In a recent article I wrote about the conflict we face in trying to resolve a contradiction in article 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 purchasing 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.  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.  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 (both learning more and buying) for our readers who click through.  The other is to provide two kinds of links in our articles.  One of those link types will take the clicker 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.  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.  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.  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 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 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.  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.  On the linked page, we’re selling our credibility and integrity.  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.  The primary purpose of that link is increasing our SEO, so we must be especially careful to research and have anchor text that is a long tail keyword with commercial intent.

We have different roles as marketers and authors.  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.  Then, with the second link type, we need to convince the search engine spiders that we have provided link text that is an accurate 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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