Attracting people to your website is one goal of a great business website. But what do they do when they get there? The best websites help your business’s bottom line. If you’re not an ecommerce company selling products but a B2B company or a not-for-profit organization, downloads may be the conversion that gives the ROI for your website.
Why should we have downloadable content?
Although downloadable pdfs or powerpoint presentatoins can take more time to create than a simple webpage, the longer form, in-depth content may be better as a downloadable file. This high-quality content will position your company as thought leaders on your industry topics, building expertise, authority and trust (EAT) with your website visitors. When their confidence in you increases, they're more likely to become loyal customers.
What should we offer as a download?
To gain traffic and customers, your downloads should include the most helpful content your expertise can provide. Think about what you would need if you were a customer. You can offer:
- How to guides/e-books
- White papers on industry topics
- Membership guides
- PowerPoints of recent webinars
- Summaries of trends
- Best practices
- How-to procedures
- Videos
- Podcasts
On the flip side, take a look at all your pdfs. If the content is shorter, consider making it a web page for better user experience.
Once you have your content finished, it’s important to make sure that these files are optimized for the best download experience and ensure your great content can be found by search engines and rank for keywords.
How do we optimize our downloadable content?
It's easy to save your pdf and move on. But make sure it's optimized for the web. Here are some pointers:
- Have a relevant file name. Treat the pdf, ppt or xls file the same way as a webpage – the file name should be readable, with a keyword, if possible, not the shorthand unique to you. So a file saved as “DBR_262_2018_AH_draft.pdf” is better saved on your website as “marketing-plan-template.pdf”
- Use your company name as the author of the document.
- Complete the details - When creating a pdf or other formats, fill out the available fields like keywords, metadata like the summaries with keyword-rich descriptions. These downloads can be indexed by Google and found in search results. Make sure the wording makes sense.
- Make the document read-only.
- Link to other website pages in the document.
- Add these files to your website sitemap for search engines to index.
How should we present our downloads?
Typically, there are two ways to present downloads on your site. Free clickable links that download a file, or you can “gate” content, which means a trade of your user’s information in exchange for your download file.
Free downloads can help drive traffic to your site. If the website content is valuable and has a good user experience, then hopefully your first-time users will return. Free content can help brand awareness, build authority, and encourage other websites to link to your great content.
Gated content helps bring leads to your site. You can build up your email list when users exchange their personal information for your downloadable content.
These days, people are more willing to exchange their personal info for something of value. It gives your team an opportunity to reach out and sell your service. But others may not take the time to give you their information.
Whether free or gated, make sure you are tracking the downloads in analytics to see which content is most popular with your visitors.
If you need help creating or optimizing your content for downloading, reach out to us at LRS Web Solutions.