I did not offer a solution in that original article.  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.

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 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.

I recommend the second of those two options.  I’ll explain why I believe that this approach is a workable solution, and then I’ll describe, in general terms, the landing page of each of those article links.

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.  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 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.  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.  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. 

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.

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.  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 quality 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 anchor 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.