Simple SEO and Marketing, Business Growth, Organic Marketing, Copywriting, Online Business, Blogging, Content Creation · 2026-07-09 · 14 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
39 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Faith Hannon, a conversion copywriter and SEO strategist, identifies four homepage design errors that quietly undermine lead conversion without being obviously broken. The first mistake - vague, fluffy above-the-fold copy - forces visitors' brains to work too hard when they're seeking a solution; effective above-the-fold messaging must be crystal clear within ten seconds. Second, business owners often lead with their credentials and experience when buyers first need to feel understood and seen. Hannon illustrates this with a personal anecdote about how people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Third, multiple competing CTAs (blog links, podcasts, freebies, social media, discovery calls, product sales, Facebook groups) confuse visitors into inaction; the fix is one paid CTA and one free CTA per page. Finally, homepage section order matters profoundly because it guides buyers through their decision using proven psychology - not random template layouts. Hannon emphasizes this is critical for any business ready to scale and offers solutions through her Simple SEO Framework group coaching program or direct website copy services.
Specific, clear messaging that addresses your buyer's problem and desired result within 10 seconds - not vague language, all your services listed, or fluffy promises like 'achieve your dreams.'
One paid CTA and one free CTA; having six or more competing actions (blog, podcast, freebie, Instagram, discovery call, shop, Facebook group) confuses visitors into doing nothing.
No; buyers need to feel seen and understood first, and know you can solve their problem before they care about your experience or qualifications.
Section order guides buyers through their decision using proven buyer psychology; the wrong order prevents conversion even if the content itself is correct.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode delivers four concrete homepage principles (clarity above the fold, leading with buyer not self, limiting CTAs, strategic section order) with reasonable explanations, but relies heavily on anecdotes and soft reasoning rather than data or first-principles breakdowns. The barrel-riding story adds color but delays substance; the core advice is solid but not packed densely with novel insights.
A vague above the fold forces the buyer's brain to work too hard
when you confuse you lose
The four mistakes are sound but widely circulated in conversion copywriting circles - 'above the fold clarity,' 'show empathy before credentials,' 'single CTA focus,' and 'strategic section order' are standard frameworks taught by countless copywriting gurus. The execution is clear but the thinking is orthodox; no contrarian takes or first-principles challenges to conventional homepage wisdom.
people don't necessarily care how much you know until they know how much you care
when you confuse you lose
This is a solo host episode with no guest. Faith Hannon is the sole speaker, so there is no guest caliber to evaluate.
I'm Faith Hannon wife mama copywriter SEO strategist and barrel racer
The episode mentions very few named examples or hard metrics. References to 'less than 10 seconds' for conversion and general CTA patterns are vague; no case studies, conversion rates, A/B test results, or specific client examples are cited. The advice is actionable but abstract, lacking the dollar figures and concrete outcomes that would elevate this substantially.
You have less than 10 seconds to turn somebody from a looky loo into I want to buy from you
one paid CTA for your homepage and one free cta
This is a monologue, not a conversation; the host delivers advice without a guest to push back, challenge, or explore deeper. The tone is warm and encouraging but there are no sharp follow-up questions, productive disagreements, or intellectual sparring. The barrel-riding anecdote feels like filler inserted to build rapport rather than to advance understanding.
So often I feel like small business owners they you know we work so hard on the product
And I get back to the barn from riding in shorts and flip flops which is maybe not the smartest thing ever
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Your homepage might look pretty, sound professional, and even get compliments… but still be quietly costing you qualified leads. In this episode, I’m walking through 4 homepage mistakes that can make the right people hesitate, overthink, or click away before they ever take the next step. These are not always obvious “your website is broken” problems. They are the sneaky little clarity and conversion issues that can make your homepage feel fine on the surface while underperforming behind the scenes. Listen in to hear: The first section of your homepage I always check when leads are not converting The well-meaning mistake that can make buyers disconnect before they trust you The reason “more options” can quietly work against you The homepage structure issue most business owners do not realize matters The simple question your homepage needs to answer faster and clearer If your homepage is sitting there looking cute but not helping the right people understand, trust, and take action, this episode will help you see what might be getting in the way.