1.Looking for something to catch my eye.
2.Having a specific need and looking for a book to help.

How does the library accommodate these two completely different mindsets?

Well the library does an excellent job of meeting just about everybody where they are at and providing them with what they need. This is a system that has been in place for hundreds of years so it works pretty darn smoothly.

Here’s a list of some of the most common ways a local library sorts out information for you. As you read think about how these same principals can be applied to an information website (like a library on the net):

New Additions: At my local library there is shelf of new books that just came in and often there is a waiting list when a popular book shows up.

Computer Catalogue: I can head to the computer and do a search for different topics or browse by subject to see if something catches my fancy.

Walk The Aisles: If I’m feeling a bit random, I just walk up and down the isles looking through the different categories. Of course I spend a bit more time on the categories that I’m most interested in and maybe find a few books to take home.

Ask The Librarian: Of course if I’m stuck there is at least one person there at all times to help guide me through the vast amounts of information available for free.

Take Courses: My local library offers often the most basic of courses and training on a wide variety of topics. All I need to do is check the boards to see what is happening at the library in the near future.

Hear the Author Speak: Sometimes they’ll have local authors in to talk about their book.

Building a website full of fantastic information that no one can find is like building a tower of books that no one can read!

Let’s see how we can apply the above principals to our websites:

New Articles/New Posts: Don’t underestimate the power of letting your visitors or subscribers know about new content. They want to know what’s fresh, what’s new and when you point that out you’ll likely get more reads.

Website Categories: Do your website categories make sense? Are they broken down bit by bit so your visitor can quickly and easily find what they need?

Search: Can your visitors enter in a search term to find what they are looking for and come up with an easy to understand list?

Navigation: Can visitors easily ‘browse’ through your pages to ‘see what they can see’?

Offering Help: Can visitors easily access YOU or your staff to find out what they need to know?

Offering Training: Can you train your visitors and potential customers on how to find their way through your site, or products or services?

In many ways your local library may seem like an outdated version of the internet but we have a lot to learn from the way these centuries-old resources have been made available to the public. Consider checking out YOUR local library today if you’re in need of some website organization inspiration!

Perhaps you also submit to article directories, YouTube and even guest blog elsewhere, but when it comes to publishing content on one’s own virtual real estate, most online business owners rely heavily on their handy-dandy blog.

It seems to make sense as it’s your central content hub.

And it’s what everyone else seems to be doing.

While a blog is a very powerful tool, in many cases a blog will serve you best with people who are already familiar with your work or who were referred by someone else. These are people who have come to expect or have been told they can expect stellar content and a unique reader experience from your blog.

But what about brand-spankin’ new prospects? Let’s follow the path of the visitor that has never heard of you before…

While they may be looking for stellar and unique, most times the new prospect is simply looking for answers. They type in keywords and hope Google will point them in the right direction. Sometimes that direction will be to the fantabulous blog content you pour your heart into and other sometimes it’s not.

Taking that into consideration, there are a couple of major problems with relying on a company blog to attract and retain plenty of brand new prospects:

1. You’ll bore your regulars to death if you focus on keyword content

If you’ve done your research with Market Samurai or another favorite keyword tool, you’ll see a ton of phrases that would be great to target, but don’t really make sense for a central blog or for your regular readers.

Let’s say you sell accessories for small dogs and you’ve been working on your most awesome blog. You have posts about your products, along with great ideas for training your dog and other useful things that your readers would love. When someone visits your blog, it just makes sense for someone to scroll through and see your latest posts. They get a nice snapshot of the remarkable content you have created. It’s that stellar and unique experience we talked about.

But from your keyword research, you discover you could be creating TONS of articles on different dog breeds, product specifications, product comparisons and other relevant and detailed content. It’s the kind of stuff people will search specifically for…not necessarily something they want to wade through on a blog. The want to come to a page and get the info they want…and then they plan to leave.

But of course, if you set your content up right, you’ll get them to follow your call-to-action instead of leaving right away. That’s why you should consider that…

2. A company blog is often designed with plenty of distractions.

Look at your blog, it’s probably got plenty of navigation, links to a bunch of categories, maybe some ads and all kinds of other stuff that isn’t specifically relevant to each single post. That’s the kiss of death with a brand new prospect. You want your brand new prospect focused and shown a direct path to a relevant call-to-action.

The Solution

It’s simple…publish plenty of content, but don’t put all your self-published content on your blog.

