Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
AdultBlock scam? Is there a downside to doing this instead....?
So our IT guy just sent me an email from our domain registrar, encouraging us to sign up for an annual 'adultblock' service. For those that aren't sure what this is... Adultblock represents a straightforward mechanism that enables qualifying organizations to block the registration of any domain that falls under their trademark. This includes unlimited variants based on the holder's labels. Instead of worrying about registering and managing many different adult related TLDs, it is possible to block trademarked domains under all four TLDs for up to ten years through just one action. Unfortunately, this service is not cheap, and I'm starting to wonder about the 'downside' of NOT doing it. Does anyone know if just purchasing the adult related TLDs for our domain, and then just sitting on them, would have any sort of negative effect on our SEO? Alternatively, could we just set an alert for when / if those domains ever get purchased and then just disavow those sites in search console? Thanks!!
Branding | Jan 5, 2021, 5:40 PM | av-seo0 -
Can we use Youtube Videos of google webmaster on blog post?
Is it okay to embed YouTube videos of channel which we don't own? For example, I have written a blog on enabling event search in Google Analytics and Google Webmasters YouTube channel has a video based on those steps. I am looking to add that video in my blog.
Branding | Jul 5, 2024, 5:28 PM | Ravi_Rana0 -
Changed the trailing slashes - how it effect SEO?
Hi, I'm doing a project called https://www.machinerygate.com/ Due to trailing slashes issues, our developer requests to remove the trailing slashes from the URLs. However, the homepage with and without trailing slashes the same effect right. How about the inner pages affect SEO. Because we just started to do SEO and not even one single link of Inner pages done with the process. However, for example, the URL for https://www.machinerygate.com/machinery/cranes/ is before with trailing slashes and it is on google indexed with trailing slashes. Due to some bug, google inspection tool has been not functioning nowadays and I'm finding hard to index the new URL without trailing slashes https://www.machinerygate.com/machinery/cranes to index on Google. If this gets indexed, how the URL with trailing slashes will be, does it automatically redirect to URL without trailing slashes or not? Please share your thought about this concern.
Branding | Oct 20, 2020, 5:16 AM | Navya1241 -
Why not just use an alias if the only change is a different domain Name?
We are rebranding our store with a new name. We have purchased a NewDomainName. Can I just make the "Old Domain Name" an alias for the "NewDomainName"? The site will not change in any other way than having a new logo. This is an e-commerce site with over 100 categories of artisan made products. So once we move the site, the old domain will be empty. Thank you Stephen
Branding | Feb 1, 2020, 9:29 PM | stephenfishman1 -
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 | Oct 29, 2024, 2:43 PM | A_Wo1 -
Rebrandly vs. Bitly?
I want an alternative to Bitly (because we must change our short domain (BSD) and Bitly Support for its free service is excruciatingly bad; I'd gladly pay). Rebrandly appears to be a good alternative at $100. per year. Can anyone recommend Rebrandly and speak to its strengths and weaknesses vs. Bitly? Thank you. Rick
Branding | Aug 31, 2017, 10:17 AM | Knockleigh0 -
Do you have to pay Yext at this point?
Over the past several months it seems more and more local listing sites are now using Yext for their listing information. Some of these include Local.com, American Towns, Hot Frog, etc. I'm not even seeing a way to claim listings anymore with these sites without going through Yext. If Yext has the wrong information, is there any way to correct these listings without paying Yext? I used to be able to claim listings with the actual listing sites. It was more labor intensive, but I didn't have to pay Yext $500/year. I could pay an assistant a lot less and they could do it. It seems that option is going away. Do any of you know of another way of correcting listings without using Yext (or at least without paying Yext)? If not, do you know if Yext has an enterprise solution for SEOs so we don't have to pay the $500 for every client? Thanks. Kurt Steinbrueck
Branding | May 11, 2023, 3:17 PM | Kurt_Steinbrueck1 -
Video's Pros and Cons - YouTube vs My website or both?
This isn't really a question per say, but more of a request for advise. We are in the process of creating videos for our travel website. They are more informational and do not promote any products as such. I am aware of the options, and I am leaning towards creating a pro account with Vimeo so that the videos are available only on our website. The reason for this is so that we can at least get credit for our work, as when they are on you tube, anybody can syndicate the video without linking to our website. I am also aware that there are allot of searches happening on YouTube, and it may be worse if we choose not to upload our videos there as we would loose out on a big audience. it would be GREAT if we had the best of both options. And i had an idea i want to get your opinions on. Create the video and upload onto our website with "lower competitive" title / meta / body. Submit the video on YouTube with a "Higher competitive" keyword / title /meta and description. When someone finds our video, they might search YouTube to avoid linking back and wont find it, (although it is there getting traffic from a similar keyword) Branding is the number 1 objective for these videos, so you tube + many other video sites would be the way to go. However, i would also like our own "private" video blog on our site so that if web masters like the video, we can give them the option of embedding it on there site (like SEOMOZ do it on there whiteboard Fridays) Your comments and suggestions will be muchly appreciated. Greg
Branding | Aug 23, 2011, 3:26 AM | AndreVanKets0
