Connection Between Syndicated Content and Linked Pages
I recently wrote about the difficulty we face in attempting meet two objectives in article syndication. Here’s the problem boiled down to its core: Readers of our articles are still in the early part of the information gathering stage of the purchasing decision continuum. Yet, because we want our links to optimize our money 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 coupled that complexity with another related issue: With good website design, each page should have a single purpose. That purpose is to satisfy our visitor’s desire.
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 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 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; 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.
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. 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.
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 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 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. 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. We shall offer them a link to the page where they can actually buy, but we really put most of our efforts into getting them to give us contact information in exchange for a free buyers guide, a free report, or a free short course.
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. Once we have their contact information we can begin selling our product, subtly at first and then with increasing urgency.
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 commercial value.
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 monetary 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. Then, with the second link type, we need to convince the search engine spiders that we have provided link text that is a truthful name for the content that we have on our revenue producing page to which that link leads. Thus our anchor text and the landing page content must be similar.
