For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. (Pareto principle)
In other words, most of the ‘hard work’ you put into your business doesn’t make an iota of a difference.
And working ‘harder’ on things that don’t work… sorry, but that’s just dumb.
The following traffic hack will increase your web traffic, build links, AND create an appearance of “being everywhere“.
All using what you already have: your existing blog content.
It’s a great and quick way to repurpose your content in a different format and publish it on document-sharing platforms, thus establishing yet another way to passively drive traffic back to your website.
Why Convert Blog Posts into PDFs?
Because I said so.
Not good enough?
Fine – here’s why:
Above is a screenshot of my very first blog post to PDF Slideshare submission: a PDF based on the Best Affiliate Marketing Programs that Pay blog post.
Not bad at all for a quick little traffic hack, whaddya think?…
Learn more about using Slideshare for your business:
But don’t feel like you have to take MY word for it.
Here’s what a couple of my Bite-Size Traffic Hacks Subscribers told me after taking this traffic hack for a spin.
Sue-Ann Bubacz, WriteMixforBusiness.com:
How to Convert a Blog Post into a PDF
Watch the following video on how to quickly convert a blog post into a PDF; then we’ll talk more.
This post is a part of my Bite-Size Traffic Hacks newsletter <= click on the link to get access to more exclusive traffic hacks like this one in your email inbox.
TL;DR: For those of you with a short attention span or working mothers, here’s the Skinny: use PrintFriendly.com to quickly convert your blog posts into PDFs. You can also download PrintFriendly Chrome extension to save even more time.
For specific instructions on editing your post before saving it as a PDF, you’ll just have to watch the video above or… learn from your own mistakes. 😆 😉
Google Search Traffic and PDF Files at a Glance
Before I let you go, I want to touch on the subject of PDFs and SEO.
Did you know Google can do a whole lot more than simply read PDF documents?
Like index and rank them in the search engine results… And follow links within PDFs. And those links pass PageRank…
Can a PDF rank well in Google search engine ranking results?
Definitely.
Here’s an example:
To learn more about how Google treats PDFs and more, read:
UPDATE:
SlideShare has a new policy on linking out. As a result, live links are no longer clickable on the first three pages of any presentation (including PDFs).
Links remain clickable beyond those first three pages.
So what now?
- Nothing. Use the strategy above and accept that some of your links won’t be live.
- Edit your PDF to make it image-heavy on the front end. In that case, you won’t be able to use the PrintFriendly strategy above. Just copy/paste your post into a Word doc and edit away.
Good thing Slideshare is just one of the sites you can upload your PDFs to.
There are plenty others, like Scribd.com, etc.
You can find a current suggested list of PDF directories in this post.
Marketing Takeaway
Make it a habit to convert your newly published blog posts into PDFs and submit them to various document sharing sites.
Just like you share each post on Facebook or Twitter or Google+.
Off to create a PDF of this post,
From Ana with
HUGE help! Thanks so much for this
You are so very welcome, Todd!
Hi Ana, such a helpful post – amazing, saved me tons of time and effort! Thank you thank you thank you….
You are so very welcome, Pratap.
Hello Ana,
I like your article, I try to convert my post into pdf but I think there are some network issues. Thanks for sharing such useful information.
Sorry to hear you had trouble, Glory; might need to try it again.
Thanks so much for sharing this! I was specifically looking for a way to convert quickly. I will definitely check out the Chrome extension. And the tip about sharing the pdf is amazing! Thanks again!
Glad to hear that, Joanna; thanks for coming by!
absolute gold..thank you Ana
? , Eddie!
Ana – You always bring unique, actionable content in a world brimming with repetitive clutter. I have to get to work on this. Thank you!
Thanks, Rasel. Not a big fan of links in comments, but will keep your gigs in mind. ?
That’s amazing information. I just implemented this with one of my blog post.
Ana, I forgot to ask this, is it OK to have same copy of my blog post in these PDFs?
Don’t worry about the copy, Mukesh – there’s no such a thing as Google duplicate content penalty. (I assume that’s what you are concerned about.)
