Linking From Your Article Syndication Content

In a recent article I wrote about the conflict we face in trying to resolve a contradiction in content marketing.  In a nutshell, the difficulty is that we frequently want to use links in our articles to our “money pages” for the purposes of search engine optimization, but the readers are not yet at the buying stage in terms of their mindset as they are busy gathering information (the reason they found our syndicated article)..  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.

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.

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 (both learning more and buying) for our readers who click through.  The other is to provide two kinds of links in our articles.  One link option or type leads to a landing page dedicated entirely to providing valuable information (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.  In these cases, our anchor text must make clear what to expect on the landing page.

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.  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.

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 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.  We can now treat them as serious prospects and ramp up our selling strategy a bit.  We shall offer them a link to the page where they can actually buy, 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.  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.

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 commercial value.

As marketers, all of our efforts are toward increasing revenue through a sale.  As writers we must make the sale without disturbing the flow 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.  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 match in meaningful ways.

Tweet This Post

Related posts:

1. How PLR content Works For Article Marketing
2. Promote Your Online Business Using Article Marketing
3. Cancelled My Article Network/My Article Network Membership !!
4. Article Marketing With My Article Network
5. Leap To The Head Of The Class With Article Directories

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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

Filed under: article marketing

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