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Well, hey, friends, if we have been friends on here for more than 35 seconds, you have probably heard me talk about your homepage. Why? Because it is absolutely crucial that your homepage is dialed in on point for your business to be getting the sales that you need. Because people come to your homepage to decide whether they're going to buy your stuff. Especially if you have, uh, more than $10 product. And even then, sometimes those ten dollar products, you gotta check out the homepage, y'. All. So today we're chatting homepage mistakes that are quietly costing you qualified leads. Okay? So you can do a diagnosis on your business and be like, oh, I gotta fix this or not. But listen in and get out your notes because this one is juicy. Hey there, fellow entrepreneur. Welcome to simple SEO and marketing. Do you want to grow your business with sustainable traffic sources? Have you heard about the power of search engine optimization? And you want to take advantage of it to get more traffic, more eyeballs on your business. But when it comes down to it, does SEO feel complicated and hard to implement? Are you tired of wondering what in the heck to do with your website to get more traffic and more leads knocking on your door? What if I could tell you that there was a simple, proven system for using SEO, blogging and copywriting to get leads from your website and not just any leads. Hi. Converting lead. Hey. I'm Faith Hannon, wife, mama, copywriter, SEO strategist and barrel racer. And for the last eight years, I've been figuring out what works and what doesn't work in the world of online marketing to get organic traffic. And now I'm here to share all the things I'm learning in the trenches of SEO, copywriting and content marketing. How does 300%, 500% or even 12,000% more. More traffic in a year sound? What could your business do with that kind of traffic increase? How many more people could you help? So listen in and prepare to take notes. I'm about to drop simple, actionable SEO, marketing and copywriting tips, all with a heavy dose of Jesus loving encouragement. Let's get you more traffic and more leads so you can help more people with your God given gifts. So often I feel like small business owners, they, you know, we work so hard on the product, on the service, on the thing that we're delivering and the your website is often like, oh shoot, I need a website better. And then they just throw something up or hire a cheap contractor and then they just get it up and get it done. Which there is some value in that too, right? But, but, but, but, but, but. When you're ready to scale your business, when you're ready to sell more, when you're read your website and your homepage is usually the very first place that I look as a conversion copywriter, SEO strategist, okay? Because your homepage is not just a welcome outlook. Here you go. Like, that's not what it is. It is the place where your buyer comes to make a serious decision. And small problems, especially surrounding clarity, can cost you so many qualified leads. And often your homepage might not be broken in a dramatic way. It might not be ugly. It might be gorgeous. Okay? It may not be embarrassing, right? You might be proud to show somebody your homepage. It might even get compliments. But if it's not helping the right people understand what you do, trust you, and take the next step, then your homepage is not doing its job. So four homepage mistakes that quietly cost you qualified leads. Mistake number one. And if you hear only this mistake, please hear this mistake. Mistake number one is your above the fold is too vague. A vague above the fold forces the buyer's brain to work too hard. And if they are coming to you for a solution, it's because they want it to be easier than them doing it themselves. Now, that's not to say DIY stuff isn't good. It's not to say that guiding DIY buyers isn't also a good thing, but your business should make it easier for them. And if you start off with making them burn too many brain calories, you're starting off in the hole. And so often people want to put too many. So here's, here's like the buckets of problems I see with above the fold. You want to put all the words up there. So many words. Like, here's all of. I do all of the things I do. Okay? That's one bucket of problems. Another bucket of problems I see with the. Above the fold is just really fluffy language, like fixing all of their problems or all of their life or helping you achieve the life of your dreams. Well, unless you're Jesus, you're not helping solve all of their problems. Okay, okay, um. Or just being too vague in general. Okay? Those are some examples of so many above the fold problems that I've seen. Okay? And these, these vague, fluffy, above the fold copy sections, they may. They may sound nice, they may be catchy, they may be like, ooh. But if they don't say the right thing, they are costing you leads. And I will very clear with you, very frank with you, when I am working with a website copy client, and we are doing. We are writing your website copy for you. I spend so much time on the above the fold. Hours and hours and hours of brain power go into this section because it is so important. You have less than 10 seconds to turn somebody from a looky loo into I want to buy from you. And this above the fold section is what carries the bulk of that weight. So, number two. The number two mistake that I see people make, and I say this with a lot of love, a lot of love in my heart for you, but m. The number two mistake I see is leading with yourself too early. Your buyer needs to feel seen and heard and understood before they care about your credentials. Now, when I was like. I think I was like, 17, 18, I was riding my horse and keeping her exercised, and I rode in shorts and flip flops, like, a lot. Bless me. It was the only way my little legs were ever going to get tan. And I get back to the barn from riding in shorts and flip flops, which is maybe not the smartest thing ever. Whatever. I get back to the barn from writing, and I get greeted by this woman that I've never seen before in my life, who apparently was a friend of my grandma's. But I get greeted by this woman and then absolutely lectured about the safety of writing in shorts and flip flops. And did I receive it the best? No, I did not. Because I was a little salty. But here's the thing. I didn't. I did not. I didn't know her from Adam, okay? And she's there trying to chew my butt. And I was. I feel like a lot of business owners, we forget that people don't necessarily care how much you know until they know how much you care. That's a great leadership quote. Take that. Put that in your pocket. But let's apply that to our copy a little bit, too, because when you lead with yourself and you're like, I'm so amazing, and I know all these things and I've done all these things, but