Four Tips For Creating An Effective Authors' Resource Box

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Copyright © 2010 Bill Platt


In article marketing, there are many factors that will affect your articles' ability to promote your website in the most effective manner. In this article, we will briefly discuss a couple those factors, before we dive into how to create an effective Authors' Resource Box, also known as the About The Author Information.

Before the Authors' Resource Box

Hands down, the most important element of a successful article is its title. Your title must serve three masters: the publisher, the reader, and the search engines.

Before anyone can see your article, you must attract the interest of a publisher. Your title will determine how many publishers open your article, in the process of determining whether your article will answer the needs of his or her readers.

Unless a publisher decides to publish your article, your article will be forever confined to a few article directories - very few article directories have any real traffic, beyond the writers who go to that site to get their own articles submitted.

Your article title is essential to getting your article opened by publishers first and readers second. You need publishers to open your articles, so that they can consider them for publication. Once a publisher has decided to publish your article, you need readers to open your article and read it. Better than that, you need readers to reach your resource box and a visit your website, so that they can consider purchasing what you sell.

The third master that your article title serves is the search engine algorithm. Once your article is published on a third-party website, you want the search engines to find it, to index it, and to present it in its search results. But, as an individual who plays the search engines, you also want the search engines to credit your website as being related to the anchor text that you used in your links.

After The Title

Once a publisher has opened your article and began reading, you want that publisher to decide that the article content is appropriate for his or her audience.

Your title will only ensure that your article will be opened. But, it is the body of your article that will determine if a publisher actually uses your article. Your article must answer a need of people in the publishers' target audience. If the publisher determines that your article content is not relevant to his or her audience, it does not matter how good your article might be.

Beyond relevance, the publisher must consider the article to be interesting and useful to his or her audience. As an article writer, you serve the publishers' needs and the publisher serves the needs of his or her audience. Ideally, your goal when writing the article should be to answer the needs of a publishers' audience. In doing so, you can gain the approval of the publisher, who stands between your article and your intended audience.

Your first master is the publisher. Without the support of publishers, your articles cannot be exposed to a much larger audience.

Your second master is always the reader. The reader must appreciate what you have written. If the reader appreciates the story that you have told, then your reader will want to read your resource box, to determine whether you can offer them more... A satisfied reader, who is also intrigued by your resource box, is someone who will be very likely to visit your website, through the link in your resource box.

Your third master is always the search engine algorithm. Once again, you want the search engine companies to acknowledge the link from a third-party website pointing to your website, and also the relationship of your anchor text keywords to your website.

The Money Shot

The publisher is seldom concerned with your actual Authors' Resource Box. The only time a publisher will shoot down an article, based on its resource box, is when it contains offensive language or links to offensive websites.

When you construct your Authors' Resource Box, there are four goals that you should seek to accomplish with every single article you write.

First, you want to define an author. People, who have read your article, want to know about the person who has written it.

Some marketers want to leave a name off of the Authors' Resource Box. This is frequently done for one of two reasons.

First, companies may want to separate its content from the people who have written content. Companies rightfully consider the article to be part of the intellectual property of the company; therefore, no individual should be given credit as the author.

Second, individual website owners may want to hide behind the anonymity that the Internet offers to them.

Articles do have the capacity to deliver real people - shoppers - to your website. If your goal is to attract real people - potential customers - to your website, it will be imperative to allow your reader to connect to an individual author...

This is not to say that you have to use a real name in conjunction with your article. In fact, many marketers utilize multiple pen names, with the articles that they publish online.

For example, I utilize article marketing to promote dozens of websites online. In doing so, I utilize a new pen name with every new website I promote. Anson Werner writes about travel. Barry Prouty writes about WordPress blogs. Emerson Lockwood writes about home improvement.

Anson Werner is not real, but he is one of my alter egos. Anson lets me write about other topics that interest me, without watering down my online persona.

Anson's most important role is to give readers a connection to an online personality, a name through whom they can find other articles of a similar nature, written by the same person.

Anson gives identity to the person responsible for the creation of the content, for the reader.

The flipside is suggesting that "Business Name" wrote the article, but that is such a disingenuous method to identify the person, with whom the reader had felt a connection.

The only thing worse than trying to convince the reader that a "Business Name" wrote the article, is to try to convince the reader that "No One" wrote the article... If you try the "No One" approach to taking credit for the authorship of the article, you will have stepped beyond the obvious, little white lie and entered into the territory of convincing the reader that you have a good reason to hide. If you must hide from your audience, then why should they trust to give you their money?

The second thing you want to is to provide a strong call-to-action to your readers. If you got a reader to open your article and read it to its conclusion, then you should absolutely be interested in getting that reader to visit your website to consider buying what you are selling.

But so many people lose the race right here, by providing either no call-to-action or an ineffective call-to-action.

The people who have just read your article are primed to do what you want them to do. But you have to tell them what you want them to do and why.

Don't miss this opportunity to encourage your readers to visit your website and buy what you are selling.

The third item is a plain text copy of the link to your domain, which is your opportunity to brand your website with your articles. This is an opportunity that is overlooked by most article marketers.

Many article marketers make the mistake of believing that the only thing that article marketing is used for is to influence the search engine algorithms. They quickly forget that before the search engines find value in a page, people will be reading the articles.

By only providing anchor text links, your readers will not know which website supported the development of an article. But, if people know the name of your website and why they would want to visit your website, then people will be more inclined to type the name of your website into their browser bar, rather than to look for you on the search engines.

35% of my global traffic comes from people who type in the URL of my website into their browser bars.

Additionally, you want to include a plain text copy of your URL, as a matter of self-protection, if the publisher does not publish your article with your anchor text links.

The fourth and final item you want to include in your Author's Resource Box is your anchor text links, which explain to the search engines what keywords best define your website.

If you use more than one anchor text link in your Author's Resource Box, then you should point each one to a different URL, to maximize the value your website will receive from the search engines. This will show the search engines that more than one URL on your website is worth consideration, and it will help your overall ability to find visitors from the search engines.

In Conclusion

Too many article marketers have the idea that article marketing will only serve one master - Google. But Google will find your articles hard to appreciate if real people do not also appreciate your article...

When publishers appreciate what you have written, they will put your article into their website, giving you access to their audiences. The more publishers, who appreciate what you have written, the more of them who will publish your article, which will give you even more links from your articles.

When readers appreciate what you have written, they are very likely to visit your website to see what else you can do for them.

If you desire only to chase search engine rankings, then that is your business. But wasn't the original purpose of chasing search engine rankings to attract potential customers to your website? So, why not chase publishers, readers and search engines with your articles?


About the Author:
My name is Bill Platt. If you enjoyed this article and found it useful, then you will love my newest article marketing ebook titled, "How To Use Article Marketing To Positively Impact Your SEO Efforts". It is 70-pages of hard-hitting information about how to make your article marketing truly profitable: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-seo.html Or, you can get warmed up with my free "Article Marketing: Beyond The Basics" ebook at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/advanced-article-marketing.html