These PDFs are meant to enhance your online presence (‘wherever I turn, Mukesh is there!’ kind of thing 😉 ), plus drive good old-fashioned traffic whenever possible.
Also the links you place in the PDF description and wherever else any given platform allows you to add links to might help SEO a bit.
Hey Ana, thanks for your useful information, a very curated blog and reliable content. It’seems your youtube link is pointing to a deleted video.
Glad you found it helpful, Antonio!
So right you are… changed the link; all is good. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
Wow! I mean Wow, what a great idea! Never heard of this! We are starting to do this to our posts now.
One problem that we have come across is that PrintFriendly doesn’t seem to take the embedded images that we have included from Instagram/Twitter etc into the pdf. A significant number of our blog posts have embedded images. Have you found something that will do this? I have been searching but haven’t found anything yet – would rather not use a WP plugin as we have found from experience that not all plugin’s play well in the sandpit together!
Once again thanks for such a great tip – i have only recently come across your blog and found some excellent ideas! Chris
Hi, Chris – welcome to Traffic Generation Café!
I know, I know… PrintFriendly does have its limitations. However, if you think about it, most of its limitations stem from the fact that PDF format is fairly limited to begin with.
The only way I know of to include embedded media into a PDF (with PrintFriendly or otherwise) is to post it as an image – it can’t be interactive in any way. Needless to say, doing it that way takes this hack from ‘easy’ to ‘oh crap, now I actually have to work for it.’
Once you have to go to lengths to convert a post to a PDF, you might as well do it well and go Word doc to PDF route. That way you can customize it however you want to.
With that said, I think it’s very much worth it, especially for a growing platform like yours. I think you can do a lot of creative things with PDFs and grow your email list, user/customer list, plus establish/increase your presence on platforms like SlideShare.
PS What a coincidence! I’ve just heard of mavsocial the other day and was checking you out, guys! ?
Ana
I have actually emailed Print Friendy about embedding social posts and Taylor Norrish (founder) responded. He said that they are going to work on including that functionality – certainly something i would pay for given the time saving compared to manually doing it
I am glad you have heard of us! Small world! If you would like me to give you a tour pls just ping me
Cheers
A man after my own heart… Glad you went right for the solution, Chris!
And yes, I’d love to learn more about MavSocial; email me? (just respond to the comment reply you’ll get in your inbox)
Ana, gotta say this is my favorite and most eye-opening tip in quite some time. Never really thought about it, then realized PDF’s often make up a good percentage of searches. Thanks!
So glad to hear it, Barry – I am all for simple and effective strategies like this one! 😉
Ana – You always bring unique, actionable content in a world brimming with repetitive clutter. I have to get to work on this. Thank you!
Much appreciated, August!
Let me know how it goes.
Hi Ana,
I always thought Slideshare was meant to upload our presentations (PPT, etc.). But I’m glad to discover in your post that we can also upload PDFs. Good job!
Indeed, Steve! I think what people don’t know about SlideShare is… a LOT.
Just need is, perfect.
Glad to hear it, Louis.
Hi Ann,
Definitely great tips. It is pretty convincing that with a small effort can lead to a greater return. And, BTW, you did not mention how to convert? Use some plugin or some online service to create PDF file out of blog post?
Or, do you suggest to copy and paste in MS Word and edit then finally save it to PDF format/’
You must’ve missed it, Suresh – the tool is PrintFriendly.com, I showed how to use it in the video, as well as mentioned it under the video in the post.
Hey Ana,
This is an older post and I have read about it before but still haven’t implemented it. I have some vacation coming up so this will give me some time to get on the ball. I definitely want to be everywhere.
Thanks for sharing Ana! Have a great weekend!
Or you could just enjoy your time off… We need that sometimes as well, Sherman! 😉
Hi Ana, I really like the idea of syndicating content as pdfs and your post is a really great. Do you know if google will give duplicate content penalties for the same content (words) but in a different format (pdf) on another site or sites?
Thanks!
There are no duplicate content penalties for posting the same content on several sites, Nigel – what would happen at best is Google would index only one version. So go ahead and repurpose your content for traffic.
Thanks Ana. Wonderful idea. Just transformed my latest article into a nice, shiny PDF and emailed it to all my clients. The response was amazing. One must never stop learning.
