Things You Can Do With A Bio Box
The part of the article submission process that turns your readers into potential customers is the bio box section at the bottom of your articles. There are a lot of different things you can do to really make them stand out. Some effective, some not so.
Typically, most people take the concept literally and write something about themselves. While this isn't necessarily a bad idea, particularly if you have some great credentials, it may tend to contribute a bit of irrelevancy to your articles if your main field of expertise is in something other then what your article is about.
For example, you could be an expert in web design, but your article is about SEO. The two may seem to relate to you, because good web design is part of good SEO. However, the way the search engines deem they're relevancy could be different.
Of course if your article is titled "How Web Design Improves a Site's SEO" then it would be appropriate to tout yourself as a web design expert. But if you're writing about a different aspect of SEO, then not.
Using articles to brand yourself as an expert does work, but the most effective form of bio box, also called a "resource box," is one that relates to the article rather than the author. And this would make sense because people come to get information about a topic far more often than they go looking for a particular author, unless your name is Hemingway or Shakespeare.
As you may have seen in a few of the other articles in this series, it's not such a good idea to use articles to sell products. Articles are stories and should be used as pure information, and at the most a way to incline your readers' mind set as a prep to turn them into a buyer.
If you've done your job effectively, then your resource, or bio box can lead them to a more pointed set of articles specifically about your product, or to the sales page itself.
One mistake authors make in this regard is to put something like, "for more information, go to . . ." as the lead in for their bio box. This equates to "click here" for an anchor text, which we all know will not count as a relevant back link.
Rather, a more effective lead in would stress the value of the article's information. To use the above example, you might write, "Good SEO can mean the difference between a lot of traffic and no traffic at all . . ." and then finish with your resource link to lead them further, "to get better acquainted with the latest tricks of the trade, see [anchor text]."
As you can see, this stands out far better than "for more information" and let's your readers know what they can expect to find when they click on your link. It also brings your bio box into tighter relevancy with your article, which in turn will improve your article's ranking and value with the search engines.
So in the end, what you put in your bio box would depend on your objective. Are you trying to label yourself as an expert? The make sure your article relates to your expertise and go with it. But if you're trying to use articles to turn readers into potential buyers, then use your bio box to highlight the subject matter.
Just remember that your bio box does count. Don't take it lightly and just throw something in there to fill in the submission form. A good bio box can be the difference between making sales or not, getting high SERPs or not, and gaining reader appreciation or not.
If you really take the time to think about what to put in there, your article submission work will yield you far better results both in short term and over the long run.