Would a free PDF download diminish SEO benefits of HTML content?
-
Dear readers,
This post is a duplicate of one I just put up. Sorry about that. If you are interested in commenting or seeing other responses, please go to http://moz.com/community/q/would-a-free-pdf-download-diminish-seo-benefits-of-html-content.
Thanks.
Hello,
I am doing SEO for a company that, as a sideline business, sells four books written by the principals; the content is directly relevant to the company's primary business focus. Book sales are a tiny fraction of our overall revenue, and we don't expect that to change, although we will continue to sell the books.
In addition to selling them, we have decided to convert the books to HTML and post them for free on our website (laid out by chapter and section). The hope is that this will result in goodwill, links, traffic, and ultimately improved search rankings.
My question: Would offering free PDF downloads of the books (in addition to posting the HTML content) diminish the SEO benefits of the HTML content?
- If we don't offer the PDF option, people would have to visit our site to read the content (unless they bought a hard copy).
- If visitors were able to download a free PDF, they wouldn't need to return to our site to read it.
- If our corporate clients (nearly all of our clients are corporations) could download a PDF, they could then post it on an intranet instead of posting a link to our site.
- In general, do you think a visitor would be less likely to link to our site if he or she were able to download the PDF? Or would the appeal of the PDF option make it more likely that people would visit and link to the site?
- Also, if we offer the PDF option, are there any SEO issues related to duplicate content?
- Finally, if we did offer the free PDF download, would you recommend that we ask for an email address before giving the PDF?
Thank you very much!
-
I'm going to close this discussion, and ask that it be carried on at the original post at http://moz.com/community/q/would-a-free-pdf-download-diminish-seo-benefits-of-html-content
-
I see you have posted the same question earlier. Is there a reason you asked the same question in two separate posts?
-
Hi, that's a lot of variables and answers may therefore vary from different people, but here's my best shot:
**1. If we don't offer the PDF option, people would have to visit our site to read the content (unless they bought a hard copy). **If the goal is getting more readership and attention for these books then I think you should provide a PDF.
**2. If visitors were able to download a free PDF, they wouldn't need to return to our site to read it. **No, but the benefits of (1) above apply I think.
**3. If our corporate clients (nearly all of our clients are corporations) could download a PDF, they could then post it on an intranet instead of posting a link to our site. **I think you could put information in the PDF and on the page where it can be downloaded from to say that you do not give permission for the PDF to be hosted on another site. You cannot guarantee that they wouldn't but I think it is unlikely a corporate would want to be seen to be going against your wishes on that. Alternatively, you could say that the PDF can be hosted on other sites, providing they include a Follow link to your site attributing your site as the source.
**4. In general, do you think a visitor would be less likely to link to our site if he or she were able to download the PDF? Or would the appeal of the PDF option make it more likely that people would visit and link to the site? ** Yes - the second option
5. Also, if we offer the PDF option, are there any SEO issues related to duplicate content? Not really, if posting on other sites they include a link to the source of the PDF on your site
**6. Finally, if we did offer the free PDF download, would you recommend that we ask for an email address before giving the PDF? **It depends what your motivation for doing so is. If you want to build an email list that you can then send newsletters and special offer emails to, then yes - as long as you make it clear that is what you will do and you get the visitor to click a checkbox confirming they accept that condition - although of course you have to give them the option to unsubscribe at a later date when you send newsletters and offer emails.
I hope that helps,
Peter
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Html to wordpress
I have an html site and most of my pages are ranking well. I want to switch to wordpress but i am afraid that i will loose ranking on my inner pages. Any thoughts? And should i do a redirect or use a html plugin
On-Page Optimization | | benjaminmarcinc0 -
Duplicate Content on our own website
Our website sells tickets for events. We also have an news articles section with information about events / artists / venues. From time to time we release a product page and a related news article on a separate page. Some of the content in the news article would be perfect for our product page. Essentially its our product page we want too rank. Would it harm our SEO if we had some of the same content on both of these pages?
On-Page Optimization | | Alexogilvie0 -
Social Media Profile and Website content dupe content issues ?
Is there a dupe content issue if your social media profiles and website have same content/copy ? For example if you have written great copy for your website home page then literally copy & paste that into your G+ co page introduction (since sums everything up perfectly and don't want to change it) would that have a negative effect or be perfectly ok ? cheers dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence1 -
Posting content from our books to our website
Hello, I am the newly appointed in-house seo person for a small business. The founders of our company have written several books, which we sell. But book sales are a small part of our business. We are considering posting to our website some or all of the content of the books. This content is directly relevant to the existing content of our website and would be available for free to all visitors. 1. Is it likely that the traffic and links to the new book pages would improve the search engine rankings of our existing pages? 2. We already have pdf versions of each book we could post, which are formatted nicely. Should we convert these to html to make them more friendly to search engines? 3. Of course, we would have to split each book into multiple web pages, perhaps one chapter per page. How much content could each new page optimally accommodate? 4. Would it be more valuable from an SEO perspective to post pieces of the books over time in a blog format? Thank you very much for your thoughts!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
Mobile website content
What is the point of optimizing (on-page SEO) a parallel mobile website if the mobile search results are taken from the general (desktop) index?
On-Page Optimization | | echo10 -
Breadcrumb position SEO impact
Hi all, Our UX designers are working on a new page design, and the breadcrumb position looks somewhat strange - it's almost in the middle of the page. The new page looks like this (the breadcrumb is below the head banner), but it's a showcase page that contains about 150 items. Each of them has a small thumbnail, title, category and short description. They've decided to use the head banner's place and have there all items, grouped in categories that visitors can browse. The breadcrumb menu is at 900 pixels from the top of the page In other words, you have the major part of this page content in front of the breadcrumb menu. Are there any SEO implications in such case? Should we use breadcrumbs on this page if they're not at the top? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | lgrozeva
Maggie0 -
Ecommerce: content on category pages
I have to optimize some online Shops and after Panda I really don't know what to think about thin content on product overview pages anymore... used to be that we could improve our rankings easily just by adding 1-2 sentences on such a page. This always worked for non-overly competitive terms. Now It feels like it doesn't work any longer, but I couldn't put my finger on it and I don't have the resources to test. Here's an example of what I mean: http://www.geschenkidee.ch/wandtattoos/aus_aller_welt.html
On-Page Optimization | | zeepartner
I would add max. 3 lines of text directly over the product thumbnails. What do you think? Is it worth adding some text on a product overview page or do I not even have to bother post-Panda?0 -
Duplicate Content Question
On the home page of my site I have a read more link that takes you to a different URL with basically the same content, just more of it. Home Page: http://www.opwdecks.com/ Read More Link on Home Page: http://www.opwdecks.com/deckmaintain.htm I think this may be affecting my seo. Any suggestions on what I should do about this? Should I add a canonical to the home page and/or on the other page? Both pages are indexed by google. Thanks for any help or tips.
On-Page Optimization | | opwdecks0