Make Your Resource Box Click-friendly
A resource box is a little “classified-ad” that you usually find at the end of an article. For most article directories, this is the only place that the authors can place a link to their website. And thus this is the most important part of the whole article that you submitted.
In general, the resource box contain the name of the author, a brief description of the author, a brief description of the author’s website and a link. If the readers like what they read, they would tend to click the link to find out where the article came from to read more. Thus it is worth putting the time and effort to create a good resource box.
Having read through many articles as well as written quite a few myself, I realized that having the author’s name and bio in the resource box does not generate a lot of clickthrough. Most of the time, when I clickthrough to any site from an article resource box, it is mainly due to 2 reasons:
1. Curiosity
2. Benefit
As an example, consider this:
Free report reveals how one man from India earned $15,691 of Adsense commission in one month without prior success. Grab your free report at http://xyz.com and discover his secret strategies now.
This resource box will make me curious and want to know more about the secret strategies. I will most likely click over to the website to get the report so that I can also improve my Adsense income (which is a benefit to me).
There is space limitation for the resource box and so it may be necessary to re-write the resource box a few times to get the length right without sacrificing the curiosity and benefit factors. I once heard an article marketing expert said that he spent less than 15 minutes writing his article, but he will spend 30 min to 1 hour to get his resource box right. That’s how important the resource box is.
For SEO reason, include your main and secondary keywords in the resource box if possible.
Just like writing actual classified ads or PPC ads, a lot of practice is required. Whenever I browse the article directories, I will copy the resource box of those articles that I’ve read and click through. They will go into my swipe files folder and will help me generate ideas on how to create my own resource boxes.
I am acutely aware of the importance of the resource box and I have been working on mine right along.
I have several swipe files. Why hadn’t I thought of the resource box as one of them? Thanks!
Carol Smith
Thank you Stephen. This is a very good advice. Starting now, I will create a swipe file of good resource boxes. And I will re-write my resource box to add curiosity to it.
thanks for sharing, now i know how to write resource box
Perfectly put on the resource box. It is one of those key points in the whole process of customer and aquisition that make an enormous difference. I constantly read article about resource box setups because I know I get lazy and forget if I don’t. It is that important.
THANKS! I had no earthly idea as I am new to this and I appreciate your valuable help and advice!
Chuck
Thanks for emphasizing how important a reference box is. It is always a good reminder, because at times I get a tad lazy after writing an article and leave the resource box less than desirable. Thanks for the reminder… It will help me push forward and put that extra touch at the end! Thanks again!!
Rob
I agree with you Stephen about the importance of an EXCELLENT resource box with a call to action whether triggered by curiosity of benefit. After all, what’s the point of writing articles if you don’t have any benefit? It’s the WIIM…W (What’s In It for the Writer).