 |
Better Articles and Better Click Through Rates
Well, I had an email by a nice guy that wanted to know about the types of articles that I’ve noticed drive more traffic to my sites. It’s a good question because it’s an important part of remaining successful.
This may get a little "philosophical" and may appear vague. I used to hate this when people were explaining stuff to me, but it’s really the only way to explain it. So try to understand and apply the philosophy. The first thing to point out is the best click through rates come from long tail keywords that send lots of traffic. It doesn’t matter if the article is vague as hell or detailed as hell. Doesn’t matter if you have a short resource box or a long one. It doesn’t matter if you try to cleverly work your last article paragraph into the resource box or make it apparent that your link is going to take them to a product. The SE traffic clicks through. Obviously that should be your main goal. Now to the philosophical part. The way you write the article is extremely important. You have to think about it as a reader. Imagine reading an article and you finally make it to the end. There’s this link and it just seems out of place. This is how most readers see it, even if the link is in the same niche as the article. The first thing I try to do is lead the person to the link in the resource box. I talk about what is in the resource box, so by the time they get to it, they’ll know why it’s there. I also pump it up, so they’ll want to click. It isn’t that hard to do. If you’re linking off to an ebook, mention the ebook in the article. Don’t write an entire article on the book. If your article is about soccer tips, than write some soccer tips, than mention in a paragraph "The Soccer Champion ebook had this new amazing tip…" and in the resource box you’ll have a link waiting for them. Another thing I like to do is promise the world and under perform. Your intro paragraph should iterate what you’re going to talk about, but I never really hit on it in the article. By the time they make it to the resource box they’re thinking "Where was the …?" And look, there is this sweet link in the resource box staring back at them, ready to answer their question. The key to that scenario is "under performing". You can’t leave articles open ended at most article directories. You have to give some information, but just give simple, vague or obvious information. It’s totally relevant, but the surfer will always want more and click through. I find if you follow these scenarios, you don’t really have to worry about how your resource box is written. I’ve tested it out and I’ve had a one liner that is 5 words with a link included that had very high CTRs. I’ll conclude in an example. Let’s say you’re writing an article on how to hip hop dance. The first thing you do is focus on a keyword. In the intro paragraph you want to promise them something amazing. Tell them how they’ll be doing “good” hip hop in no time (Sorry, I don’t know a thing about hip hop, so I don’t know how to make it sound exciting). The idea is you want to promise them the world. Than you might lead into a paragraph on how it is important to stretch before you practice. A few more vague paragraphs later, they haven’t got what they want, but the resource box with a link staring back at them says, "Learn how to hip hop dance". August 16 2008
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
|
Affiliate Marketing Xpert was created for people that want to live the Four Hour Workweek lifestyle.
Categories
|
|
|
|