you don't actually make your person, your ideal client, feel seen and heard and understood and like you actually have the solution to their problem first, then they really don't care. They don't care how much you. How much you know and all of your credentials, okay? Yes. Your experience matters. Yes. Your story matters. Yes. Your training matters. Yes. If you have an entire Alphabet behind your name because you've got gone to school for 47 years, yes, that matters. But those things should not be what you Lead with on your homepage, they should not be carrying the weight of the page. Okay. If somebody lands on your homepage with a real problem, they are asking, can you help me fix this? Okay, so I want you to start with. Here's your practical fix. I want you to start with your buyer's problem and their desired result, and then. And then later on, explain why you're qualified to help. Yes. Use your story and your credentials to support the sale, but don't lead with that. Okay? Okay. All right. Problem number three that's costing you leads is you have too many competing CTAs. Your homepage, you have, like, one goal. Yo, get those people to buy that thing or sign up for a discovery call. Yes. You can have a freebie linked in there because we want to collect email addresses. Yes. But if your homepage is asking people to do 65 different things or even six different things, most people will do nothing. Because when you confuse, you lose. Okay? So it's really common to have, you know, competing CT CTAs and not even realize it. But I want you to go through your homepage and look, if you're asking people to read the blog, listen to the podcast, download the freebie, follow on Instagram, book a call, shop the offer, join the Facebook group, that is too much. That is too much, too many things. None of those things are bad by themselves. But they start to compete and they start to clutter and they start to ask for way too many things. Okay, so here's a practical fix for you. One paid CTA for your homepage and one free cta. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. Make the path, make the solution. Make the way for them to buy from you or learn more from you. Make that super, super clear. Okay? And you need to decide what's the most important action for this page before you publish it. All right? Number four. Problem is your homepage sections are in the wrong order. Now, I actually get a lot of pushback about this until people publish their homepage, and then they get more sales from it, and they're like, oh, uh, okay, fai. Your homepage sections and the copy structure, uh, should be very strategically laid out. Your homepage should guide your buyer through a decision using proven buyer psychology. It's not just sections stacked on top of each other in whatever order looks good on the template. It's not usually even just what your designer says, because they're probably not a conversion copywriter. Okay? This is something that we work extremely hard with in our student group, the, um, Simple SEO framework guided group program. You get my template for this, and this is something that we work extremely hard with for website copy clients. Your homepage copy will be structured very, very strategically according to buyer psychology practices. Because the order matters. Because you are using, um, you're using copy to guide somebody through their decision process. And so you can't just jump around. You can't just throw stuff up, up in random order and hope that it works. Even if it's the right stuff, it's the. If it's the right stuff in the wrong order, it's not going to perform how it needs to. So how what I want you to do? Well, since I just can't give you my homepage template and my homepage layout, I would love it if you jumped into Simple SEO framework and guided group coaching. If you're like, I need to do this myself, Faith, I can't pay you to do it for me, then you need to get inside of Simple SEO Framework and group coaching and we will work with you. Hands on. In the group coaching call to help you with your homepage copy and the layout there. And the order. The order matters so much. And if you're like, Faith, I just need you and your team to do it for me, then book a call to see if we're the best fit to help your website start converting. Okay? Because it matters. Your business needs to convert at a higher level so you can help more people. It's not selfish to be like, I want to convert more. If you have a heart to serve in your business. All right, if you know your homepage isn't carrying its weight, then I want you to jump inside of either the SEO Simple SEO framework if you're like, on the DIY track, or if you're like, faith, I'm ready to for you to fix it for me, then book a call to see if we are the right fit to help you get more leads, more traffic to your website, and more leads from that website. Because your homepage shouldn't just be sitting there collecting dust. It should help the right people understand, know you, and take the next step. All right, y'. All, click the link in the show notes for both the Simple SEO framework and to book a call to see if we're the best fit to help you with your website copy and marketing strategy. All right, y', all, chat with you next week. Bye. Thank you so much for listening in today. Hopefully this episode gave you some really tangible tips for better SEO and marketing to get more leads and more sales from your website. If it did, can I ask you a quick favor? Would you please share this episode with a friend and then uh, just take 10 seconds and go leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. That is the very best way to help more Jesus loving entrepreneurs scale their businesses so that they can help more people with their gifts and make an even bigger impact for the Kingdom of God. And guess what? We now have a Facebook community where we can learn, hang out and laugh app. Go join the Facebook group now. It's linked in the show notes and all the other things, courses, coaching and copywriting can be found at my website, faith hannon.com until next time. God bless and I'll talk to you soon.
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