Relationship Between Distributed Content and Linked Pages
In a recent article I wrote about the conflict we face in trying to meet two objectives in content syndication. In a quick summary, the difficulty is that we frequently want to use links in our articles to our “money pages” for the purposes of optimizing for search engines, but the readers are not yet at the buying stage in terms of their frame of mind 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.
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 (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. 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. I trust that I don’t have to tell you that we always must deliver what we promise our prospects. 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. Hence we link 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 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. 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 our content landing page, we focus upon bringing our readers much closer to the buying decision end of the decision making 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.
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.
The second type of link from our article marketing content leads directly to a product page. 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 intent.
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. 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.
Tags: anchor text, article marketing, external link, link building, linking, linking text, traffic, website design