Best Practices for Leveraging Long Tail Content & Gated Content
-
Our B2B site has a lot of of long form content (e.g., transcriptions from presentations and webinars). We'd like to leverage the long tail SEO traffic driven to these pages and convert those visitors to leads.
Essentially, we'd like Google to index all this lengthy, keyword-rich content AND we'd like to put up a read gate that requires users to register before viewing the full article. This is a B2B site, and the goal is to generate leads.
Some considerations and questions:
- How much of the content to share before requiring registration? Ask too soon and it's a terrible user experience, give too much away and our business objectives are not met.
- Design-wise, what are good ways to do this? I notice Moz uses a "teaser" to block Mozinar content, and I've seen modals and blur bars on other sites. Any gotchas that Google doesn't like that we should be aware of? Trying to avoid anything that might seem like cloaking.
- Is it better to split the content across several pages (split a 10K word doc across 10 URLs and include a read gate on each) or keep to one page?
Thank you!
-
Hi Ronnell,
Thanks for your considered response, I appreciate it!
Re: #3, I was thinking an advantage to splitting the content amongst multiple pages could be that it gives the search engines more URLs to index, and thus gives more opportunity for users to find it via long-tail keywords.
For example, if we split a webinar transcript across five pages, and optimize the title tags, header tags, other on-page elements, etc. uniquely for each page, then it increases the chances a user will find one of those pages (via long tail searches) vs. loading all the content on the first page.
We could add a sidebar paragraph that gives an overview of the webinar content, and users would see that when they land on the page (or perhaps a modal would be more effective?). Once a user signs up to view the entire transcript, we redirect them to an unlocked experience of the first page of the webinar.
I'm not sure if the effort to separate the content and optimize all the unique pages is worthwhile, and I do think the user experience will have more friction if we go this route. We plan to experiment and see how it goes!
Thanks again -
-
Hi Allie,
Great to see that you're proactively working to use this content in a way that best benefits the brand while reaping the rewards of organic search. One thing I'd add, however, is it's more important that you create as positive a user experience as possible as well, and that means ensuring that the benefits of the information are commensurate with the effort prospects will go through to access it.
To answer your questions...
- You'll have to do some experimenting here, but you want them to invest enough time that they feel compelled to keep going. You also need to make the case that what they've read only scratches the surface of what they'll learn. To that end, I'd say one or two paragraphs should suffice. However, that means (a) that the headlines are catchy and descriptive and (b) the graphs of text pique their interest to a significant degree.
- From experiments I've done with gated content, headlines/titles and compelling nuggets of text work exceedingly well. Also, use A/B testing on the CTA.
- From a user experience perspective, I'd keep it to a single page. No practical advantage to splitting the content.
Be sure to let us know what you decide. We'd very much enjoy hearing the results of the effort.
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
-
NO Meta description pulling through in SERP with react website - Requesting Indexing & Submitting to Google with no luck
Hi there, A year ago I launched a website using react, which has caused Google to not read my meta descriptions. I've submitted the sitemap and there was no change in the SERP. Then, I tried "Fetch and Render" and request indexing for the homepage, which did work, however I have over 300 pages and I can't do that for every one. I have requested a fetch, render and index for "this url and linked pages," and while Google's cache has updated, the SERP listing has not. I looked in the Index Coverage report for the new GSC and it says the urls and valid and indexable, and yet there's still no meta description. I realize that Google doesn't have to index all pages, and that Google may not also take your meta description, but I want to make sure I do my due diligence in making the website crawlable. My main questions are: If Google didn't reindex ANYTHING when I submitted the sitemap, what might be wrong with my sitemap? Is submitting each url manually bad, and if so, why? Am I simply jumping the gun since it's only been a week since I requested indexing for the main url and all the linked urls? Any other suggestions?
Web Design | | DigitalMarketingSEO1 -
With Google's new Speed Update, what does that mean for AMP pages?
Hey everyone! I wanted to get the other Mozzers opinions on this. With Google announcing a new Speed Update that will affect mobile rankings, I wanted to ask: How will AMP pages play into this? Let me know what you think!
