May

The Article Resource Box | The 3 Biggest Mistakes

Table of contents for Article Marketing Success

Article Marketing Success
Top Article Marketing Resources
Article Marketing SEO | What is Thy Purpose?
The 7 Bad Habits of Highly Defective Article Marketers
Article Marketing To Increase Website Traffic
The Article Resource Box | The 3 Biggest Mistakes

I keep seeing mistakes with the article resource box, so obviously someone is not reading my blog posts. They’re also not reading any of my forum posts since I keep saying this over and over again. So, I’ll outline for you here 3 of the biggest mistakes I see.

1. The No-Name Marketer

Who told you that you should leave your name out of your articles? Hunt them down and kill them. While your content should grab the reader and speak for itself, the decision to visit your website comes at the end of the article. Use this opportunity to introduce the reader to the name of the person behind the content. There may be a reason to leave your name off of an article from time to time, but as a general rule, it’s insanity to do so.

When your article is republished in a prominent online newsletter, or an ezine delivered via email, your name needs to stand out. You need to make it clear to the reader that you are the creator of this great content they’ve just read. It’s an advertisement for your site, and a branding opportunity for you. You can’t be seen as an expert if you are nameless to your potential audience.

Put your name in the resource box, and use verbiage that builds trust. Which builds more trust?

For more information on green widgets, see my website.

Or:

Joe Shmoe is an experienced widget pro who teaches average people how to do great things with green widgets.

2. URL Suicide

Repeat after me… I will not link using a raw URL in my article resource box. It does you no good with respect to link juice and is therefore a waste of Web real estate so don’t do it. I’ve been guilty of this myself back when I didn’t know any better. Please please please go back and change any article resource boxes that contain raw URLs to links with anchor text.

Why?

The main purpose of article marketing is SEO, right? OK, yes, it involves branding as we discussed, and it’s also about direct traffic, exposure, and so on. All true. But, why have hundreds of your articles out there with URLs that are basically collecting dust instead of having an effect on your search engine positioning?

So instead of:

   1: Joe Shmoe is an experienced widget pro who teaches average people how to do great things with green widgets at http://mygreatwidgetsite.com/.

Use:

   1: Joe Shmoe is an experienced <a href="http://mygreatwidgetsite.com/">widget pro</a> who teaches average people how to do great things with <a href="http://mygreatwidgetsite.com/green-widgets.html">green widgets</a>.

3. The Never-Ending Story

Now, the above might seem like a small resource box, but it’s got power. It tells the visitor what they need to know, and it has two links with anchor text for SEO purposes. It’s fine. Really, it is. Can it be longer? Yes, if you feel the need.

What I see a lot though is that some people seem to feel their resource box needs to take up half the space in the article. It’s as if they’re afraid that people won’t see it or won’t click unless it screams at them. Well, with my methods, it doesn’t really matter whether or not people click since you’re doing it mainly for SEO. The ironic thing is, though, that if you deliver good content, use a lead in, and use a more subtle resource box, you’ll get plenty of clicks.

Some people try to put this long sales pitch in their resource box. Instead, let your article’s content do the selling, and combine it with my technique of a lead-in. How?

Remember, as I outlined in my post on increasing traffic with articles, the idea is to create a page on your site based on a keyword for which you want that page to rank. Then, create your article as a lead-in to that page. Your resource box is the culmination of that lead-in. You don’t need to hog the page with the resource box.

If you do, you run the risk of coming across as too pushy, and, you will probably have your article picked up by fewer sites.

So, using our example from above, the resource box with a lead-in to your site would be:

   1: Joe Shmoe is an experienced <a href="http://mygreatwidgetsite.com/">widget pro</a> who teaches average people how to do 5 more great things with <a href="http://mygreatwidgetsite.com/green-widgets.html">green widgets</a> and more.

So that’s the skinny on that. I urge you to run, not walk, and go change any of your resource boxes that don’t measure up and enjoy the resulting search engine love.

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