Avril Harper writes:

Great article, thank you so much. I think sometimes writers become obsessive about creating quality articles and sometimes overlook the WIIFM part of the production, namely the resource box.

Best wishes

Avril Harper

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Tom writes:

Thanks Chris for keeping us all in line. Great resource!

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Alvin writes:

Yeah, I have encountered some of these mistakes as pointed out by you.

Once, I read an article on a HEALTH topic, upon clicking the URL in the author bio, it leads me to a POKER site instead. Worse thing is, it changes the size of my browser. I reported the article instantly.

I am glad I didn’t make the mistakes as mentioned in your article. :)

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Dale writes:

Thanks for this very informative tip. I have seen lots of examples of just what you are talking about. It is very frustrating. It makes you wonder what those writers were thinking – maybe they weren’t thinking.

Anyway, I hope I did a better job. I offer both a free special report and a free mini-vacation for signing up! What a deal!

Thanks again for your tips – they are always helpful!

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Jess Webb writes:

Great tips! Thank you! Keep up the good work. I enjoy reading your newsletters. :)

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Alvin,

Thanks for reporting it. I’m continually amazed how efficient our users are at reporting content that breaks their trust… so that we can do something about it.

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carol stanley writes:

Articles like this are so helpful…and I agree there are way too many commercials out there. Lets all work on this.

Carol Stanley
spectacularaftersixty.blogspot.com

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Jeanette writes:

Thanks for including the “90% ads and 10% content or any MFA (Made For AdSense)” landing pages. As a publisher, I never use articles with links to these pages in the Resource Box.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Thanks Wordfeeder Dina for the blog mention:
http://wordfeeder.com/blog/blogroll/landing-page-tips-from-christopher-knight/

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Dan Goodwin writes:

Chris, I think the Example 1 you gave happens just through inexperience sometimes. An author fairly new to article marketing might write a few articles on their first chosen niche, then get worried they’ll run out of things to say in that niche, so write articles about EVERYTHING they know ANYTHING about. But they still use their original resource box they set up for that first niche in every article thereafter.

I think it’s probably daunting when you’re starting out to find your own niche(s), and part of finding them is writing lots of articles and working out what you know about and what people are interested in hearing. But being a relatively newbie and just getting going with writing articles, it’s even MORE daunting thinking you have to come up with a different resource box and then webpage/website for each niche you’re writing in.

What would people advise for new authors in this position?

Maybe have a general, personal blog, then a resource box saying something like “for more interesting articles visit my blog…”, then make the resource boxes more specific as you develop your niche websites/products etc?

Just a thought that a lot of people are really new to all this and are finding out as they go. This EzineArticles blog is a brilliant resource for learning how to improve your article writing and marketing…

Dan Goodwin

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Ugur writes:

Great article, Chris! Good advice. I believe this not much of an issue for those specializing in only one specific niche. But it is a problem for the “generalists” who offer products or services in more than one category.

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Christina Sponias writes:

Hi Chris!

I think that an author can do many things to attract the public. What I did for example, when I only had a few articles ready: I organized my first site in several categories, so that my readers could find easier what they wanted to.

The articles were the same ones they could find all together at EArticles (and always with EA’s link because I write too much and I would need too much space for my articles and it is good for my ranking to be connected with EA), but the same articles were in their respective categories, facilitating my readers.

Now my first site is full of articles and I’m posting my new articles to my blogs, besides EzineArticles, fist of all, and many other sites when I have time.

If you don’t have so much content to provide, collect good content from other sites providing a link to the author’s site and you’ll have something nice to present to your visitors and make them stay around! and take a look at your products if they wish, after reading the article collection you prepared for them, helping them find everything they need at your site.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Dan G,

I’d advise new authors who feel overwhelmed to narrow their focus to mastering writing & marketing in one niche first… then worry about related or unrelated niches (if at all) later.

One Resource Box mistake to never make: Including multiple URL’s for all kinds of different expertises. Totally confuses the reader as to what kind of commitment you have to your niche.

