What is the best way to take advantage of this keyword?

[9868john]

Hi SEO's!

I've been checking out webmaster tools (screenshot attached) and noticed that we're getting loads of long tail searches around a search query 'arterial and venous leg ulcers' - on a side note we're a nursing organisation so excuse the content of the search!!!

The trouble is that google is indexing a PDF page which we give out as a freebie:
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/admin/uploads/5DifferencesBetweenVenousAndArterialLegUlcers1.pdf

This PDF is a couple of years old and needs updating but its got a few links pointing to it.

Ok so down to the nitty gritty, we've just launched a blog:
http://news.nursesfornurses.com.au/Nursing-news/

We have a whole wound care category in which this content belongs, and i'm trying to find the best way to take advantage of the search, so I was thinking:

1. Create an article of about 1000 words
2. Update the PDF and re-upload it to the main domain (not the sub domain news.nursesfornurses.com.au)
3. Attach the PDF to the article on the blog

OR would it be better to host this on the blog, and setup a 301 redirect to this page?

I just need some advice on how best to take advantage of this opportunity, our blog isn't getting much search traffic at the moment (despite having 300+ articles!!) and i'm looking into how we can change that.

I look forward to your response and suggestions.

Thanks!

qtY64B1

[9868john]

On another side note, the authors often upload PDF's from other sources like government bodies etc. I've told them to set them to nofollow for the PDF's which they're now doing. Is there a quick way to do nofollow on all the PDF's uploaded to the site or will I need to do it manually?

They also sometimes repost (copy and paste) articles from their partners. Is there an easy (and free) way to scan the whole site and see which pages are duplicates from another site need canonical URL's?

What is the best way to fix the canonical domain issue? Were you refering to the blog (news.nur...) or main site?

[9868john]

Thank you for your response @ATP its good to know people are in the same boat and had success.

@Micheal / @Andy, I really didn't want to be on a sub domain (theres actually an earlier discussion i've had about ways around this) but the dev we're working with can't host PHP on the server so he's forced us to use a sub domain if we want to use wordpress...

We definitely haven't been ranking that well at all and I know theres a lot that needs to be done to improve the on page SEO. I did just add yoast and updated the /tag / category.

For the current issue with the PDF, I'm thinking to do the following:

• Update the PDF, to make it more current
• Create a unique article.
• Then upload the new PDF to the blog, and do a 301 redirect from the old PDF

Do you think this pass the link juice to the sub domain?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

And that is fine After having done a lot of testing on this, I can say it does make no difference. Create a site, create a subdomain, and that subdomain will then carry the PR from the primary. I have had subdomains ranking in a matter of days (and still there 12 months later), with not a single link to them.

I have yet to see anything that would suggest otherwise.

Edit-- FYI, I much prefer not to use a subdomain myself, unless there is a reason. I prefer to keep everything under the primary domain.

-Andy

[MickEdwards]

I don't totally agree that it truly doesn't matter.  I'm strongly siding with Rand on this one - https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Your first issue is that the blog is a sub-domain which means as far as Google is concerned a new website which will have to be optimised and grow independent of the main site.

This isn't the case now Michael, and hasn't been for some time. Your site sub-domain will carry all benefits as if it were a normal part of the link structure. Google say "Just use whichever one is easier for you"

Matt Cutts talks about them here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk

-Andy

[MickEdwards]

"I just need some advice on how best to take advantage of this opportunity, our blog isn't getting much search traffic at the moment (despite having 300+ articles!!) and i'm looking into how we can change that. "

Your first issue is that the blog is a sub-domain which means as far as Google is concerned a new website which will have to be optimised and grow independent of the main site.

Within the blog you need to use the Yoast plugin to not index stuff like /tag/, /category/, possibly /author/ - any of these categories that is potentially duplicating your content.  You have 1810 URLs indexed.

As a side issue you need to resolve your canonical domain - you have both www and non www.

[ATP]

Hi John,

We are in the process of doing a similar thing, we had 15 articles all pdf's with one in-particular attracting 5k viewers a month to the website (65-80% of our website traffic each month). Our problem was that the PDF didn't encourage them to interact with the rest of the site, and was a nightmare to update.

After discussion and seeking advice here on the moz forum we decided the best solution was to launch a blog (in process), update all the old pdf articles and release them all as a blog post, then re-direct the old pdf's to the relevant blog post then finally attach the new updated pdf as a downloadable link via a no-follow link so we don't get duplicate content and our customers can still take away the content. So far we only did it on 1 article as a test whilst we get the blog set-up correctly, and about 1/5 of 5000 viewers each month now view additional pages across our site instead of just the pdf.

If you do it correctly and get the same success with your pdf's that are attracting traffic you may find you can seek the boosts in traffic your blog is after.

SIDE NOTE: However, if your blog has 300+ articles and your not getting traffic, i would suggest moving traffic from other parts of the site to your blog in this manner isnt the answer you seek and instead you need to look at addressing the problem directly by looking at marketing strategies for your content aswel as reviewing the content in these articles to see if there may be a reason its not attracting visitors or ranking to gain traffic.