WriteAndCorrect.com

In a recent article I wrote about the conflict we face in trying to resolve a contradiction in article marketing. Here’s the problem boiled down to its root: Readers of our content are still in the early part of the information gathering stage of the buying decision continuum. Yet, because we want our links to optimize our money pages in our sites, the readers’ clicks on our article links will take them to a web page that assumes that they are ready to buy a particular alternative. In that article, I combined that conflict with another related issue: With good website design, each page should have a single purpose. That purpose is to satisfy our visitor’s desire. In other words, we should not direct a prospect to our money (product) page until they already want to go there–in other words, they’re ready to buy.

I did not offer a solution in that original article. Simply bringing the problem to the attention of article marketers was my goal in that previous piece. Today, I’ll go that one additional step and give one answer to the quandary.

There are actually at least two solutions to the dilemma. One is to violate the rule of website design by letting our linked page offer two alternatives allowing our readers to satisfy their information seeking and provinding an opportunity to buy the product or service from the same page. The other is to provide two kinds of links in our articles. One of those link types leads to a landing page dedicated entirely to providing valuable information and an opt-in form encouraging the visitor to get even more information by signing up for our list; the other type of link leads to our “money page,” primarily for the purpose of search engine optimization. In these cases, our anchor text must make clear what to expect on the landing page.

I recommend the second of those two options. I’ll explain why I believe that this approach is a workable solution, and then I’ll describe, in general terms, the landing page of each of those article links.

Remember that our distributed article attracted the readers because those readers intended to gather useful information. The only likely way we are going to attract those readers to our site is to offer them even more information than our article provides. I trust that I don’t have to tell you that we always must deliver what we promise our prospects. Thus, our article marketing content must be interesting, accurate and informative, but it must leave the impression that we still have more to tell them. We must subtly persuade them that our site will provide all the remaining necessary information, and we make sure that link delivers them to a content page.

At the same time, within the syndicated article, we let our readers know that once they have gathered all the information they need to make a buying decision, they will find the product or service that will solve their problems right there on our site. By including that information, we have an opportunity to link to one of our selling pages largely for the purpose of search engine optimization.

It is always easier to logically include both types of links within our articles if we syndicate directly to websites that are within our general niche category; in those cases we can make our links contextual within the article, itself. However, if we limit our article distribution to article directories, we can still accomplish our task by cleverly using a well written resource box to provide the rationale for linking to both kinds of pages.

On of first type of linked page, we will move our prospects along the decision continuum. We have already made progress by getting the readers to click the link in our syndicated article. They are no long “just readers,” they have become serious prospects. We shall offer them a link to the page where they can actually buy, but we really put most of our efforts into getting them to give us contact information in exchange for a free buyers guide, a free report, or a free short course.

We establish ourselves as experts in our distributed content, so we are “selling” that expertise to our readers. On the linked page, we’re selling our credibility and integrity. Once we have their contact information we can begin selling our product, subtly at first and then with increasing urgency.

The second type of link from our article marketing content leads directly to a product page. The primary purpose of that link is increasing our SEO, so we must be especially careful to research and have anchor text that is a long tail keyword with implicit commercial intent.

As marketers, all of our efforts are toward making the sale. As writers we must make the sale without disrupting the prose of our content. So our first objective is to convince the article readers that they need more information, and that the necessary information can be found by clicking our link. Then, with the second link type, we need to convince the search engine spiders that we have provided anchor text that is a truthful name for the content that we have on our revenue producing page to which that link leads. Thus our anchor text and the landing page content must be very similar.