Ruth,

Notice that I didn’t say we reject articles based on any of the above criteria (even though we should in some or all cases)… so go edit your articles to include your new resource box (before we start charging for that service).

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Linda Henning writes:

We were on the right path! I just recieved an article of over 1600 words, about the sport, DockDog. The author was instrumental in developing the sport in the Midwest. The problem is that the printing is expensive and we can’t afford to add more pages. At first we thought about spreading the story out over a few months’ issues.

We also publish the newsletter on line in a printable PDF. I thought we could pull out highlights of the article, put those in print with more photos, and link to the full article on the website. That way we get the full story out as the competitions start here locally, we drive hits to our site, and the author is happy not having her article drastically edited. Her article will appear in the June issue coming out by June 5.

alaskadognews.com

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Wordfeeder Dina writes:

You’re welcome, EzineArticles Chris. :)

Dan G., you definitely make some good points about inexperience and how that effects one’s article marketing.

If I went through my EzineArticles.com stockpile right now, I’d likely have to fix 75% of the resource box content.

The reason is because, at one time, “I just didn’t know any better!”

For example, who knew that a landing page that you (I) spent a good amount of effort promoting would eventually no longer exist!

(In that case one must become schooled in the 401 redirect. Or is it 301, I’m forgetting).

There’s just a lot to learn. I would say keep paying attention to what Chris says here on this blog. It’s quite phenomenal.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Dina,

It’s 301 redirect for permanently moved.

Yeah, I don’t think most writers are thinking several years out nor have they gone through enough website cycles to know that they should plan several years out.

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strephon kaplan-williams writes:

Hello Chris and others,

What exactly is the point of writing articles and having two url links to your web pages at the end?

I’ve only been at this web development two years about. So much to learn.

By point I mean, what works?

-Am I writing articles to get read? The amount of links as now reported is very small compared to the reported reads.

-What is the point if you get such small numbers of people clicking on your links for the effort to write all your articles? Then if the click through conversion rate is at one percent, this does not mean they sign up or buy your service or product.

So please explain the point with real statistics.

A business law is don’t put effort into products that don’t sell.

Are there any really valid statistics?

If you write a hundred articles on a niche subject do you get a hundred link visitors back in a year? If this is supposed to increase your Google ranking, by how much?

One percent? Any percent?

Why should a person click on your link rather than stay with EzineArticles and read other articles in the same info subject you are browsing?

If you can’t write a selling type article but only info then it seems like there is no way to get readers to leave EzineArticles, which usually will have more articles and even better articles than on your own site.

The writer’s true competition are the ezine directories, which have far more info on their directory than a writer can have on his or her site.

So why write for the competition?

Yes, a very small percentage of readers do click on a writer’s links. Mine is so small. You have the statistical machine here. Please give the actual percent of readers clicking through to a writer’s site versus those who read EzineArticles but do not click through.

In business you should always evaluate the cost of your own time.

I’m still sensing EzineArticles needs to do significantly more for its writers because the writers do a lot for EzineArticles.

But since I know so little about the system here and on the Web I only have my nose in the air with nothing solid to eat yet to be found.

Any helpful facts and statistics, not assertions?

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Strephon,

You asked a lot of valid questions.

You either GET A RETURN equal to or greater than your perceived effort or you don’t. If you don’t, we’ll assume we lost you as an active member. If you get a solid or goal exceeding return, we know you’ll be a more active member (something very important to us).

Only you can determine if it’s worth it for you.

Some members get results that can’t be measured in tangible economic ROI, but blew them away in intangible ROI. ie: Like a high profile media interview and the ripple that follows.

I can share that the number of visitors that EzineArticles sends its 100k members is in the millions per month total.

—

Thanks Joan for the blog mention:
http://publicityhound.net/bad-resource-boxes-landing-pages-can-confuse-article-readers/

Hmm! we should get moderated trackbacks working I think soon for this blog.

