By : Admin

Normally you find a resource box at the end of an article when you used to submit the article in article directory. It usually contains a link to the site that has submitted the article. And of course, the article and the site both are related. A resource box contains the name of the author, a brief description of the author, a brief description of the sponsoring site and a link. It’s FREE advertising.

As we know that writing articles is one of the fastest ways to build traffic to the website. Not only that, they are great marketing tools and instant recognition vehicles on the internet.

However, one of the most overlooked parts of the article is the resource box - and it is almost as important as the article itself.

A well-crafted resource box has the capability to make or break your article writing. You may miss out quality visitors simply because resource box at the end of the article is not constructed effectively. There are a few check points to ensure that your resource box is always working to its maximum efficiency.

• Ask the reader to click on the link you have presented to them.
• Relate the resource box directly to the content of the article.
• Avoid hyped up or promotional language.
• Do not dilute the effectiveness of having a single link because you don’t have the space in a resource box to provide more than one link.

Things to keep in mind:

• Resource box must be able to attract the attention and interest of the reader.
• Use the right keywords and content.
• Use creativity; it should not look either too boring or not eye-catching enough.
• Do not mislead your potential website visitors.
• Don’t ever think the resource box is not useful.
• Keep it professional. Use spell check and verify your URL’s are correct.
• Do not list every website you own in you resource box.
• Get your point across quickly without overselling the readers.

Consider these key elements in your Resource Box:

1. Name: The first line of your resource box should be a short sentence that gives your name and tells what you do on the Internet.

2. Website URL: Listing your website URL will bring visitors to your website. Whenever your article is published on another website with a link, your link- popularity with the major Search Engines will be boosted.

3. Newsletter Subscription Address: Getting an interested visitor to visit your website is great; do not forget to capture their email address. Remember when listing your newsletter; do not use an email address. Include the URL for your newsletter subscription address.

4. List Something Free: By offering a free item you’ll greatly increase the chances of a reader clicking through to your website. You also have the opportunity for sales through your free offering. Make sure your product is relevant to the article.

Avoid these things when writing a resource box:

1. Don’t oversell: This is not the time or place to list every product you sell and every detail that makes your website better than others. Include a couple of sentences where you sell yourself or your website.

2. Stay on theme with the article: It is vital that whatever theme you choose, you stick with it. The best way to stay on theme is to include what the article was about inside the theme.

3. Irrelevant information: Stay with either your website or the product you discussed in the article. There is no point and not enough room to discuss other products and thus providing irrelevant information.

4. Affiliate links: If you want to promote affiliate links, do it on your website or in your blog because adding affiliate links will be selling your competitors, not yours!

5. Short and concise: Your resource box should be no longer than four lines, short and to the point, meaning you have a limited amount of space to fit a lot of information in.

Writing a resource box is an art whereby you have a lot to say in very little space. So it is needless to say to put some thought into it and keep in mind that after writing a great article, the resource box is the reward for your gift. It’s entirely upto you, how effectively you use it!

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By : Nidhi Gupta

Universal Search is a term coined by Google in which results from different vertical search engines (images, video, news etc…) are integrated into Google’s regular search results. The idea is that textual listings may not necessarily be the most relevant result for a user’s query.

But when will these different search results show up? For example, what causes a video of a scene from Star Wars to appear within the organic search results for the query: “Darth Vader” Obviously it has to do with Google’s sophisticated algorithms which can correlate the right content to a user’s query, however here are some factors that can help influence the Universal Search results:

• Number of Searches per Individual Search Silo - This theory is based on shear volume for a given query on a given vertical search engine. For instance, if the query “scenic mountains” has a high number of searches within the image search, perhaps this influences the top images to appear within Universal search for the same query.

• Performance through ratings and views - This applies mostly to Video Search because on YouTube and Google Video both ratings and the number of views are kept track of. Could the ratings/views affect the appearance of videos with Universal Search?

• Clicks per listing - Google applies this same type of algorithm on both AdWords and organic search results therefore it’s something that can help Google gauge the relevance of non-text based results.

• Time Spent - With the Google Toolbar installed on so many users’ computers as well Google Analytics installed on so many websites, Google can start to understand how engaged users are with a website (after a user clicked on a listing) by measuring time spent.

• Return Visits - If a user clicks on a result listing, visits a website/image/news listing, returns immediately and clicks on another listing and continues this cycle, will Google start decreasing the quality of the websites/image/news listings that were selected?

• Usability - Google performs rigorous usability testing using eye tracking to further understand users’ search behavior and reactions to different types of search results.

How Can You Leverage Universal Search?

Universal Search requires a wide-range content strategy in addition to simply text. Here are some tactics worth looking into in terms of Universal Search:

• When using images in your web pages consider adding related keywords to both the name of the image (filename - ie: imagename.jpg) and the alt text.

• When uploading videos to YouTube and Google video take full advantage of adding a full description about your video.

• Promote your uploaded videos on your blog or through press releases. The higher your ratings and the number of views, the more authoritative your video.

• Apply to be a Google News Source. If this doesn’t work, submit your latest content to sites which are Google News Sources.

• Keep visitors on your site longer by adding enticing content which compares competitors, offers pricing and gives them something tangible to take away (whitepapers, data sheets).

Get More Details At : Webanalyticsassociation.org

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