Pages Linked From Your Syndicated Content

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 core: Readers of our articles are still in the early part of the information seeking phase 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 coupled that complexity with another related issue:  With good website design, each page should have a single purpose.  That purpose is to satisfy our visitor’s desire.

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.

Two ways to solve the problem present themselves.  The first option is to ignore the rule of website design for marketing purposes and have our landing pages attempt to offer two different objectives (both learning more and buying) for our readers who click through.  The other is to provide two kinds of links in our articles.  One of those link types will take the clicker to a landing page filled with valuable, additional content (and an opportunity to learn even more by signing up for our newsletter), while the other link category will direct the visitor to a product (or purchasing) page.  Of course we must make clear from the context of the link what the landing page will offer.

I recommend the second of those two options.  Allow me to elaborate on why I endorse this approach and what the respective landing page for each type of link will contain.

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.  Of course, we always follow through with our promises or we shall immediately lose credibility.  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 making the implication that our product or service will be their ultimate solution, even after they have gathered all the necessary information, we have justified linking to our product or money page.

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.  Remember that the visitors have already been persuaded to accept our initial offer by clicking on our link, so they are in an agreeable frame of mind.  We can now treat them as serious prospects and ramp up our selling strategy a bit.  Consequently, we make our link to the actual buying page very prominent on this content page, but we focus primarily on getting them to take one more small step by asking for the contact information in exchange for the promise of even more valuable content. 

We establish ourselves as experts in our distributed content, so we are “selling” that expertise to our readers.  What we sell on our linked (landing) page is our integrety, by establish our credibility.  Once we have their contact information we can begin selling our product, subtly at first and then with increasing urgency.

Remember that the other type of link takes the clicker (or the search engine robot) to our page where we directly sell our product or service.  Since the purpose of that link is primarily search engine optimization, it is especially important that our anchor (linking) text is at once an accurate description of the selling page and a useful long tail keyword with implicit commercial value.

As marketers, all of our efforts are toward making the sale.  As writers we must make the sale without disturbing the flow of our content.  First we sell the article readers on their need for more information and convince them that they can find that information by clicking our link.  Second we sell the search engine robots on the accuracy of our description of our selling page by making sure that the anchor text and the page’s content match in meaningful ways.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tagged with: anchor text • article marketing • external link • link building • linking • linking text • traffic • website design

Filed under: Uncategorized

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!