SEO impact of adding a lead gen form to a #1 ranked page
-
We have a page that ranks really well and gets a lot of traffic. We're wondering what would be the SEO impact of putting a lead gen form before visitors can download what they want.
Currently, entrepreneurs can download a free business plan template kit. It's a zip file that include 6 files like a blank template, an blank Excel for the financials, examples files and links to related articles.
The page is : http://www.bdc.ca/en/advice_centre/tools/business_plan/Pages/default.aspx
Do you think that adding a form before downloading the zip file would cost us rankings?
Thanks,
-
Thank you for you answer and comments. We're a little scare of putting a hurdle in front of the visitors and will monitor the impact closely, but they do get a lot of valuable information. We will still measure and compare the rate of downloads before and after the changes.
-
Thank you for your answer. We will test the new gated content on a small sample of the visitors first and monitor bounce rate closely.
-
Morning!
A long time ago I had a mentor who taught me something which has stuck with me through everything. He told me about the Rule of 3's, and I use it as a rough guide. The end user has 3 pieces of currency, and your website is going to take it. Every time the user gets to a new website that currency refreshes. If a user can't find what they are looking for in 3 seconds (ie. page takes too long to load) or 3 clicks, then there is a good chance they will leave.
Obviously if you have a decent fan base and dedicated followers that number goes up, if they individual is driven and knows that what you have is worth the time that number goes up. But, anything that you put in front of your end user is a potential barrier to entry. The less obtrusive you can make the lead generation the better. From an SEO standpoint, adding a pop up or something that asks for an email won't do anything, but if it causes people to leave etc, then you are looking at a different type of SEO impact.
We are in an era in digital media of people seeking information they want WHEN they want, that is why auto play videos are so annoying. Let your followers decide when and if they want to download something, and then provide them with the easiest way to do it. People are hesitant to give out emails, I know I am, I have a specific email that is dedicated to signing up for stuff that I know I'm never going to check.
I personally think it's better to build trust and then ask for their information. What good is a lead that just goes to a spam email?
Best of Luck!
Let us know what you end up doing!
-
I agree, that it shouldn't really hurt from a content perspective providing existing elements remain in place, but make sure you consider that by adding a barrier to the downloadable files, this could lead to a higher bounce rate for the page.
Bounce rate I believe has been considered as having a potential part to play in the algorithms for a while now. As such monitor what affect the changes have and you can always look to roll back should you see any signs of a drop taking place.
-
Thank you for your answer !
I fear that maybe Google's quality rankers team could find the page less valuable now or that the content in the ZIP file contributed to the overall SEO score of the page and that would now be out of range for the crawler.
We will A/B test it for sure and I'll try to share the results, if possible.
Regards,
JF
-
Hi,
I don't think it will affect rankings so long as the text on the page stays the same.
I would A/B test this change though, because you may find fewer people download the pack. Or, if that doesn't matter so much as harvesting contact details then I guess it's not a massive concern.
We have a downloads section on our site, and we have a popup newsletter sign-up form which appears when they click the download button. It's not currently compulsory to sign up for the newsletter, but this is something we are considering. I'd be interested to know how you get on with yours!
Best of luck,
Amelia
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
-
Our protected pages 302 redirect to a login page if not a member. Is that a problem for SEO?
We have a membership site that has links out in our unprotected pages. If a non-member clicks on these links it sends a 302 redirect to the login / join page. Is this an issue for SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | rimix1 -
Compare to Front End view source contain more tageting keywords any impact on seo?
Hi All, I am using chrome browser and in my category page when i search my keyword like example Acer Laptop it is showing me 40 searches for that keyword in front end while in view source it is showing 100. Now for same category of my competitor page when i search Acer Laptop it shows 20 searches in front end and 300 in view source. So my question is - Is it a good practice I have seen my competitor page he is using tab button where lot of geunine content is there that is the reason hiss view source keyword search is more. So will it impact on seo?
