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.
Downloads can build your company’s expertise, authority, and build trust with your users as you share your knowledge and provide them valuable information. Then they’ll come back for more!
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
Once you have your content written, it’s important to make sure that these files are optimized for the best download experience.
How do we optimize our downloads?
- 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” should be saved on your website as “marketing-plan-template.pdf”
- Use your company name as the “Author”
- 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.
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 to 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.
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.