For your blog, focus on content that makes sense for your current readers. Use it for more timely pieces and ones that really show your unique perspective. For example, if you have an opinion on a controversial dog training technique that is growing in popularity, that’s perfect for your blog. But an article talking about the characteristics of a Schnauzer or common skin problems of a Westie…maybe not so much.

Create a “New Prospect Content” Section of Your Website

Create a separate section of your website – or even a separate website – for your more generic and keyword-based content. That doesn’t mean post crap – not at all. It simply means that you provide the content that your potential new prospects are actively looking for. Not all useful content has to be mind-blowing and innovative. It just needs to serve a purpose for your reader and ultimately, a purpose for your business.

Call it a “How To’s” section, a “FAQ” or whatever describes the type of content you’re creating. Only call it a “New Prospect Content” section in the privacy of your home or office.

Have a Simple, Distraction-Free Design

While you can certainly use WordPress or some other blog platform for your New Prospect Content, keep it completely separate from your blog. That means a separate RSS feed and definitely a simple design. New prospects have an even shorter attention span than a regular reader…don’t take chances.

Tips:

• Minimize the distraction of navbars, categories, ads, etc. Have only the bare minimum links needed and place them at the bottom of the page if possible.
• Include strong and focused calls-to-action. Offer them a subscription to your mailing list or even a link to a product, but make sure there is a strong and relevant offer.

When in doubt, always put yourself in the mind of your visitor. Think of how they got there, what they are looking for and how you can deliver exactly that.

Let’s dig deeper and understand why this is so important to your article marketing and content publishing success – the following tips apply not only to article writing but also to any other type of content you publish, either offline or online.

Your resource box is the last “communication” call to take your readers to the next level. Think of it as a P.S. You don’t want to write for the sake of it, nor waste valuable space!

All the winning resource boxes I’ve seen [and I’ve analyzed hundreds of them!] have one thing in common – they include a simple and direct “call to action”

Your article is the first step to learning from you. The call to action found in your resource box should be the next logical step to move reader to more “advanced” information or expand on the topic she has just read.

The biggest mistake I see the majority of article publishers is slap a resource box in 2.5 minutes and call it a good author bio.

If your main reason for publishing content online is to build your brand and get your name out there as a prolific writer or business mind, then your author bio should focus on YOU, your brand and your expertise!

If your main reason for article publishing and submission is to get traffic to your link, then your call to action and its URL should be in the spotlight and your author credentials afterward.

The question is – what should you promote in your resource box to ensure maximum clicks.

Before we answer that, imagine you were writing this article you’re reading now.

TITLE – “Article Resource Box Explained: What I Learned from EzineArticles Experts”

Which one of these resource boxes would you find more appealing and more importantly WHY?

Version A

For more information read our “32 Smart Article Resource Box Tips” FREE Guide

Version B

If you want to receive more resource box tips, read our blog!

Hint – the bold text will actually link to your url.

I won’t provide the answer here because it looks self-evident, right. These were just two examples from the top of my head. I’m sure with a little research you’ll find better ideas to come up with the winning resource box for your niche articles!

Back to our question:

What should you promote in your resource box to ensure maximum clicks?

As Alice mentioned here – Build Your List: Autoresponder Promotion 101 – you could give away a brand new free report, an eCourse, a Software tool, an audio recording or maybe a video tutorial. That’s not the problem. We have plenty of ideas, but rarely get to work on any from start till finish.

What I suggest is to focus on one freebie item; get it done. Do it yourself, or hire an expert in your niche field. And put your giveaway on download overload through article marketing, blog posting, and so on.

We have heard of PDF reports getting a whopping 200,000 downloads within weeks of launch, and YouTube videos attracting 1,000,000 views, wouldn’t it feel nice to aim higher?

As they say – “If you aim for the sky, at least you’d shot the moon.”

Keep this in mind – whatever your call to action, you should always LINK to your landing page. That’s the only way I know of that helps to capture leads and build a long-term, “one-on-one” relationship with your niche audience – one prospect at a time – that’s what autoresponders are for, right?

If you care less about this, then forget about lead capture pages and send traffic straight to your site, or blog. The negative side of this move is you’d be leaving a ton of money on the table. It is like your parent left you with $500,000 in the bank account, but you were only using $5,000.

Why settle for less when you could get the maximum out of everything you want or have?

