SEO impact of adding a lead gen form to a #1 ranked page
-
We have a page that ranks really well and gets a lot of traffic. We're wondering what would be the SEO impact of putting a lead gen form before visitors can download what they want.
Currently, entrepreneurs can download a free business plan template kit. It's a zip file that include 6 files like a blank template, an blank Excel for the financials, examples files and links to related articles.
The page is : http://www.bdc.ca/en/advice_centre/tools/business_plan/Pages/default.aspx
Do you think that adding a form before downloading the zip file would cost us rankings?
Thanks,
-
Thank you for you answer and comments. We're a little scare of putting a hurdle in front of the visitors and will monitor the impact closely, but they do get a lot of valuable information. We will still measure and compare the rate of downloads before and after the changes.
-
Thank you for your answer. We will test the new gated content on a small sample of the visitors first and monitor bounce rate closely.
-
Morning!
A long time ago I had a mentor who taught me something which has stuck with me through everything. He told me about the Rule of 3's, and I use it as a rough guide. The end user has 3 pieces of currency, and your website is going to take it. Every time the user gets to a new website that currency refreshes. If a user can't find what they are looking for in 3 seconds (ie. page takes too long to load) or 3 clicks, then there is a good chance they will leave.
Obviously if you have a decent fan base and dedicated followers that number goes up, if they individual is driven and knows that what you have is worth the time that number goes up. But, anything that you put in front of your end user is a potential barrier to entry. The less obtrusive you can make the lead generation the better. From an SEO standpoint, adding a pop up or something that asks for an email won't do anything, but if it causes people to leave etc, then you are looking at a different type of SEO impact.
We are in an era in digital media of people seeking information they want WHEN they want, that is why auto play videos are so annoying. Let your followers decide when and if they want to download something, and then provide them with the easiest way to do it. People are hesitant to give out emails, I know I am, I have a specific email that is dedicated to signing up for stuff that I know I'm never going to check.
I personally think it's better to build trust and then ask for their information. What good is a lead that just goes to a spam email?
Best of Luck!
Let us know what you end up doing!
-
I agree, that it shouldn't really hurt from a content perspective providing existing elements remain in place, but make sure you consider that by adding a barrier to the downloadable files, this could lead to a higher bounce rate for the page.
Bounce rate I believe has been considered as having a potential part to play in the algorithms for a while now. As such monitor what affect the changes have and you can always look to roll back should you see any signs of a drop taking place.
-
Thank you for your answer !
I fear that maybe Google's quality rankers team could find the page less valuable now or that the content in the ZIP file contributed to the overall SEO score of the page and that would now be out of range for the crawler.
We will A/B test it for sure and I'll try to share the results, if possible.
Regards,
JF
-
Hi,
I don't think it will affect rankings so long as the text on the page stays the same.
I would A/B test this change though, because you may find fewer people download the pack. Or, if that doesn't matter so much as harvesting contact details then I guess it's not a massive concern.
We have a downloads section on our site, and we have a popup newsletter sign-up form which appears when they click the download button. It's not currently compulsory to sign up for the newsletter, but this is something we are considering. I'd be interested to know how you get on with yours!
Best of luck,
Amelia
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 Marking a Business as Permanently Closed in GMB Impact Website Rankings?
I recently acquired a business that had a website with great rankings and traffic but also had a few physical locations listed in Google. The physical locations closed and are marked as "Permanently Closed" in Google. The website also expired for several months before I picked it up. The site had amazing rankings and traffic previously but is really struggling to regain rankings now. I'm concerned that the site is not performing well due to the business marked as "permanently closed" in GMB. I'm unable to do anything about that because the website doesn't have any physical locations. Any tips on what to do here?
Technical SEO | | shags3130 -
Changing .nl to .eu impact on rankings?
Hi all, I have 2 questions concerning the merge of two websites of ours.
Technical SEO | | MarikeP
We would like to combine our .nl and .be website to one big .eu website. Both websites have dutch and english rankings in The Netherlands and Belgium. 1. Will the rankings change because of the domain change to .eu?