Technical SEO | | miteshseo0 -
Will a CSS Overflow Scroll for content affect SEO rankings?
If I use a CSS overflow scroll for copy, will my SEO rankings be affected? Will Google still be able to index my copy accurately and will keywords used in the copy that are covered by the scroll be recognized by Google?
Technical SEO | | moliver10220 -
Page Rank gone - technical difficulty?
Hi all, after coming back from the holidays, I noticed that our PR (6 on the homepage) has vanished into "Unranked". All other sites are also "unranked". I tested other domains - PR still there, so the problem does not lie in the PR checker. There are no drops in traffic, rankings, no messages in the GWMT, the same numer of indexed pages, inbound links okay (all natural)... As you see, I checked everything I thought could be a hint to a solution, but found nothing... This goes on for the 3rd day now (after my holidays, maybe even longer). Could there be a technical problem causing this "drop"? Our website: http://www.access.de/ I am thankful for all hints/suggestions... Thanx...
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW - Any SEO benefit to these pages?
Hi I could use some advice on a site architecture decision. I am developing something akin to an affiliate scheme for my business. However it is not quite as simple as an affliate setup because the products sold through "affiliates" will be slightly different, as a result I intend to run the site from a subdomain of my main domain. I am intending to NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW the subdomained site because it will contain huge amounts of duplication from my main site (it is really a subset of the main site with some slightly different functionality in places). I don't really want or need this subdomain site indexed, hence my decision to NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW it. However given I will, hopefully, be having lots of people link into the subdomain I am hoping to come up with some sort of arrangement that will mean that my main domain derives some sort of benefit from the linking. They are, after all, votes for my business so they feel like "good links". I am assuming here that a direct link into my NOFOLLOW,NOINDEX subdomain is going to provide ZERO benefit to my main domain. Happy to be corrected! The best I can come up with is to have a "landing page" on my main domain which links into parts of my main domain and then provides a link through to the subdomain site. However this feels like a bad experience from the user's point of view (i.e. land on a page and then have to click to get to the real action) and feels a bit spammy, i.e. I don't really have a good reason for this page other than linking! Equally I could NOINDEX,FOLLOW the homepage of the affiliate site and link back to the main domain from there. However this also feels a bit spammy and would be far less beneficial, I guess, because the subdomain homepage would have many more outgoing links than I envisaged for my "landing page" idea above. Also, it also looks a bit spammy (i.e. why follow the homepage and nofollow everything else?)! The trouble, I guess, is that whatever I do feels a bit spammy. I suppose this is because IT IS spammy! 🙂 Has anyone got any good ideas how I could setup an arrangement like I described above and derive benefit to my main domain without it looking (or being) spammy? I just hate to think of all of those links being wasted (in an SEO sense). Thanks Gary
Technical SEO | | gtrotter6660 -
Are there negative SEO implications to pages without any images?
Hi Mozzers, Do you think there are any negative effects of having no images on a page but several hundreds words of text? (There is a logo image and call to action buttons). Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Charlessipe0 -
International Site, flow of page rank?
OK. I'm working on an international site. The site is setup with folders for UK, US, AU e.g www.site.com/UK/index.aspx The root (non folder based) is the international version of the site e.g www.site.com/index.aspx www.site.com/index.aspx has the lions share of links. Therefore, the pages immediately linked from www.site.com/index.aspx have page rank distributed between them. My UK, US and AU home pages are linked via a country selector from the www.site.com/index.aspx page via an aspx redirect page that 301's to the appropriate country home page. Therefore the home pages of UK, US, AU are recieving some of the 'juice' that is coming in to www.site.com/index.aspx (but only a fraction via the redirect links) Am I right in thinking that pages on the international version of the site will have much more potential to rank (because of their 'juice') than the pages on UK, US and AU versions of the site? If so, am I right in thinking that these will tend to rank over the equivalent UK, US and AU versions of the pages in each country version of Google despite having set directory level Geo-targetting in GWT?
Technical SEO | | QubaSEO1