P.S. A little “trick” you could use to get a fairly small boost in your clicks and gain more trust for long term is to showcase your headshot image next to your resource box. With EzineArticles dot com that’s easy.

Now I run my own website design services business and have created dozens of websites. I’ve also studied what makes a great website. One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen is people focus entirely on the design and forget about the content or vice versa, they focus on the content and forget about design.

It’s important to have a good balance of great design AND great content for a successful website.

What I Mean By Website Design:

Now when I say design I don’t mean fancy graphics. While fancy graphics do have their place, my idea of design involves the layout of the website.

A website’s design should be laid out kind of like a blueprint for a house. Before you can build the house you need to know the details. You’ll want to find out things like:

• how many people will live in the house
• what rooms do you need
• how many bathrooms do you need
• do you want a back deck
• will you have a hot tub

That’s why content planning and site design should go hand in hand. Before you create the design of the site you should know the answers to the following questions:

1. How often will the website be updated?
2. How many pages will the site have?
3. Will there be a blog?
4. What is the purpose of the website?
5. Who is the target market?
6. Will you be selling from the website?
7. Will you have an email signup?

There’s no point in having a beautiful website that doesn’t convert into sales. It’s also pointless to have a site filled with great content that no one can find. Answering the above questions may take some time if you haven’t put a lot of thought into them before. Taking the time to really understand your needs and market will, however, pay off huge in the long run.

Once you know the answer to these questions you can create the content and the design that fits your needs.

All the best in your website design adventure!

There are two kinds of resource boxes; those that get the click, and the rest.

If you’re writing for results, then your resource box should have one goal – make the reader click your link. That’s why your call to action is either remarkable or invisible.

Why do you think most article publishers are barely getting any clicks to their resource box link?

One reason is because they try the easy route. A winning resource box is not something you can slap in a minute and call it remarkable.

A resource box is like your brand. As Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder once said “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”

You have to put in as much effort, time and energy into building your resource box as when building your personal or company brand. Don’t settle for less. Your reputation is at stake.

Before I share with you the “secret” to writing winning resource box call to actions [yes, I want to save you some time here, and give you 3 real-life examples] let’s uncover three of the biggest resource box mistakes I see others doing.

And by the way, one of the case studies I’m going to share with you today is incredible. I was able to secure 20.4% call to action link conversion on one of the articles I submitted to EzineArticles.com

Resource box mistake #1
Author spotlight

If you write for fame, and want to get your name out there, author spotlight is the way to go. But if you write for traffic, if your article’ aim is to get the click, then forget about your ego. Showcase the link/offer first, and the author bio after.

Resource box mistake #2
http:// missing

I’ve seen countless resource boxes where the author forgot or simply didn’t think about including the direct URL next to his hyperlinked keyword.

Why does it matter? Just imagine someone likes your article so much, that he wants to publish it in his newsletter, or on his blog. Most webmasters would simply copy-paste the article from EzineArticles.com directory and forget to make your hyperlink active. When you include the http:// link, you guarantee to get traffic and clicks to your site.

Resource box mistake #3
Missing call to action

This is the biggest mistake ever. Why? Because we, as humans, like receiving direction. If you simply include your LINK without having a specific call to action, your article publishing efforts go in vain.

Call to action Case Study #1
Writing Headlines That Are So Irresistible In 60 Seconds Or Less

This is an article I submitted a few months ago. It got 319 views and 65 clicks as we speak. That’s a 20.4% clickthrough conversion ratio.

Your content should be results-oriented [aka getting the click], otherwise why are you still publishing articles and linking to your site?

What I’m trying to say is that your LINK needs to have a story. They say that an asking hand without a story receives nothing.

Having a link in your resource box won’t get the click. It needs a call to action, period.

That’s why I want we take a look at three winning call to actions. So you can understand what makes the difference between remarkable VS invisible call to actions.

Why did it work? Notice the call to action OFFER. It says… “You might want to check out these 127 winning advertising headlines.”

It also said… “Also, do you dare to follow me on Twitter? http://twitter.com/codrutturcanu

I always send out irresistible alerts to all my followers.”

I suspect we got so many clicks not because the Twitter link but because of the highly-relevant hiperlinked text “127 winning advertising headlines.”

Call to action Case Study #2
Learn How to Get Pregnant Easily – 3 Tips You Should Not Ignore

This is an article which I did not write but found it quite effective in terms of call to action. It’s kind of lengthy but it shows why works that well!