2. Will the rankings in both countries change because of the merge? I hope somebody can help me, Greetings0 -
Effect of 302 redirects from empty parent page to sub page
A client's website has links to their service pages which then redirect (302 through a php "Location:" header) to that service's first sub-page. For example, our-services/service-x redirects to our-services/service-x/about-service-x I can only think this has been done because there is no actual content for the parent page and to maintain some kind of structure for navigation and URLs. Really there's no reason why the 'about-service-x' page can't be removed and its content transferred to the main 'service-x' page. Then the redirects can be removed also - it's not how a 302 should be used for a start. I'm just wondering what kind of effect this current redirection has on SEO, as I know 302s don't pass any link juice? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | driftingbass0 -
Page that appears on SERPs is not the page that has been optimized for users
This may seem like a pretty newbie question, but I haven't been able to find any answers to it (I may not be looking correctly). My site used to rank decently for the KW "Gold name necklace" with this page in the search results:http://www.mynamenecklace.co.uk/Products.aspx?p=302This was the page that I was working on optimizing for user experience (load time, image quality, ease of use, etc.) since this page was were users were getting to via search. A couple months ago the Google SERP's started showing this page for the same query (also ranked a little lower, but not important for this specific question):http://www.mynamenecklace.co.uk/Products.aspx?p=314Which is a white gold version of the necklaces. This is not what most users have in mind (when searching for gold name necklace) so it's much less effective and engaging.How do I tell Google to go back to old page/ give preference to older page / tell them that we have a better version of the page / etc. without having to noindex any of the content? Both of these pages have value and are for different queries, so I can't canonical them to a single page. As far as external links go, more links are pointing to the Yellow gold version and not the white gold one.Any ideas on how to remedy this?Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Don340 -
Explain me the SEO impact when a website has more internal link compared to less internal links
A website that I am working on has more than 200 internal links (Its because of the design and various kind of service that we offer). I want to know its SEO impact. I also want to know the SEO impact when a website has less internal links compared to more internal links
Technical SEO | | BoniSatani0 -
Is page rank lost through a 301 redirect?
Hi everyone. I'd really appreciate your help with this one 🙂 I've just watched Matt Cutt's video 'what percentage of PageRank is lost through a 301 redirect?' and I am confused. I had taken this to mean that a re-direct would always lose you page rank, but watching it again I am not so sure. He says that the amount of page rank lost through a 301 redirect is the same as any other link. Does this mean that no page rank at all is lost during site migrations? Or is it the case that first page rank would be lost from the original link and then more page rank would be lost from any subsequent redirects? watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw
Technical SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Rankings for Google Play Pages
Hey all, I'm relatively new here and certainly new to posting in the forums and interacting with the community but I hope to be much more active in the coming months. I have what might be a silly question regarding search results for a Google Play store-specific query. The company in question has their main North American app that's been out for a month and a half and then an International version that was released just a few days ago. If you run a Google search (NOT a search witin Google Play) for 'Google Play Company Name' the more recent (but less used and ultimately less important, at least for the time being) International app is higher in the SERP than the more used and reviewed North American app. I'm guessing that this is something that will correct itself over the next week as the North American app establishes itself as the more important of the two, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask just in case there's something they can do to affect the results a little quicker. Any advice, input or just a verification of my guess would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | JDMcNamara0 -
URL content format - Any impact on SEO
I understand that there is a suggested maximum length for a URL so as not to be penalized by search engines. I'm wondering if I should if should optimize our ecommerce categories to be descriptive or use abbreviations to help keep the URL length to a minimum? Our products are segmented into many categories, so many products URL's are pretty long if we go the descriptive route. I've also heard that removing the category component entirely from a product URL can also be considered. I'm fairly new to all this SEO stuff, so I'm hoping the community can share their knowledge on the impact of these options. Cheers, Steve
Technical SEO | | SteveMaguire0