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Tibor writes:

Chris,
thanks for that. I’m still a little bit confused why my recent article was not allowed, unless EzineArticles is very chary about promotional websites. I sent readers (from my author box only) to a home page with LOTS of video content and the page auto starts an enlightenment / light sales video for a book. WTH.
I suspect the article was deemed a sales article due to weblink, is that right?
T.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Hi Tibor,

Best to contact our member support about individual cases… as we don’t disclose specific membership issues here in the public blog.

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Tim writes:

Chris,

Great points for people looking to market their websites with articles. I especially like the examples of what people have done… reminds me of a song back in the late 80’s or early 90’s… “Things that make you go hmmm”

I loved that song.

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Fran Civile writes:

Thank you Chris for the detailed information – examples are a good way to teach!

As Dan said, many of the mistakes you cited are
probably due to inexperience and there’s a lot of
misinformation out there…

I am curious about the 301 redirect Dina mentions –
you say it’s used for permanently removed…
could you expand on that a little please?

Thank you,

Fran

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Tim,

No, never heard of it before… ;-)

I was in Daytona Beach for Spring Break when we were jamming that song in 1991.

Gonna make ya sweat till you…

Fran,

Not permanent removed, permanently moved. 302 is a temporary redirect, 301 is a permanent redirect. In either case, consult your webmaster or web host for more info.

Do a search on EzineArticles for “301 redirect” and you’ll find 79 articles… most of them pretty good.

More important than learning how to do a 301 is making darn sure you have a 404 redirect setup to recapture lost traffic to ANY deep URL within your website. Again, this isn’t the right place for me to show how to do it as it’s specific to your webserver software/platform. Consult your web host.

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Christina Sponias writes:

Hi Chris!

I read by chance your last message when I opened the outlook.
My web hosting server said that my hosting account doesn’t have the capability to redirect the links and I asked them if I can change my account so that it will be able to support the necessary. What do you think? My webmaster said that it would solve the problem.

I’m so sad when I think that there are many people clicking the link to get my free ebook in my old blog posts and other places and going to page not found! My webmaster and the web hosting server should have prevented that. I could not imagine we would face such problem only because I changed the appearance of booksirecommend!

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Any web host that can’t provide a simple missing.html or server-side 404 redirect is worth leaving and finding a new web host that can.

This is one of those non-negotiable things.

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Christina Sponias writes:

Both my sites are hosted by one of the best American companies. However, the people that work there delay too much to care for our problems. This is what happens with big companies: everything is too bureaucratic.

I’m not happy! Wish it was simple to change server and finish with this matter, but I’m afraid I’m going to have more problems, expenses and delay to face, if I dare changing my hosting server now…

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Bobbi Linkemer writes:

Hi Chris,
Very to the point and practical. Do people really do those things? I guess so, though it defies logic. As always, thanks.

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Edward Weiss writes:

It’s so simple. Give them something FREE related to what you’re talking about in your articles.

For example, I run a piano lessons website. I talk about piano lessons. Guess what I offer in my resource box to get them to click through to my site?

Duh … a FREE piano lesson!

See. I told you it was simple.

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Matt writes:

Hey do you know where I can get a good piano teacher?

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Brad Hurlbert writes:

Helpful article, thanks for the insight…

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Sachin writes:

i think this landing page comes in the picture when the user is able to reach those resource box link. Your ezine pages have huge adsense code placed on each and every page i dont think that user wil be able to find the real author link. I had thousand of page views for my articles on your ezine but there is no CTR for my link in my author box. This directly indicates that user are just coming to our articles but bcoz of the huge adsense code in the pages, you are getting benifit out of those our articles.. what is the point og improving the landing page then………..

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Strephon writes:

Thanks Edward Weiss,

I’m the one that asked for simple and positive: How the heck do you get people to click through or you lose out in competition with EzineArticles itself, which has far more info on its site than you can have on your own.

I do frighten easily. Chris says don’t do this and that and then has his team evaluate every article I do for the ‘wrongs’ I may be committing!

Do they do that in all the company workplaces of America?

