Thinking About the Pages Linked From Your Article Syndication Content
In a recent article I wrote about the conflict we face in trying to meet two objectives in content syndication. Here’s the problem boiled down to its root: Readers of our articles are still in the early part of the information gathering phase of the buying decision continuum. Yet, because we want our links to optimize our money pages of the 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. I pointed out that this is compounded by the marketing commandment that any effective page should satisfy the major goal of our website visitor–at that time.
I did not offer a solution in that original article. My purpose was to bring the inherent conflict to the attention of article marketers. With this article, I’ll try to bring some resolution to the dilemma.
Two ways to solve the problem present themselves. 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. Another solution to our dilemma is to include two different kinds of links from our distributed articles. One of those link types leads to a landing page filled with valuable, additional content (and an opportunity to learn even more by signing up for our newsletter); 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.
When presented with these two options, I recommend the second. Allow me to elaborate on why I endorse this approach and what the respective landing page for each type of link will contain.
Recall that the readers of our syndicated article want to gather 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. In order to encourage our readers to actually click our link, we must give them truly interesting and valuable information the first time, while simultaneously leaving them with the impression that there is still more to learn. 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.
We also want to move them along that decision making continuum by implying that there is a product or service that will provide the ultimate solution to their current problem. 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 easiest to achieve the task of incorporating these two types of links within articles that we syndicate directly to other sites within our niche, because we can place those links contextually. On the other hand, when we publish on article directories, we must make the connection between our informational link and our selling link more quickly as it must fit within our resource box and not within the article.
On our content landing page, we focus upon bringing our readers much closer to the buying decision end of the decision making 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. They are no long “just readers,” they have become serious prospects. 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.
In our syndicated article we use our content to sell our expertise. What we sell on our linked (landing) page is our integrety, by establish our credibility. After they have signed onto our mailing list, we can actually begin selling our product by building our relationship with our new prospects and then more blatantly recommending our product or service.
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. 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 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 spiders 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.
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Tags: anchor text, article marketing, external link, link building, linking, linking text, traffic, website design