Thinking About the Pages Linked From Your Article Marketing Content
In a recent article I wrote about the conflict we face in trying to serve two masters in article marketing. Here’s the issue boiled down to its core: Readers of our content 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 income 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.direct a prospect to our money 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. 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. 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. Another solution to our dilemma is to include two different kinds of links from our distributed articles. One link option or type will take the clicker 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, 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. 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.
Recall that the readers of our syndicated article want to gather information. If we want to entice them to click a link to actually come to our site, we must promise even more information that is pertient to them. 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 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. 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 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. 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.
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 spiders on the accuracy of our description of our selling page by making sure that the linking text and the page’s content match in fundamental ways.
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