How to Have High CTRs In Your Articles

by Talinn
29 replies
Hi Warriors, as some of you might know I am a newbie but I have found some success with article marketing. Because I am thankful to you guys, I believe in giving back to the forum.

Because I am using article marketing, CTRs are extremely important to me, that's why I have conducted very deep analyses of my good and bad performing articles, CTR-wise. Here are my results.

1. Resource boxes are ALWAYS second to the actual content of the article. There are some article marketers who claim that resource boxes can dramatically increase a CTR by themselves. This is only true if the actual article content was compelling, but the CTR was low because of the poor resource box. The resource box can at most be a bottleneck.

2. Remember your goal: You need to grasp the reader from the start, make him read, read, read to the end and at last click on that link. The longer the article, the harder it is to keep your readers reading and reaching the resource box. So your articles should be as short as possible. No, I am not saying every article should be 250 words. Every article needs to be as short as the points you're trying to pass on your readers should require. Do not crowd the article with unnecessary and long sentences just there as a filler.

3. More informative content is not always better. This is a key rule to article marketing CTR's. If you are going to give away some methods to do something (cure a tinnitus, for example), and if you know of 5 methods, do not tell them all. Put one or two in the article. And make sure that you don't put those methods in the beginning of the article. Remember that your goal is to make your readers follow you throughout the article and click on your link in the end. If you just give some methods at the beginning, and fill the rest of the article with other things, the reader will most probably think one of the following:

a) "These methods look good, I'd never heard of them before. Let me try them." And there's at least a %50 chance that your reader will just stop and try that method at that exact time. Not good.
b) "What the hell, it makes no sense at all." Not good.
c) "What the hell, I've read of this a billion times." Not good.

That is why you should restrain yourself from talking and giving away too much. The best CTRs always come from those articles where you point out the fundamentals of a method (on which principle your method works), and then just tell the article that they should use a method with THAT specific underlying principle. And what a coincidence! You have exactly a way of doing that with that principle in your resource box!

4) Do not use the same resource box in all your articles. This is a well known fact - you should make sure that the resource box blends with the article itself, so that the reader will not realize that the resource box is actually advertising and they'll read on, thinking they're reading the last paragraph of the article. If you use a standard resource box for all your articles, you'll be forced to make it generic so it'll fit all of your articles, but in the meantime it will lose any specific references to the article itself, and will stand out as advertising.

Additional Information: As I understand, CTRs vary greatly from niche to niche. But everything aside, if I am not averaging at least 30% CTR in any niche, I assume I am doing something wrong; and when I play with the articles, change here and there, I am usually able to pass 30% in every niche. As an average my CTR is about 40-45%, and this is not really difficult to attain.

Good Luck!
#articles #ctrs #high
  • Profile picture of the author yommys01
    Great post man. I am one of those quility of using the same ( 6 for 2 Author names) resource boxes for their articles.
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  • Profile picture of the author tea_lover2
    Hi Talinn,

    thanks so much for sharing these tips as well as your journey, it is very inspiring. I am wondering, if you don't mind sharing, what is it that you did differently, or changed, or talking with Casey that totally changed your ability to start making money immediately? I am just starting my article marketing, and definately found Casey Gentles's free tips to be super helpful. But what was the real change that made the difference? thanks so much!
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  • Profile picture of the author Talinn
    Hi,

    Actually, like I have said some time before, even though I hadn't earned a cent from IM I had gained lots of very important experience and I felt that my next project would make me money. But what Casey changed is that he gave me one of his niche packs, and on top of his great "$4000 Blueprint" report that made a huge difference. Plus, I got to talk to him (maybe for two hours! he wasn't sick of my questions, and more importantly he didn't hide anything from me.) so it all made some sort of sense to me; and I began making money.
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  • Profile picture of the author remyhenry
    Thanks Talin For these tips i have always believe that article writing is one of the most cost effective means of advertising online and have been struggling to write and the few a wrote are not doing well, may be i will go back to with your tips i will do better. Thanks for sharing with us.
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  • Profile picture of the author tea_lover2
    thanks so much Talinn, I have only submitted 8 articles so far, but 7 of them were this week, after reading about your success and then asking Casey for his free ebook, which was so helpful. I think I'll go ahead and see about the $4,000 blueprint report. Thanks so much for sharing!
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    • Profile picture of the author Talinn
      Originally Posted by tea_lover2 View Post

      thanks so much Talinn, I have only submitted 8 articles so far, but 7 of them were this week, after reading about your success and then asking Casey for his free ebook, which was so helpful. I think I'll go ahead and see about the $4,000 blueprint report. Thanks so much for sharing!
      His $4000 report is one of the best things that happened to me in IM - he could easily charge $50 for it and it would be worth it still!
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      • Profile picture of the author breakdance
        Originally Posted by Talinn View Post

        His $4000 report is one of the best things that happened to me in IM - he could easily charge $50 for it and it would be worth it still!
        Hey Talinn, are you talking about the "Clickbank Secrets" book or whatever from Mr. Casey, that is *free*, right?
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  • Profile picture of the author MissEvonne
    Thanks for this Talinn, article marketing is so important when you are starting out and do not have a lot of money. So doing it correctly right from the start really helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
    I agree with your take on resource boxes being secondary in importance compared to the actual content. You have to lead the reader to the resource box with compelling content and then pull them in with a killer resource box.
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    • Profile picture of the author Talinn
      Originally Posted by Marhelper View Post

      I agree with your take on resource boxes being secondary in importance compared to the actual content. You have to lead the reader to the resource box with compelling content and then pull them in with a killer resource box.
      That's definitely correct. Your resource box doesn't have any importance when nobody is reading it!
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  • Profile picture of the author phil.wheatley
    With the Bio, making them curious is probably the most important thing, like you said, don't give too much information. I tend to use "Are you doing one of these 3 mistakes that will stop you losing weight forever???" type thing.

    p.s MissEvonne, I checked out your free videos from your link, thanks for those, I thought after 2 years I already knew it all about Article Marketing, clearly not!! DOH!
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    It's still not working for you??? Need direction?...
    ---->>>> BrainDirection.com <<<<----
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    • Profile picture of the author Joshua.E1
      Thanks Talinn for the post, its very useful to know that conversion also goes with article marketing too.

