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
-
Should I be worried about our 'Duplicate' content
Hi guys... I've just been working through some issues to give our site a little cleanup. I'm working through our duplicate content issues (we have some legitimate duplicate pages that need removing, and some of our dynamic content is problematic. Are web developers are going to sort with canonical tags this week.) However... There are some pages that are actually different products, but are very similar pages that are 'triggering' MOZ to say we have duplicate pages. Here an example... http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/fortnight-view-filofax-personal and http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/week-to-a-view-filofax-personal They are very similar refill products, it's just the diary format is different. Question: Should I be worried about this? I've never seen our rankings change in the past when 'cleaning up' duplicate content. What do you guys think? Isaac.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Duplicate content with tagging and categories
Hello, Moz is showing that a site has duplicate content - which appears to be because of tags and categories. It is a relatively new site, with only a few blog publications so far. This means that the same articles are displayed under a number of different tags and categories... Is this something I should worry about, or just wait until I have more content? The 'tag' and 'category' pages are not really pages I would expect or aim for anyone to find in google results anyway. Would be glad to here any advice / opinions on this Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia1 -
Why is my website not showing up in a specific, very uncompetitive niche?
My website just went live about 3-4 weeks ago and while it has been indexed by Google-it shows up when I do a search for my site's name, it does not show up for the keyword terms it has been optimized for. This is a very specific, non-competitive niche-so I just can't imagine why it would not be showing for these non-competitive keyword term searches? Any insight would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | lfrazer0 -
Checking for content duplication against content on your own site.
We are currently trying to rewrite our product descriptions and I'm afraid some of the salespeople that are writing the descriptions are plagiarizing one-another's writing. Is there a content duplication checker that will allow you to check a piece of writing against a specific site rather than all of the web?
On-Page Optimization | | MichealGooden0 -
Should I use this Facebook comment content on my related blog post?
I have a blog post that ranks pretty high for the term "justin bieber tickets". We are running a ticket giveaway and have received tons of responses on Facebook and G+. The responses are often poorly written in they sense that they are from younger fans, but it is a bunch of related content that I thought could be a "good "addition of unique content to the post. Is this a good idea in general? Is it still a good idea if the comments are poorly written and contain lots of slang an exclamation points? Is it bad form to put people's Facebook comments live on the web, even though it is a public page. Here is the post Example of what this would look like in the post >http://cl.ly/1Q3N0t091V0w3m2r442G Source of comments >http://www.facebook.com/SeatGeek Another less aggressive option would be to curate some of my favorite comments... Thanks for any thoughts.
On-Page Optimization | | chadburgess0 -
Duplicate content problem
I am having an issue with duplicate content that I can't seem to figure out. I got rid of the www.mydomain.com by modifying the htaccess file but I can't figure out how to fix theproblem of mydomain.com/ and mydomain.com
On-Page Optimization | | ayetti0 -
Can Other Websites You Own Affect Your Rankings?
Let's say you own three websites. One is low quality and Google frowns upon it, another is moderate and a third has stellar unique content. Would Google penalize the third website because you own the first website? On a related note - If you were banned from Google AdWords, would registering a site in your name potentially harm your rankings?
On-Page Optimization | | DerekP0 -
What is the best practice for optimizing international websites? We operate a .co.uk and .com and obviously content is similar.
We have two (and soon to be more) international websites, all in English. The sites in question are WebHostingBuzz.com and WebHostingBuzz.co.uk. Obviously content is similar as we're providing a similar service but from different locations and different prices. What is best practice here? Should we completely re-write the .co.uk content (this is the newer site) so it isn't penalized for scraping? Any hints/tips would be appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | mdrussell0