Posting content from our books to our website

[nyc-seo]

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!

[TakeshiYoung]

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.

[EGOL]

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.

[nyc-seo]

Yes, it is content that is not available anywhere else.

Thank you, Takeshi.

[nyc-seo]

Wow, thanks for your enthusiasm, EGOL!

I appreciate the feedback.

[EGOL]

I wish I had a big stack of books to publish on my site.

[nyc-seo]

Haha!