We need to talk about PDFs...

Content, content and more content seems to be the mantra of many black hat SEOs.

As an experienced business owner, I know how to make engaging and interesting text and graphical content. I then submit this content to my graphic designer who does a splendid job of making into a very professional e-book type document. This is then posted to the homepage of my site.

However, lately I am worrying that the emotional part of my brain is engaging in some sort vanity exercise and I'm doing this just because e-book type documents look so cool / professional on my site. While the logical part of brain is saying that maybe this is all just a waste of time. With a PDF book the information, keywords, etc., are scattered everywhere in a 30 page booklet. The booklet is then posted on the homepage.

Am I completely mad following this approach? Are PDF's really any good for SERP ranking? Would I be much better off delivering my high-quality content via some other means?

It's hard to say anything definitive about this without knowing your intent, because the answers to your questions would be different depending on what you're trying to achieve. If you're trying to rank your homepage based on the content of your ebooks (which it sounds like you keep changing), then it doesn't make much sense. Don't just toss them on the homepage. If you like the long-form, ebook-type content, you'd be much better off making new web pages for each of them, which (as long as the content is crawlable) should do well to rank by themselves, assuming they're high quality and SEO-friendly.

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to provide the new ebooks on the homepage would be for your actual users, i.e. trying to convert them in some way.

My intent is

1) to maintain our top 3 position in Google's SERPs for 6-7 search terms

2) Bolster in SERPs in Google search for long tail keywords

But that is probably way too broad an aspiration?

Not necessarily too broad. But why just the focus on the homepage? Why not use the new content to create new, useful, content-rich pages? The new pages would rank for long tail keywords and with proper internal linking, would improve the overall strength of your entire site (and therefore be of benefit to your homepage, too).

Warrenway said:

Not necessarily too broad. But why just the focus on the homepage?

Click to expand...

Well as I've said I kinda fell in love with the whole Ebook concept and believed the the homepage was the natural home to have an Ebook.