategy. Google alone, the world’s most used search engine, receives around 2 trillion searches a year, according to Search Engine Land .

It is important to note that this figure is approximate, as the company does not share data related to search volume.

Imagine optimizing your website to dramatically increase the number of people who find it. This is the essence of SEO!

The elements that influence SEO
A website has several elements in its structure that need special attention to maximize both visibility and conversion. We can highlight:

header;
footer;
content;
CTAs;
sidebars;
data capture forms.
Working on optimizing each of them can ensure that sites stay up-to-date and follow Google's main ranking factors , so that they achieve good organic results.

The role of the sidebar and why you need to structure it on your site
Blogs are created specifically with the goal of attracting traffic and subsequently converting visitors into people interested in your product or service.

And the sidebar plays a crucial role when the focus is on conversion, as it is possible to insert CTAs and lead the reader to take an important action.

In the example we mention below, the CTA motivates the user to create a blog for free, learn about the available materials or have access to Rock University courses .

sidebar
These CTAs increase the chance of converting readers at different stages of a funnel through attraction, consideration, and decision offers. However, there are other elements that can appear in a sidebar.

These elements, no less important, are capable of helping your SEO strategy by capturing emails, directing them to other pages and even leading the reader to make direct contact with your company.

In the next section, find out what these elements are.

Fundamental elements of a sidebar
Banners
Banners are always linked to some offer you want to make to take your reader from point A to point B, that is, from one page to another.

In this way, they will often help you increase the number of leads or products sold.

Imagine an offer you make to let your entire audience know about a solution or the product or service that needs to be highlighted to boost your campaigns.

It will be temporary and can end at any time, because a very old banner becomes an ornament for your website.

sidebar
Data capture forms
Now, thinking not only about selling and promoting the product, but also about receiving data such as email.

With these resources, you can maintain personal contact through email marketing or even send a product that is on sale and has been highlighted on the blog by creating a banner.

Capture forms help you increase your contact base and expand your relationship with readers, not only through organic attraction but also through email marketing.

And we know that once a user provides their email, they are giving permission to receive personal contact through their inbox.

sidebar
Email has great power to close deals and increase sales. There are marketing books that prove this, especially the book "Invisible Selling Machine".

CTA
It seems redundant to talk specifically about CTAs because in all the topics presented above, the reader is invited to take some action, such as downloading an e-book or receiving news by email.

But we must not forget the possibility of creating calls for different actions, such as those that only you offer, such as trying a product, joining a community, or a real example: the 30-Day Challenge promoted by Hotmart.

sidebar
For this reason, having your own call to action, in the form of text, not just an image, can help achieve specific blog actions and improve your sidebar for SEO through content recognition.

But remember that there are sites where the sidebar will be present on every page. Therefore, it is necessary to be very careful with the context of the inserted content in order not to cause negative experiences for readers.

Secrets to maintaining an optimized sidebar
To achieve consistent results on any website, it is essential to optimize the conversion rate . The same goes for the sidebar.

Keeping it optimized requires understanding whether users are taking the right action and whether that action is generating the expected results.

How can you find out if the Y banner on the ebook is generating enough clicks to increase the total number of downloads? Or even if people are hovering over this element?

To know this data, there are specific tools such as Google Optimize , Google Analytics and Hotjar , which can help you improve conversion.

But there are other good practices that contribute to optimizing the performance of your bar. Learn about them below!

1. Keep your sidebar updated
An element that has been on your site for a long time without being changed can become just cosmetic. That's why updating your sidebar with fresh content, relevant offers, and different call-to-actions is essential to keep your reader interested.

Performing A/B testing with colors, fonts, text, sizes and images is always a great way to increase the effectiveness of a sidebar.

2. Create a segmented sidebar
For a message to be effective, it must be delivered at the right time, to the right person, and on the right channel.

The same goes for an unplanned sidebar where a person goes to a top-of-funnel related page to clear their mind and consequently receives bottom-of-funnel offers.

In this case, the search intent is not respected and the chances of a conversion occurring decrease more and more. That is why it can be extremely interesting to use plugins or add-ons that can segment your sidebar according to pages, categories or posts.

3. Sometimes, less is more
This is the most controversial point of the text, because after all, how many elements are there in the sidebar of the Rock Content blog? None!

And why do we write a text about the importance of the sidebar when we decided not to include it in our blog?

The answer is simple: because of the conversion rate .

Historically, our blog always had sidebar elements that helped in conversion and e-book diffusion, but after many tests, studies, and changes to the blog structure, we concluded that clean content pages and a sidebar on the home page have offered a better experience to readers.

This doesn't mean that the method works everywhere, or that it's right or wrong, but for the structure of our blog, less, or nothing, is more.

4. Think about the mobile environment
A common mistake is forgetting how changes will be applied to the mobile experience.

In fact, it is common for banners to change size, for buttons to not appear, or for forms to be too large.

So, if mobile traffic to a website is relevant and conversion through this device is also relevant, never forget the experience of those who use these devices.

We're done!

As you have seen in this article, you can optimize a sidebar for SEO. All you have to do is apply a few simple measures like the ones you have just seen. This way, your website's organic traffic will improve, generating more leads and conversions.