In a recent article I wrote about the conflict we face in trying to meet two objectives in content marketing.  In a quick summary, the problem 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 mindset as they are out gathering information (the reason they found our syndicated article in the first place)..  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.  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 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 of those link types 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.

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.  Of course, we always follow through with our promises or we shall immediately lose credibility.  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.  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 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.  Remember that the visitors have already been persuaded to accept our initial offer by clicking on our link, so they are in an agreeable frame of mind.  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. 

In our syndicated article we use our content to sell our expertise.  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 commercial value.

As marketers, all of our efforts are toward making the 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.  Then, with the second link type, we need to demonstrate to the search engine spiders that we have provided anchor text that is a truthful name for the content that we have on our selling page to which that link leads.  Thus our anchor text and the landing page content must be very similar.

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