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!
-
Haha!
-
I wish I had a big stack of books to publish on my site.
-
Wow, thanks for your enthusiasm, EGOL!
I appreciate the feedback.
-
Yes, it is content that is not available anywhere else.
Thank you, Takeshi.
-
salivatin'
1. Is it likely that the traffic and links to the new book pages would improve the search engine rankings of our existing pages?
This is going to be kickass. KickAss.
In addition to traffic and links this will make you look like a very generous, experienced and credible company.
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?
You can use them as .pdf documents. If you do be sure to optimize them by modifying the properties of the document to add a title tag. Also, add links within the documents that allows any linkjuice that flows into them to travel back to your site.
I would probably post these as nicely-formatted html documents, optimizing chapters for specific search terms. You can then monetize with ads, use them to guide people to conversion opportunities on your website.
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?
I don't hesitate to place a few thousand words and several images on a page. If you do that to a page that has a free-standing subject then it could attract a nice number of links.
4. Would it be more valuable from an SEO perspective to post pieces of the books over time in a blog format?
I would build a library of html documents (maybe offering downloadable file formats that can be read on mobile devices) and get them up ASAP.
This is going to be KICKASS.
-
As long as the content from the books isn't available anywhere else, then you can definitely get more search traffic to your site by posting that unique content.
Whether you want to convert your books to HTML format depends on how much resources you have. My feeling is that having snippets or summaries of the books online in a blog format would work best, since most web searchers aren't looking to read an entire book when they search for content online. A snippet of the chapters along with a link to purchase the book could both increase search traffic and drive book sales.
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
-
Does javascript generated content consider as regular content?
The website mentioned below, the content is generated using javascript, and content is something to do with Unicode char. The Unicode content creates as you scroll down. Will this content affect SEO https://www.myweirdtext.com/
On-Page Optimization | | teenmass423230 -
Consolidating a Large Site with Duplicate Content
I will be restructuring a large website for an OEM. They provide products & services for multiple industries, and the product/service offering is identical across all industries. I was looking at the site structure and ran a crawl test, and learned they have a LOT of duplicate content out there because of the way they set up their website. They have a page in the navigation for “solution”, aka what industry you are in. Once that is selected, you are taken to a landing page, and from there, given many options to explore products, read blogs, learn about the business, and contact them. The main navigation is removed. The URL structure is set up with folders, so no matter what you select after you go to your industry, the URL will be “domain.com/industry/next-page”. The product offerings, blogs available, and contact us pages do not vary by industry, so the content that can be found on “domain.com/industry-1/product-1” is identical to the content found on “domain.com/industry-2/product-1” and so-on and so-forth. This is a large site with a fair amount of traffic because it’s a pretty substantial OEM. Most of their content, however, is competing with itself because most of the pages on their website have duplicate content. I won’t begin my work until I can dive in to their GA and have more in-depth conversations with them about what kind of activity they’re tracking and why they set up the website this way. However, I don’t know how strategic they were in this set up and I don’t think they were aware that they had duplicate content. My first thought would be to work towards consolidating the way their site is set up, so we don’t spread the link-equity of “product-1” content, and direct all industries to one page, and track conversion paths a different way. However, I’ve never dealt with a site structure of this magnitude and don’t want to risk messing up their domain authority, missing redirect or URL mapping opportunities, or ruin the fact that their site is still performing well, even though multiple pages have the same content (most of which have high page authority and search visibility). I was curious if anyone has dealt with this before and if they have any recommendations for tackling something like this?
On-Page Optimization | | cassy_rich0 -
Blog on server or embedded? Duplicate content?
Wondering what would be best in terms of SEO. Should I install some blog software actually on the website or can I just embed say a blogger.com blog? if I did that would they consider it duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | Superflys0 -
Duplicate content: Form labels and field content
I have a site that has 500 pages, each with unique content, the only content that could be deemed the same is the 'Make Contact' form, which has the same labels and placeholder text on each page. Is this likely to cause any duplicate content penalties?
On-Page Optimization | | deployseo0 -
Is This A Reason To Move Content?
Dear All, I am questioning my initial decisions when I planned a site due to reading lots of info on moz. Although what I have read has made me question what I have already done, I can't find anything that is specific to my exact case, so here goes. I recently built a shopping cart in OpenCart. I want the site to have lots of information on the products it sells. I have populated each category with at least 1000 words of content that is specific to the products in that category, also I have some information pages that have no products in them at all, just copy. So the shopping site actually has a few pages that look like a static website and a few that look like a normal shopping cart. My thought behind this was I wanted the pages with lots of info to rank and become authoritative, in some way elevating the whole site. I have recently put a blog on the site, and a combination of that, and reading Moz has lead me think that I should move all the content from the category pages to the blog, and deep link each blog post to it's relevant products and category. From what I have read it would be easier to get the blog ranking and acknowledged as an authority rather than 30 category pages. Also each 1500+ word category page will make at least 3-4 nice blog posts, and each post can be focused on a single keyword rather than a large category page that has maybe 3-4 keywords it's trying to rank for. Also the blog is much better optimised than a standard OC category page (even using extensions with them). The only negative I can see is moving the content, but the site is less that 2 months old, and the amount of link juice it has is negligible. Does google cut new sites a bit of slack in these situations of moving content around, or will I be seen as 'up to something' by google? I guess my question is, am I barking up the right tree? Or is the old adage 'a little information is dangerous' true in this case, and I just about to make a load of work for the sake of it with no real benefit. However, if I am to make such a dramatic change to the sites architecture I think the time is now, before things start gaining juice & rank. I hope I have explained my situation clearly and I thank anyone who can offer me any advice. Great forum, Thank you, Ian
On-Page Optimization | | cookie7770 -
Checking for content originality in a site
two part question on original content How would you go about checking if a site holds original content accept the long search quary within Google? ans also if I find many sites carrying my content and I am the original source should I replace the content? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ciznerguy0 -
Do I need a unique post meta description
Just wondering what the best practise is for unique meta desriptions on blogs. When I post a blog on my wordpress, clicking the title takes you to an individual page with that blog on it. I understand how important the title tag is on this page but when I create a meta description: a) is it useful? b) Should it be unique or is it ok to copy part of the post and insert that as the meta tag? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | acs1111 -
Duplicate Content using templates
Hi, Our web site is designed using a template, which means the header and footer is consistent across all pages. Only the body content is unique on each page. Is the google bot able to see that the header and footer content is defined by the common template? Will this have any impact in terms of duplicate content? For example, we have a two line text in the footer that summarize the services we provide. Because the same text is in the footer of all pages, i am concerned about creating duplicate content. Finally, does it make sense to include keywords in header and footer of the template? Will it have any positive or negative SEO impact?
On-Page Optimization | | petersen0