White Papers! Is this still good for SEO

[AppleCapitalGroup]

Does publishing a white paper good for SEO? We are trying to decide to publish one or not for the purpose of SEO. If it will not help, we will spend money for other things.

[AppleCapitalGroup]

We are an asset based lender that broker a lot of our deals and having a good white paper and bring more attention to us. We plan to release it over the news wire as a press release for links and distribute the articles over the web. Thank you for your response.

[AppleCapitalGroup]

I am thinking of both - website page and on the same page in pdf format. Additionally, I plan to release it in a news wire article. Thank you for your response.

[AppleCapitalGroup]

Thank you for your response Casey!

[AppleCapitalGroup]

I would like to do this too but I am trying to get links so I want to the search engines to see it, rate it and link to it. I am hoping it will get us some good links.

[EGOL]

When you say...  "White Paper"... does that mean publishing it in .pdf?  I would not do that unless you need it in that format for controlled printing or distribution.

Otherwise I would publish the paper on a standard webpage because they are easier to optimize, easier to monetize and fit into the format of your website.

If you do go with PDF, remember that you can optimize it to be seen in the SERPs, include links to your website and that many shopping cart links will work  within a PDF.

[DougRoberts]

From a "pure SEO" point of view, whitepapers (like any rich content) can really help get some good long-tale content on the site, and may earn some links if they're good.

My personal view is that whitepaper are more useful when it comes to conversion.

Whitepapers can be used to support your offering/your proposition by providing evidence that you've understood the prospects needs, delivered a great solution to ther problem that delivers real benefits to the customer. (and explain the unique benefits of your solution that they wouldn't have received from your competitors)

Such whitepapers, like other good content may attract links too (unless they're hidden behind a subscription form)

Well presented solutions to problems that your target audience experience are of interest to people who, as Casey mentioned, may be willing to provide their email address, join a mailing list in order to receive the whitepapers. Think about the value of building such a mailing list for the business.

I'd take a step back and think about what you're trying to acheive and how you can use white papers to support these goals.

Hope this helps.

[CaseyKluver]

Assuming your talking about generating links from it, It all depends on the topic and quality of the white paper.

Personally I would rather use the whitepaper as a way to get people to subscribe to a email list.

Interested in other peoples comments though!