Case Study Formats - On-page vs. PDF
-
Hey all,
I've been thinking about the pros and cons of case study formats (On-page vs. PDF), and was curious to see what you all think.
An on-page case study is crawled by search engines and has fewer barriers in terms of visibility.
The only pros I can think of for a downloadable case study (with no opt-in) is that it's less likely to be plagiarised (generally a low priority) and can have a custom design that may not fit with your website's look and feel without clashing. Also, I suppose it makes it easier for visitors to save the PDF for future reference.
Have I missed anything? Do you have a preference? Keen to hear which you prefer, and why. Let's brainstorm!
Cheers,
Carlo -
Yes, I've been through this too. My gut feeling here is to focus on your audience and think about how they will consume and share this information.
For example, how can you make it easy for Dave to walk into his boss and tell his boss exactly why he should hire you!
There's absolutely no reason why you can't put the case-study on-line to allow people to read, or at least scan through the document on-line. AND allow them to download the PDF so that it's easy for them to print, read off-line or share around their team/colleagues.
Having the content on a web page also gives you more opportunities to engage your audience (social sharing, even comments etc)
Where PDFs can really come into their own is where you have complicated graphs, drawings that you just can't scale well to fit on a screen, provide enough context and stay legible!
Oh, and make sure that you've got links in your case-study PDF documents to take you to relevant/useful pages on your website.
If you do decide to go down the PDF only route - please do your visitors a favour and provide a really good extract so that they know what they're going to get. I've downloaded too many case-studies that turned out to be rubbish, irrelevant or just blatant marketing bumpf! (Thinking about your audience first can also change the way your approach case-studies and whitepapers!)
-
I wouldn't bet my money on this but backlinks in PDF's won't count I think.
-
Hi Carlo, PDF's get indexed as well. Unless you outline the text in your design that is. Sites like Slide Share can be useful for submitting them if you intend for people discover to share your content. Make sure to optimise your PDF with urls to gain some traffic to your site.
I don't know if urls in PDF's count as a backlink? Maybe someone else can shed some light on that.
Ciao,
Immanuel.
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
-
How does the background on my product photos impact SEO - step and repeat vs. plain background
I have a new e-commerce site and I'm focused on optimizing it for SEO. If I am taking product photos, will having a step-and-repeat (background with our logo repeated) in the background of the product impact how the images are scanned by Google? In other words, would I benefit from having a plain background behind my item shots vs. a backdrop with our logos all across it? I don't want Google to think I'm spamming my logo across all our items, but also want our photos to be recognized as ours. I want to gain SEO from my effort and definitely not hurt it! Thanks!
Branding | | A_Wo0 -
Concerned over a small video snippet autoplaying on my homepage (Negative page load speed = Negative SEO)
I'm looking at embedding a short 20 second autoplay video to show as the background in a Jumbotron (I'm using Bootstrap) right below my navbar. This looks great and works well for branding ect, however I'm concerned the loading speed will be hit after crossing over from a static image (perhaps 300kb) to a video (perhaps 2MB) which could detrimentally hit my SEO (I also can't help but notice not many SEO minded websites have these autoplaying videos - Perhaps for this reason!) Does anyone have any experience with a similar issue? Is there anything I can do to compress the video right now to a similar file size to an image? I've set it up using a media query to not show on mobile/tablets. Sam
Branding | | Sam.at.Moz0 -
How Google decide reading time of a page?
Dear friends, I have a question. How google decide bounce rate? For an example- I open a website through organic keyword from Google. Now I have tab of landing page in browser I do not close this tab for 10 minutes and continue doing my other things after some time I come back on that tab and close. Can Google know? This page has been read till 10 minutes. Can Google decide the bounce rate for this session? If I do some click boost for my negative reviews can I do same thing in my website? Is it useful? If I open one tab and come back after one day than what happen? Silly question but confusing me so please help me. I will be very grateful to you! Thanks all
Branding | | docbeans0 -
YouTube won't let me disconnect a Google+ business page from my channel.
Hello! Here is a good one. My YouTube channel is connected to a Google+ page a created by accident. Since I named this accidental page as a business, when I go into advanced setting to disconnect it from YouTube, it says "This feature is not available for this account." Does anyone know a way around this? I don't want to have to rebuild my Google+ page on the new, accidental page. I have put quite a bit of time onto my current page and would like to get it hooked up to YouTube. Please help! Thank you!
Branding | | sarita3450 -
Page Title restructuring
Hey Mozers! Surely you have noticed Google has been randomly restructuring our Page Titles to emphasize branding by placing the company/brand first, as opposed to after the "|" - a convention we had been accustomed to. I am wondering if the aforementioned warrants restructuring our client's (where branding is important) Page Titles as per Google's lead, or simply staying on the sidelines for now and letting Google do it? Anyone care to share their take on this? Thanks! Dino
Branding | | SCW0 -
Effects of a long-term holding page/503 http code whilst site is being rebranded?
We have a client who is adamant that during the rebranding of their company and website, a holding page is put in place from August 5<sup>th</sup> till go-live date on August 21<sup>st</sup>. They don’t look like budging on the matter, therefore we are looking to set up a 503 HTTP code on the holding page to tell Google the site is down for maintenance and redirect all pages back to the holding page. The general consensus is that implementing this for such a long period of time will see Google de-index all pages and the site will lose masses of traffic as a result for a substantial time afterwards. It would be great to get some insight on best practice for this situation, how Google will determine the situation and the consequences of such actions. If you have any case studies of similar situations or have firm knowledge of how this scenario would affect the site, I would be delighted to hear from you!
Branding | | AndrewAkesson0 -
Facebook Like of Root Domain Linked To Facebook Page
If I install a Facebook Like Button on my Root Domain, How can I have the likes accumulated from that button augment those already on my brand's page? Thank you fellow knowledgenies of the Book of Face.
Branding | | Blobe0 -
Has anyone had success with product page rel=author? Can I protect the content but dump the face on the SERPS?
Hi, Is there a way to get the benefits of rel=author for protecting site content but to disconnect that from the face photo on the SERPS? We added rel=author to our unique and individually written product descriptions and reviews. This has led to a decrease in click thru thus far. I suspect this is because when searching for a product to buy the user sees the face and thinks "review" or at least "not corporate". I don't nec. want to dump rel=author in the sea yet for our ecom pages, has anyone had success with product page rel=author? Four our keywords, we are the only company of 10 well known travel sites that have the face in the SERPS, far from improving our CTR, it has trashed it. Any ideas?
Branding | | xoffie0