      I agree that more does not mean good conversion, but what you did not say, thats where they want to know more.

      Its strange for humans to act this way, but this is our nature, so make good use of this.
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    • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
      Originally Posted by LegitBlogger View Post

      Very revealing post! I agree with lots of your points,
      especially that of shorter articles for EZA. From my
      experience the longer articles just don't get as high
      CTRs as the short ones. So - yes, it pays to stick
      to short articles of less than 250 to 350 words,
      ever 400 words!
      .
      I have experimented with the length of articles to CTR and found that the shorter articles get a better CTR all things being equal.
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      • Profile picture of the author steveniam
        I have to agree with you. People seem to have attention-deficit problem and would not read longer articles.

        Originally Posted by Marhelper View Post

        I have experimented with the length of articles to CTR and found that the shorter articles get a better CTR all things being equal.
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  • Profile picture of the author didiert
    Great info, very usefull.

    Thanks for sharing




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  • Profile picture of the author katiec
    Great advice. I have been doing article writing for quite some time now, but even I learned a little bit from this post. Thanks so much for this!
    Signature

    Please read the sig file rules

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  • Do you all write your own articles or do you outsource? I´ve tried a few times to start writing but it doesn´t seem to be working. I guess I´m just not a good writer.

    Do you know of any good places to get quality articles?
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    • Profile picture of the author Tony Dean
      Originally Posted by Terro View Post

      Do you all write your own articles or do you outsource? I´ve tried a few times to start writing but it doesn´t seem to be working. I guess I´m just not a good writer.

      Do you know of any good places to get quality articles?
      A good place to start looking for article writers is the WSO.

      Be successful,

      Tony
      Signature

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      • Profile picture of the author Justin Jordan
        Originally Posted by Tony Dean View Post

        A good place to start looking for article writers is the WSO.

        Be successful,

        Tony
        Or the warriors for hire section.

        Or, and I'm just saying, some people's signatures.

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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Stigson
    Woow! This almost feels like it's taken right out of my upcoming traffic product... But it couldn't be since it's out. I guess we are TWO who use this method. Since I learned this I'm getting pretty high CTR's.

    250-350 words,

    Compelling, Benefit Driven Title: "3 Ways To Overcome Procrastination In 8 Minutes Using Recent Discovered Method..."

    50 words (promoting the article, and restating the title) "If you have ever dreaded the horror of procrastination and want to overcome procrastination you will love these 3 ways to overcome procrastination in 8 minutes using recent discovered methods. Keep reading to learn more.

    50 words about tip 1 (talk ABOUT THE METHOD, not REVEAL THE METHOD) and introduce tip 2.

    50 words on tip 2, leading into tip 3,

    50 Words on tip 3, leading into summary,

    summarize, such as "Now you know what not to do and also, 3 effective methods to overcome procrastination. You should know that there are many other techniques similar to this, which have been kept secret by experts, who have recently started coming out with their methods..."

    Resource box: "Download your FREE report showing 27 Ways to instantly overcome procrastination in 8 minutes a day... Link - In this FREE report 3 experts reveal their insider secrets, never previously exposed to the general public.

    Something like that, also link your keyword, like "overcome procrastination" =)

    These articles usually get a fairly high CTR for me, but I'm not sure if they are similar to yours or not, I just came up with something on the spot, lol.

    - Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author Money Bomb
    Treat it like TV I guess, 30 second ad spots of instant gratification. The methods used by quick hitting hook spitting "as seen on TV" commercials are a good template for affiliate marketing IMO - same demographic group.

    Give them pseudo-content - which is actually a generalized sales pitch masked as a "tip" or "technique". Just don't mention the product that's being pushed until the resource box.
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  • Profile picture of the author Neil Kieren
    Hmmm... This is very informative thanks for sharing.
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  • Profile picture of the author James Pateman
    Hi Talinn,
    I've found that lists also work really well in articles.



    Regards,
    James Pateman
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  • Profile picture of the author mithu
    Really helful post. I'm into article marketing to promote my site. So this is going to help a lot. I have seen that writing a better and informative article gives more CTR then anything else nomatter what your resource box says because you have already proved your authority with the article. Altering the resourse box contents also helps a bit.
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  • Profile picture of the author ebizman87
    If you're doing this...

    " Internet marketing is the best form of marketing lately because of the massive amount of benefits that you can get easily and instantly."...

    Maybe you can try this...

    "Internet marketing is a good form of marketing. It offers a lot of benefits to you"

    Compare the 2 sentences that I've given above, which 1 do you think will keep your eyes focused on it?

    I'm sure the latter because it's short and simple.

    The ultimate aim of the first sentence is to make sure that it triggers someone to read the 2nd one. And the 2nd sentence is aimed to trigger someone to read the 3rd and so on...

    People like to read short sentences because it makes more sense to them.If you keep writing long sentences in your articles, in the end you might BORE your readers and thus lose CTR!!

    This is what I've learned by reading Joe Sugarman's copywriting books...
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  • Profile picture of the author entrepreneurjay
    Yeah i agree make your articles short and sweet especially through ezinearticles. Put your link in the very front of your resource box first thing. I found this improves your click through rate.
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