In a recent article I wrote about the conflict we face in trying to resolve a contradiction in content marketing. Here’s the problem boiled down to its root: Readers of our content are still in the early part of the information seeking stage of the purchasing decision continuum. Yet, because we want our links to optimize our income 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. 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.
Simply bringing the problem to the attention of article marketers was my goal in that previous piece. Today, I’ll go that one additional step and give one answer to the quandary.
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 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 filled with valuable, additional content 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. 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. 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. 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.
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 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 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.
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. 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 authors. Wearing the marketing hat, our primary goal is to make a sale, but as writers we worry about the quality of our prose even above its financial reward. 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 meaningful ways.