Web Design | | TaylorRHawkins
Thanks!2 -
Best way to Load Responsive Images for Responsive Site?
Hello All, Can anyone suggest be best technique to load responsive images? We are developing responsive site so looking for good ideas from your side so that it load very fast. Thanks!
Web Design | | micey1230 -
How would a redesign, content update and URL change affect ranking?
Hi guys, I have a question that I suspect there is no simple true or false answer to, but perhaps someone has done the same thing as we're pondering wether or not to do? We're taking over an existing site that ranks very well on all the important keywords and is obviously very well liked by Google. The site is today hosted on a sub-domain (xxx.domain.com). When taking over, we'll have to redesign the site and recreate most of the content on the site (unique). The site structure, URLs, incoming links etc. will remain exactly the same. Since we are recreating the site, we also have the opportunity to move the site off the sub-domain and on to the main domain (domain.com/xxx - 85/100 Moz rank) and do a 301 Permanent Redirect on all old URLs. Our long-time experience is that content on the main domain, ranks way better than the sub-domain. The big question is wether or not Google will punish us for both changing the content and the location of the site at the same time? Cheers!
Web Design | | mattbs
Matt0 -
Best Way to Remove Mutltiple XML Sitemaps From Multiple Subdomains
Just found a series of of XML sitemaps hosted like so: http://www.thesite.anothersite.com/sitemap.xml and defaulted to remove and 301 redirect but as this is the first time I've encountered an issue like this, an outside opinion or two would be much appreciated. Is the 301 the best option, should I 404 them or what?
Web Design | | ePageCity0 -
Which Content Causes Duplicate Content Errors
My Duplicate Content list starts off with this URL: http://www.nebraskamed.com/about-us/branding/bellevue-medical-center-logo Then it lists the five below as Duplicate Content: http://www.nebraskamed.com/about-us/branding/fonts http://www.nebraskamed.com/about-us/branding/clear-zone http://www.nebraskamed.com/about-us/social-media http://www.nebraskamed.com/about-us/branding/order-stationery http://www.nebraskamed.com/about-us/branding/logo I do notice that most of these pages have images and/or little or no content outside of our sites template. Is this causing SEOmoz to see it as duplicate? Should I use noindex, follows to fix this? This error is happening with branding pages so noindex is an option. What should I do if that's not an option? Should I change our mega menus to be ajax driven to so the links aren't showing up in the code of every page?
Web Design | | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine0 -
How to best correct cannibalization?
I apologize if this has already been answered, but after reading several posts on cannibalization, I can't seem to find what I am looking for. The site in question is www.urbanitystudios.com and in particular the term "western wedding invitation". We rank in the top 30 for this term in Google, but Google has indexed a particular product, versus our western wedding invitation collection page. The product that is indexed for this term: http://www.urbanitystudios.com/Designs/western-wedding-invitations-p-1527.html The page that we would rather be indexed: http://www.urbanitystudios.com/Designs/western-wedding-invitations-c-95_179_181.html After running an onpage report in SEOmoz tools for the collection page, we recieve an A grade, but get a warning on the cannibalization line item. As you can see, we name each product within that collection as "Western Wedding Invitation-x" (and have done this for other product categories...not good). After a good head slap, we realized that we are confusing Google as to what should be the main page. If we rename our products, the product's URL will change-Do we do a 301 for those products? If we rename our products, do we take out the words "Western Wedding Invitation" entirely or can we say "x-Western Wedding Invitation"? Or. because cannibalization is deemed a "low priority" in the reports, do we let things be and work on getting links to the collections page vs the individual product? Any insight would be most appreciated.
Web Design | | UrbanityStudios0 -
Duplicate Content for index.html
In the Crawl Diagnostics Summary, it says that I have two pages with duplicate content which are: www.mywebsite.com/ www.mywebsite.com/index.html I read in a Dream Weaver tutorial that you should name your home page "index.html" and then you can let www.mywebsite.com automatically direct the user to index.html. Is this a bug in SEOMoz's crawler or is it a real problem with my site? Thank you, Dan
Web Design | | superTallDan0