Should I offer our free eBook on its own page?

[cajohnson]

I work for an e-commerce website and we have written a super helpful eBook about one of the kinds of products we sell. The original idea was to offer it on the main page that we direct people to when they're shopping for this product, but it occurred to me that it might be better for link building and less cluttered if it has its own page. But we are concerned that link building to a separate page will not help with SEO for the main product page, which was the original goal. What should we do? Pros/cons?

[masdigitalmedia]

Seems like there are many variants that could be considered, but what occurs to me is your primary stated concern.  You mentioned, "that link building to a separate page will not help with SEO for the main product page, which was the original goal."  I wouldn't undermine your original goal.At this point, you've moved into a CRO space.  So your offering helpful information in trade for the subscriber information or at least tagging with analytics to understand the download activity is a good idea.  Once the user downloads the info, you embed a clear call to action inside the document that routes back to a unique landing page and converts the user to engage in your product offering.  Now you can track how effective this document will be for the user and gaining trust.  If they are compelled to buy after reading the document, that provides data to you in two ways.  This off the top of my head, but I would map out a usability flow and use this to engage the user in deeper and more meaningful way for your organization.

[Chris.Menke]

The conversion of the ebook download and the conversion to the product sale being on the same page put the two objectives in competition with each other on that page and can make it hard to segment your visitors.

Link building to the ebook conversion page will certainly help the authority of your product conversion page and entire domain.  In fact, using an ebook page as the basis of many successful ecommerce link building strategies.