Should extra content be added to item page or resource center?

[dkeipper]

We run an ecommerce company which sells machines.  After the machine is used for X amount of time, we suggest changing the blades in the machines.  We have a resource center for customer convenience.

We are creating videos and content on how to change the blades in each machine. (each machine is a different process).

Do we create videos and content in the resource center and link to the product page or do we beef up our content on the product page by adding that information there?

1 part of us thinks - "The new blade-changing content" is valuable to that product so buyers know the process before buying and hopefully gain some rank juice on the item pages.

The other part of us thinks - Keep all resources in the resource center and link to learning resources from the product pages.  This version doesn't beef up our product pages but seems to be the logical place to hose the content on the website.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[MERGE-Chicago]

I would keep the two separate for a few reasons.

• Two separate pages will give you twice the chance to rank for that specific machine and related terms as somebody looking to buy a machine has a different search intent than somebody searching google to find education / resources on how to change the blade. Having both the pages will also double your audience to consumers that already own the machine searching for resources (who could potentially end up needing another machine / other complementary products) PLUS the audience of people searching to buy the machine (that with a link, can dive deeper into your site through the link on the product page)
• Writing up great deep valued content will give your site more pages to index around the machine and create a good library of content in your resource center which with a quick link in each related product will create a very strong internal link silo. Plus you can always go after long-tail niche keywords / phrases with one or the other of the page which in turn brings in consumers further in the decision making process that are more likely to convert.
• And last thought, make sure you're optimizing those videos as well! Very underutilized way to bring traffic to your site / youtube page!

Hope this helps a little bit!

[Lumina]

I'd place them in the resource center. Pumping the SEO of product pages is great, but being a resource of information is both good for SEO and great for customer retention / growth. Furthermore, if you or a customer were to send someone the link, having it on a product page may seem more aggressive. Sometimes it's better to gain a lot of people churning in your sales funnel than it is to gain a few new sales.

[RangeMarketing]

I agree with Lumina. Just wanted to add a few points:

If you are looking for short term SEO gains you are probably tempted to add the videos to the product pages themselves. Thinking long term, your potential to generate backlinks will be a lot higher by building a strong resource center that people want to link to and share. This approach would in turn boost your domain authority, which would trickle down to your product pages.

Also, sometimes it makes sense to keep product pages on the lighter side content-wise. Adding too much to the page could potentially reduce conversion rates. This is something that I would consider testing.

I hope your team can make a confident decision on this conundrum!

[DennisSeymour]

You can deal with this in a practical manner. You can think of it from the point of view of the searcher.

Practical thinking would tell me that the person would either look for on Google (a separate page about it) OR if he can't find it, then he'll go to the page where he bought and look there, maybe there's an FAQ section on that specific product page or a link to the resource area.

As a 1st time buyer, I would not know immediately that there's a resource page so Google is my first choice.

So I would go with a separate page, specifically for that item, then link back to the product page

The product page should also link to that page.

[dkeipper]

Thank you so much for your feedback!

[dkeipper]

Thank you so much for your feedback!

[dkeipper]

Thank you so much for your feedback!

[dkeipper]

Thank you so much for your feedback!

[RangeMarketing]

Np!

[KeriMorgret]

When this has been in place a few months, could you update here with how it went? Or if you have interesting results (whether a success or not), you might want to write up a YouMoz post. Things that would be of interest would be how you arranged the content, got stakeholders on board, and changes in:

• traffic from organic search
• sales (both of the machines and of the blades)
• service/help inquiries (did adding this content help reduce that load?)

Feel free to drop us a note at editor@moz.com if you're interested in writing this up at all.

Keri

[dkeipper]

Definitely will follow up with this.  Thanks!