Posting content from our books to our website
-
Hello,
I am the newly appointed in-house seo person for a small business.
The founders of our company have written several books, which we sell. But book sales are a small part of our business. We are considering posting to our website some or all of the content of the books. This content is directly relevant to the existing content of our website and would be available for free to all visitors.
1. Is it likely that the traffic and links to the new book pages would improve the search engine rankings of our existing pages?
2. We already have pdf versions of each book we could post, which are formatted nicely. Should we convert these to html to make them more friendly to search engines?
3. Of course, we would have to split each book into multiple web pages, perhaps one chapter per page. How much content could each new page optimally accommodate?
4. Would it be more valuable from an SEO perspective to post pieces of the books over time in a blog format?
Thank you very much for your thoughts!
-
Haha!
-
I wish I had a big stack of books to publish on my site.
-
Wow, thanks for your enthusiasm, EGOL!
I appreciate the feedback.
-
Yes, it is content that is not available anywhere else.
Thank you, Takeshi.
-
salivatin'
1. Is it likely that the traffic and links to the new book pages would improve the search engine rankings of our existing pages?
This is going to be kickass. KickAss.
In addition to traffic and links this will make you look like a very generous, experienced and credible company.
2. We already have pdf versions of each book we could post, which are formatted nicely. Should we convert these to html to make them more friendly to search engines?
You can use them as .pdf documents. If you do be sure to optimize them by modifying the properties of the document to add a title tag. Also, add links within the documents that allows any linkjuice that flows into them to travel back to your site.
I would probably post these as nicely-formatted html documents, optimizing chapters for specific search terms. You can then monetize with ads, use them to guide people to conversion opportunities on your website.
3. Of course, we would have to split each book into multiple web pages, perhaps one chapter per page. How much content could each new page optimally accommodate?
I don't hesitate to place a few thousand words and several images on a page. If you do that to a page that has a free-standing subject then it could attract a nice number of links.
4. Would it be more valuable from an SEO perspective to post pieces of the books over time in a blog format?
I would build a library of html documents (maybe offering downloadable file formats that can be read on mobile devices) and get them up ASAP.
This is going to be KICKASS.
-
As long as the content from the books isn't available anywhere else, then you can definitely get more search traffic to your site by posting that unique content.
Whether you want to convert your books to HTML format depends on how much resources you have. My feeling is that having snippets or summaries of the books online in a blog format would work best, since most web searchers aren't looking to read an entire book when they search for content online. A snippet of the chapters along with a link to purchase the book could both increase search traffic and drive book sales.
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
-
ECommerce Website Internal Links
We run an ecommerce website... approx 8K products. When using the page grader, MOZ tools consistently tell me that I have too many Internal Links on the page.
On-Page Optimization | | Ampweb
These are caused from our fairly large menu system, and probably from the sub-category links on the category landing pages as well. I was reading an article that mentioned a no-follow on these Internal links would not really solve the "Too many internal links issue", so wanted to check if anyone has ideas or should I just dis-regard this MOZ suggestion that there are too many in this type of environment?0 -
Acquired Old, Bad Content Site That Ranks Great. Redirect to Content on My Site?
Hello. my company acquired another website. This website is very old, the content within is decent at best, but still manages to rank very well for valuable phrases. Currently, we're leaving the entire site active on its own for its brand, but i'd like to at least redirect some of the content back to our main website. I can't justify spending the time to create improved content on that site and not our main site though. What would be the best practice here? 1. Cross-domain canonical - and build the new content on our main website? 2. 301 Redirect Old Article to New Location containing better article 3. Leave the content where it is - you won't be able to transfer the ranking across domain. Thanks for your input.
On-Page Optimization | | Blenny0 -
One post on a keyword updated frequently vs. multiple posts
I'm wondering - which is better for SEO: having one post which is updated frequently or multiple posts on a given topic? Take this example: I write the ultimate guide to grilling steak. This guide should be updated at least yearly, if not more frequently. Should all the updates be applied to the existing post, or should there be a new, yearly post for each yearly guide to grilling steak? Another related question: is it bad for SEO to have a single-page site? Let's go back to the example: what if we create a single page which is the ultimate guide to grilling steak. We don't create additional content or anything else: it's only the guide which continues to get added to over time with new photos, new comments, new ideas, more information, etc. Is that going to rank better than a blog with separate posts that address all the different things that go into grilling steak (choice of meat, cooking methods, useful tools, etc.)? Thanks, --eric
On-Page Optimization | | EricOliver0 -
E commerce Website canonical and duplicate content isssue
i have a ecomerce site , i am just wondering if any one could help me answer this the more info page can be access will google consider it as duplicate and if it does then how to best use the canonical tag http://domain.com/product-page http://domain.com/product-page/ http://domain.com/product-Page http://domain.com/product-Page/ also in zencart when link product it create duplicate page content how to tackle it? many thanks
On-Page Optimization | | conversiontactics0 -
Prevent indexing of dynamic content
Hi folks! I discovered bit of an issue with a client's site. Primarily, the site consists of static html pages, however, within one page (a car photo gallery), a line of php coding: dynamically generates a 100 or so pages comprising the photo gallery - all with the same page title and meta description. The photo gallery script resides in the /gallery folder, which I attempted to block via robots.txt - to no avail. My next step will be to include a: within the head section of the html page, but I am wondering if this will stop the bots dead in their tracks or will they still be able to pick-up on the pages generated by the call to the php script residing a bit further down on the page? Dino
On-Page Optimization | | SCW0 -
Tags creating duplicated content issue?
Hello i believe a lot of us use tags in our blogs as a way to categorize content and make it easy searchable but this usually (at lease in my case) cause duplicate content creation. For example, if one article has 2 tags like "SEO" & "Marketing", then this article will be visible and listed in 2 urls inside the blog like this domain.com/blog/seo and domain.com/blog/marketing In case of a blog with 300+ posts and dozens of different tags this is creating a huge issue. My question is 1. Is this really bad? 2. If yes how to fix it without removing tags?
On-Page Optimization | | Lakiscy0 -
Website posts
How many post a day should i post on my website to look natural ? first website is 1-2 years old second is 7 years old, i bought aged domain third is about 3 weeks old Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | xverticle0 -
Is it better to drip feed content?
Hi All, I've assembled a collection of 5 closely related articles each about 700 words for publishing by linking to them from on one of my pages and would appreciate some advice on the role out of these articles. Backround: My site is a listings based site and a majority of the content is published on my competitors sites too. This is because advertisers are aiming to spread there adverts wide with the hope of generating more responses. The page I'm targeting ranks 11th but I would like to link it to some new articles and guides to beef it up a bit. My main focus is to rank better for the page that links to these articles and as a result I write up an introduction to the article/guide which serves as my unique content. Question: Is it better to drip feed the new articles onto the site or would it be best to get as much unique content on as quickly as possible to increase the ratio of unique content vs. external duplicate content on the page that links to these articles**?** Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Mulith0