By Nettie Hartsock
Two astute readers of the WhitePaperSource Newsletter alerted us to the fact that we had not yet covered how search engine optimization (SEO) can be used to bring traffic to a white paper. In response, this article covers SEO tips for white papers.
What Is SEO?
Wikipedia.org describes SEO as “marketing by appealing first to machine algorithms to increase search engine relevance and secondly to human visitors.”
Essentially, SEO is the process of altering the content of a web page to increase its ability to be highly ranked by search engines (the source of many prospects).
Using SEO With White Papers
We turned to Lisa Wehr, CEO of search engine marketing industry leader Oneupweb, for some insight into how to boost SEO with white papers.
“Businesses put a lot of resources (time, labor, money) into white papers in order to demonstrate wisdom for solving a problem. Without optimizing that paper for search engines, a company might as well print the paper with invisible ink. Search engines connect people with questions to the answers. White papers are those answers. So, make it easy for the search engine to serve white papers to your prospects.”
One of the challenges for companies is that white papers are lengthy. How can you decide which parts of the paper are best for feeding those “search engine monsters”?
Wehr says that each white paper should have a summary page that outlines the content of the paper and the problems it solves. Wehr says it’s much like a landing page, but content-rich.
She also recommends an internal linking strategy. This means pages within your site should also link to your white paper summary page for greater search engine relevancy.
And Wehr notes that the summary page should be in HTML. Search engines can also index white papers in PDF. You want to make sure the summary page has the links into the PDF white paper and capitalizes on its content, says Wehr.
“That summary page really needs to reflect the content that’s going to be in the white paper so it can be put into organic search very quickly.”
Another tip is to make certain your keywords are relevant and specific. Broad terms are not as likely to serve up your white paper.
According to Wehr, you should also supplement your optimization efforts with a paid search campaign.
“If your work is important enough to put into awhite paper, then it’s important enough to be promoted.”
Interestingly, Wehr also recommends that if there are three different ways to say the same thing, use them. Not everyone is going to use the same queries to search on your subject.
Tracking
What is search engine optimization without a tracking tool?
“In order to determine the true value of the white paper and help define future topics, tracking is key,” says Wehr.
Tracking is an important measurement tool to apply and integrate as part of your white paper search efforts. It helps ensure you’re achieving your conversion objectives.
Analytic systems, such as Oneupweb, Omniture and Coremetrics can provide tracking from the original source and keyword through to the download (conversion).
To learn more about SEO, be sure to read Oneupweb’s paper entitled, “How to Launch an Effective Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Campaign“.