“Now Pay Close Attention Here:

To increase your chances of getting pregnant there are some things that can’t be explained in a short article. Take a look at this revolutionary guide that explains in step by step details exactly what you need to do to get pregnant and get pregnant fast- Click Here”

Can you guess why does it get the click? Because the resource box doesn’t scream “ADVERTISEMENT!” In fact, the author bio is an integrated part of the article itself. It doesn’t look like an advert, although it pulls you in via “Now Pay Close Attention Here:”

And the promise is simple – “Take a look at this revolutionary guide that explains in step by step details exactly what you need to do to get pregnant and get pregnant fast- Click Here”

While I don’t recommend lengthy call to actions, this example proves why your link needs a very specific reason to click.

Call to action Case Study #3
How to Lose Weight Permanently – Finally a Straight Answer

This is an article I noticed recently that glued me in. Usually titles that are well written promise a good content-packed article, and potentially a well-written resource box. This example is no exception. And the call to action proves a winner.

“Now the question you may be asking is where is the best place to start with your habits? Analysis of your current habits will ensure that you can establish your first eating habit change. The Habits Diet ebook outlines the best approach to this first step on the way to permanent weight loss. http://www.thehabitsdiet.com/”

This resource box includes both the hyperlinked text and the direct http:// link, making it easy for the reader to click.

But that’s not all. What I want you to understand is the “psychological” reason behind this call to action.

The article is a short how-to “guide” on what to do, but the resource box is even better as it’s the next logical step. It shows what to do next – click the link to take the first step, etc.

While I won’t direct visitors on a straight sales letter page, but get them on a landing page where they can join my list for a red-hot FREE special report, this example shows how practical it is to write winning call to actions and attract the click.

Article written by Codrut Turcanu: email follow-up specialist, blogger and copywriter. He’s HELPING companies and entrepreneurs engage their subscribers, leave competitors behind and cash in the profit.

Side Note: Before we get started, if you’re looking to build your list by giving away a free report (i.e. you give the report free with subscription), we’re going to have some list building tips in a few days. For now, let’s talk about giving away reports fully and freely.

Preparatory Promotion:

Before you get out there, let’s get a few things in order…so you can make the most of your report promotion. Here are some ideas and no, you don’t have to do ALL this for every report. I’m just trying to get you to consider all the possibilities and push yourself to fully and completely promote your report. If you got a great piece of content, you can really get a lot of mileage out of just one report.

1. Design a graphic cover.

2. Create a pre-written promotional write up and/or blog post.

3. Create some newsletter ads.

4. Graphics ads / banners in several sizes.

5. Pay-per-click ads for split testing.

Where to Promote Your Report:

• Tell your mailing list: The people most responsive to your great content are the people who have already shown they’re interested in it.

• Announce it on your blog: Again, your readers will loooooove it!

• Check your stats: Go through your older, relevant and high traffic pages and add a promo/link to your report.

• Visual promotion: Add a promotional graphic for the report to your site.

• Swap newsletter ads: Contact other targeted and large mailing list owners and offer to promote their free report in return for promoting you theirs.

• Buy newsletter ads: If there is no swap available or you don’t want to swap, buy an ad.

• Affiliates: Let your affiliates brand the report with their affiliate link. Plus, be sure to share a lot of these promo tips with them too.

• Find New Affiliates: Contact busy blog owners or big list owners whose audience are a perfect match for your report. Ask them if they’d like rights to give away the report and tell them they can include their affiliate link for [insert amount] commissions.

• Get social: Tweet it…tell your Facebook friends. You know the drill.

• Signatures: Include the report in your signature line in your emails and in networking groups.

• Bylines: Create highly-targeted articles and distribute them with a link to the report in your byline.

• Unique Guest Posts: Go a step further than simple article distribution, create unique blog posts and offer them to busy blog owners for publications. Make sure the content is very targeted to their readers and it’s stellar content.

• Advertising: Buy pay-per-click and graphical ads. Be sure to split test and track your results to ensure you’re staying profitable.

• Free Ebook Sites: Upload your report to free ebook sites – Try Google Books,  iTunes, Get Free Ebooks,  e-Library.net,

Just a few ideas to get you started. There are so many possibilities and opportunities and just when you think you’ve run out of possibilities, just take a look at this list again. I’m sure you’ll come up with more promotion opportunities.