Handling the Linked Pages 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 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 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. 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. In other words, we should not [deliver a prospect to our money (product) 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. Simply bringing the problem to the attention of article marketers was my goal in that previous piece. With this article, I’ll try to bring some resolution to the dilemma.
There are actually at least two solutions to the dilemma. 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 link option or type leads 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. 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. 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. 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 including that information, we have an opportunity to link to one of our selling pages largely for the purpose of search engine optimization.
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. We have already made progress by getting the readers to click the link in our syndicated article. 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.
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 intent.
We have different roles as marketers and writers. Wearing the marketing hat, our foremost goal is to make that sale, but as writers we worry about the flow of our prose even above its financial reward. 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 robots 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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