Have a team looking over every worker’s shoulder evaluating where the workers and office people are doing wrong?

It’s a scary way to do things.

I asked for positive, and you gave me positive. Maybe I was a bit too negative myself in my request?

The question still is: how do you get positive click-through’s on your links that beat the competition with other information givers on EzineArticles?

Thanks and yes, I do get stupid if I am scared half to death by pointing to the wrongs I may be doing.

I will certainly offer something free at the end of my articles. Great idea.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Sachin,

You’d be surprised… In fact, your jaw would drop if I told you how efficiently millions of monthly visitors can find the Resource Box links at the bottom of every article.

Internet Marketers have trained the whole world to scroll down the sales letter to the very bottom to get the fortune cookie at the bottom of the letter to buy. Readers of articles on a site like ours have also learned how to find the resource box links.

Strephon,

Having (2) human editors to review every article submission is the only way we know how to deliver a quality user/reader experience for the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors who trust us.

Your micromanagement analogy is non sequitur. Could you imagine if any product or service wasn’t quality controlled? Now… That’s a scary thought!

On the topic of link competition, I’d like you to ponder this:

What happens when someone else is reading one of the other 10-30 articles that are not yours and they see your article title in recent or most viewed articles at the bottom of every article?

Tim Bossie,

Thanks for mentioning this thread:
http://www.timbossie.com/2008/05/20/article-writing-and-marketing-tips-for-higher-landing-page-conversions/

To quote Tim:

“That’s the big attraction for marketing your website with articles. The long term traffic.”

“An article is a tool.”

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Strephon writes:

Chris,

Thanks for the response!

To quote you: “On the topic of link competition, I’d like you to ponder this:

What happens when someone else is reading one of the other 10-30 articles that are not yours and they see your article title in recent or most viewed articles at the bottom of every article?”

There is confusion for me here. I have in the past looked for where my articles appear on your site in any lists or anything else. I never found one listed on most recent. Either it did not get listed immediately or later when I went back I could not find it.

Maybe I do not know the system. It would be nice if there was automatic notification when my article title did appear on some list on your site.

Or more kinds of listings or collections.

What services do you offer?

Of course I appreciate what you now offer and would like more as an author, as I have already voiced my opinion about, hopefully in a nice if challenging way.

Do you have a staff editor who can focus on enhancing article author benefits? To explain these, to suggest further benefits? I do know you to have the author in mind also, as well as article quality, and staff sky-diving trips. :)

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Strephon,

I love that idea… for us to notify you via email if or when any of your articles make it into the most viewed or most published top 10-15 articles in any of the 569 niche categories.

We’ll do that as soon as we can create an email notification control panel so that members who don’t want to be bothered with every email can throttle us.

On the author benefits, there is a lot we do every week that no one notices and we no longer point out because we think it’s just part of our job… and we don’t need a pat-on-the-back every time we add another pool of new servers to speed up the service (happens every month) or when we hire more people to improve our service (happens weekly).

…There will be no staff sky diving trips! Good talent is hard enough to find. :)

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Kronik Media writes:

Landing pages although useful for search engine optimization should be used with utmost care. Technically Google frowns upon the concept of landing pages designed purely for search engine optimization e.g. keyword spammed landing pages.

Google can also penalize for landing pages that are not linked back to to the rest of the site pages.

This topic is discussed in detail on
kronikmedia.co.uk/blog

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Livin writes:

Thanks for the article. I agree with Dan G.

As a newbie, I have a lot to learn, and it’s forums like this and articles/posts that can point me in the direction of the things I need to research and learn more about.

We learn by mistakes, but your articles help us avoid some of them.

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Randy Kemp writes:

Excellent landing page/article tips. Short but to the point.

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Sofia Hogan writes:

Hello Folks!

This thread is EXCELLENT!, I am so glad I subscribe to this blog because there are so many talented people who are willing to share.

Via this blog, I am learning the ropes day by day and hope I bring value here.

– More to come!

Sofia

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