Ann Zerega

Perfect World vs Real Life

Considerable time and effort goes into creating white papers and solution PDF documents for company websites.

In a perfect world, high value content like solution briefs or white papers would be optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and HTML landing pages created to showcase them.

In real life, solution briefs and white papers get published at the last minute, the evening before a product launch.

Haste Makes Poor SEO

When a user opens up a PDF document online, it creates a non-navigable path for your user with no call to action, or way to measure clicks.

PDF documents can also be very slow to load on both desktop and mobile sites, which can lead to user frustration and increased bounce rate.

Once a PDF document is online, the PDF document link can become broken if the exact file path is not maintained, leading to a poor user experience and lost business opportunities.

Improve SEO and Keep Your Sanity

If your team has the time, optimize PDFs before they’re released, create landing pages for the high value content, and measure page views after launch.

However, if your team is short-handed, the right kind of file download software can automate some of that process by:

• Automatically creating a landing page for your PDF file where you can add meta information.
• Adding a “nofollow” link to the document download button so search engines don’t index the full path to a PDF, preventing link rot.

For WordPress sites, the WordPress Download Manager plugin is a good option for file management.

PDF files can be helpful to your site’s SEO; treat them like the precious unicorns they are. 🦄

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Your website is a great resource for existing and potential customers.

Unlike a brochure or a slide deck, your website can contain the latest information, is available 24/7, and is easily accessed from anywhere.

• 66% of B2B buyers said it is very important to have a website that speaks directly to industry needs and shows relevant expertise. (Forbes)
• Nine out of ten B2B buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on purchasing decisions. (CMO Council)

Most people rely on search engines to guide them through their research process instead of going directly to a site.

Therefore, your website needs to be constructed so search engines can help find your site for your customers.

Here’s a quick guide to creating web pages that your customers and Search Engines will find useful.

Titles

It’s important to remember that people rarely read web pages in full, so it’s important that a page title be descriptive and concise.

Google displays the first 50 to 60 characters of a title tag, which is displayed not only in search results, but also in web browsers and social networks.

In the example below, including the words “from Scratch in” in the title pushed the word “Guide” off the search results page.

Heading Tags

Heading tags (H1, H2, H3 … H6) in a web page markup lay out the hierarchy of the page. They help search engines, screen readers and your readers how blocks of content are connected.

Snippets

A web page “snippet” is automatically created from page content or can be configured using plugin software such as Yoast SEO on WordPress.

Google will sometimes use meta description tags to create snippets if they think it gives a better summary of what a page is about.

NOTE – If your website supports cloning of pages or posts, be sure to update the <meta> description tag when you create your new page – otherwise you’ll have duplicate meta descriptions which will impact search!

For example search engines will see your duplicated pages like this:

• Apples web page > Meta Description = We have Honey Crisp apples!
• Mangos web page (copied from Apples web page) > Meta Description = We have Honey Crisp apples!

Very confusing for a search engine and customers trying to find mangos.