All Entries Tagged With: "Author Resource Box"

5 Ways You Can Go Wrong With Your Article Resource Box

By Hendry Lee

Article resource box is a vital part of every article. The same article could get none to hundreds or thousands of visitors just because of a resource box. You can’t just write a few lines without a strategy and expect it to work. It doesn’t work that way.

Here are 5 ways you can go wrong with your article resource box:

1. Blatant self-promotion

Although you’re allowed to promote yourself in the resource box doesn’t mean that you should do so. The readers never care about you but how could you help them. Think of ways on how you can move the credibility you’ve built so far to the next level. Give them even more information or value.

2. Award showcase

The resource box is not the place for show all your accomplishments. You may use one or two that is very relevant to boost your credibility, but much of the credibility is earned by demonstrating your expertise within the article body. If you give them valuable information, they will know it.

3. No call to action

People may think they’re smart enough to take action without being told about what to do. The fact is exactly the opposite though. People are confused about what to do next unless you tell them what to do, although they may not admit it.

If you want them to visit your site to get more information or subscribe to your e-newsletter, say it. Give a reason why they should do it, perhaps give them a special report for download when they subscribe.

4. No links
Giving the readers at least a link to click and a strong reason for them to do so is the key to getting traffic from your articles.

Don’t waste the virtual real estate. You want to include at least one link to your web site.

5. No keyword targeted anchor text

Don’t include just a link. Use keyword focused anchor text (the text used as a live link) because search engines think the page that is linked using the anchor text must be relevant for that keyword.

You may want to diversify the anchor text links to make it appear as natural links, but still such links are important. The best way is to use anchor text but still keep the full live URL in the resource box so web site owners who decide to copy and paste your articles still have the link of your site in the resource box.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hendry_Lee

Hendry Lee makes some good points. No. 3, 4, and 5 are the most important of these. Get that anchor text link to speak with a call to action and your article marketing efforts will really shine!

Use Your Articles To Build Anchor Text Inbound Links

Article marketing is about two things:

• Building Links
• Driving Traffic

In both cases, the best tool for accomplishing the task is your author resource box. That’s the area at the bottom of your articles where you get to talk about yourself. It’s best not to write a book. If your author resource box is as long as your article then it’s too long. It just needs to be a couple of sentences. But what should go in it?

Obviously, you need your name. Also, a one sentence explanation of what you do. Follow that up with a call to action. In those two sentences, you should have two links. One of those links should be an URL – spell out your URL. The reason you want to spell out your URL is because your anchor text, which I am about to tell you about, may not be activated by some publishers. If a publisher doesn’t activate your URL then readers of your article will still be able to see your domain name and copy/paste it into their browser windows.

The second link in your author resource box should be your anchor text link. Whatever your important keyword is – the keyword around which you optimized your article – include it again in your author resource box and link it to the page on your website most appropriate for that anchor text. Hint: It should be the URL you spelled out in the other link.

If you do it this way then you are promoting one landing page for each article, but you are also using an important keyword phrase for that landing page to build inbound links to your website. Every time a publisher publishes your article, you’ll get a new inbound link. The most of those, the better. Even more importantly, the more high quality and relevant inbound links you build through article marketing then the better off your rankings will be. Anchor text helps you build your reputation online.

Author Resource Box Links:
How Many Is Enough?

When it comes to article marketing, the most important part of your article (for you) is the author resource box. This is where you will put your author bio and links back to your website. But how many links is enough? How many is too many?

Most article directories will allow you up to three links in your author resource box. But that doesn’t mean you should include three links in every resource box. You should include as many links as is necessary to promote the specific product or service you are marketing. In many cases, that could mean just one link.

Whether you use 1, 2, or 3 links, you should always include one instance of your URL hyperlinked. The reason you want your URL spelled out is because some publishers fail to hyperlink your anchor text or use bots to pick up articles and the bots do not activate the anchor text links. In that case, you at least have your URL spelled out so readers of your article can just copy/paste your URL into their browser and visit your web page.

My best recommendation is to promote only one web page in your author resource box. You can do that by using an instance of anchor text hyperlinked to that page and your second link should be the URL of that page linked with an a href tag. If that specific page’s URL is real long then only spell out the main body of your URL (www.websitename.com) and link it to the specific landing page that you want your site visitors to go to. Your author resource box can drive traffic to your website fast if you don’t overload it with useless URLs and links. Don’t try to promote everything you do in one resource box. That will water your marketing down.

EzineArticles Provides Free Link Diagnostic Tool To Article Marketers

EzineArticles has implemented a diagnostic tool that tells article authors when they have broken links in their articles. At first thought, this seems like a useless tool for an article directory. After all, article marketers ought to know their URLs and ensure that every link in their articles and resource boxes are not broken.

I agree that article marketers should be careful. But if you write a lot of articles and you update your website at some point then you could end up with a few broken links. This is probably more prevalent among local business owners who may move their website from a free host to their own domain and then forget to go back and update the links in their articles. Just think what that could do to your traffic, to forget about updating the links in hundreds of your articles at several article directories.

This tool is good and it’s these kinds of innovations that keep EzineArticles in a leadership role in the article marketing arena. I don’t know of any other article directory that is doing this. None. And this is just one more reason that EzineArticles will continue to be a leader.

The diagnostic tool will prove valuable to article marketers. If anything, it will get article marketers who have abandoned their EzineArticles accounts back to EzineArticles to perform some maintenance on their articles. I’m sure that is badly needed. When you think about all the small business people who write 10 articles then give up on article marketing because they don’t see it working within the first month then it all makes sense. Even then, it should be a useful tool for veteran article marketers as well. If you do, by some cosmic mistake, upload a new article and mistype an URL in your author resource box then you have a tool that will point it out for you. No longer will you have articles with broken links circulating around the Web not helping you at all. After all, there is no benefit to article marketing if your resource box links are broken.

Article Resource Box: Information You Should Include

Do you know what information you should include in your article resource box? It’s OK if you don’t. Many new article marketers have no idea. Here is a list of items that you absolutely must include in your article resource box in order to have an effective article marketing campaign:

• Your name – It’s amazing how many people leave out their name. No one wants to read an article by a company. They want to read an article by an individual with a name. Be sure to include your name in your article resource box.
• Your title – If you are a CEO or a Senior Marketing VP then let your readers know. A title can add credibility like nothing else.
• Your company name – Yes, you can name your company. But name just your company. People do want to know your affiliations, however, and the most important of these is your company.
• A link to your website or landing page – You don’t want more than a couple of links. One is better in many cases. But you are trying to send traffic to your website through article marketing, so include a link or two. Your link should be to the page that is most appropriate for the information in your article. If you wrote an article on the health benefits of seafood, for instance, don’t send traffic to your vegetarian food substances web page. Send the traffic to your halibut recipes web page instead.
• A call to action – Be sure you invite your readers to visit your website. Statements like, “Visit the All About Halibut Recipe Page” or “Ready Why Vegetables Are Your Salvation” are good calls to action.

Remember that you are trying to get visitors to your website with your article resource box. Don’t bore them. Be concise and let readers know what you have to offer.