Sweeeeet! Glad to help, Omi; thanks for coming by.
Hi Ana, you’ve shared a great way of gaining more traffic and backlinks, keep up the good work.
Thanks, Nathan – I try.
Hi Ana,
Heard about this post through Kevin Duncan. I learned about Print Friendly not to long ago when I was crafting a post similar about converting a post for SlideShare. My method is more for creating slides though.
I have to say I had no idea that PDF’s were so valuable beyond just posting to content. With Print Friendly only taking 2 minutes or less to create the PDF, it makes sense to add that to your marketing strategy. Time and money is not a factor with this option 🙂
Thanks for enlightening me on this topic as it goes far deeper than I realized. Great share!
Have a good week!
This is indeed one of those very easy to implement strategies that are worth a few minutes, Steven.
Thanks for coming by (and thanks to Kevin for a referral!).
Hi Ana, Thank you for the tip. I tried this and it was SO easy, except my links on the slide share do not work. In the print friendly pdf they do…
You are very welcome, Katie.
Not sure why your links didn’t work; mine do. Slideshare is known to have bugs though; it might be just fine next time you post a PDF. Just make sure it doesn’t have too many links in it.
I know this is an older post, but somehow I missed it. This is such a great idea Ana – I love it! Every time I visit your blog, I pick up a new way to convert content. I’m off to give this one a try!
You are so very welcome, Rebekah – thanks for sharing it on G+, by the way; for some reason, your shares always fly off the shelves. lol
Can this site go4convert.com help on this issue?
No, we are not converting DOC files into PDFs.
I guess it is good to say that we often do away with the importance of PDF. Or, put in another way, the value of the PDF is often underutilized!
From this post, we are reminded of how to use this format to increase traffic shares. The tutorial is easy and it is very resourceful knowing some of the types of vital online file directories to share this post!
Indeed, Sunday.
I too believe that allowing readers to download pdf of the blog post script is a great idea.The site shows useful tips.Really impressive content.Nice video tutorial,thanks a lot.
You are very welcome, Avinash.
Don’t know how I missed this post. Short as it is, it offers a great tip, which goes to show that it is not about the length of the post as some – SEO gurus especially – would have us believe. Another take is the importance of interlinking, which is said to be good for SEO, as this is how I got here (and stayed on site a little longer than I would otherwise have which too is good for SEO).
But what I particularly love is that you gave us a link for creating PDFs that allows you some control, as in ability to clean out some stuff. I have been using pdfmyurl.com, which is fast but does not offer the option to delete some stuff (at least not with the free version).
Thanks for the compliment of spending some time at Traffic Generation Café, David.
And yes, that’s precisely why I love this tool so much – it gives you a lot of control as to what the final output would be.
Good answer!
I second your thoughts
that’s not what I’ve heard 😉
OK be serious Alex.
This was awesome Ana – genuine bite sized brilliance!
Thanks for sharing – definitely going to be visiting printfriendly and leveraging the crap out of every article my clients has ever had written 🙂
Hi Anna,
Haven’t tried to submit my blogs to pdf sites because I am afraid Google will outranked my contents but then, thanks for your advices here. You give me courage. I will keep you posted by the results.
Traffic is traffic! 🙂
Hi Ana,
Thanks for the post on a PDF. It’s something I’ve got to try. You’re right. It does seem simple. I have the ability in my word program. That would be easy enough. It’s setting up the group to send it to on email. Again, thank you.
I think this is a great idea. Who would have thought of something like this. I am going to try converting it into pdf and submit to slide share and see how it converts. Thanks for this idea and the list of places for submission.
Hi Ana
I have never converted a file of any sort to another format before. But looks quite straight forward. You have mentioned scribd and slide share are they the main two or are ther several other useful ones to use. ??????
Await reply great heads up thanks lee
I added a few more directories to the post, Lee.
Hi Ana, seems like you have added Social Locker plugin and it would be great if you can share your experience in using it. Coming to this article, thanks for sharing the plugin and I’m using Scribd for a long time. Indeed its a really good idea to get traffic from a purely new source like document sharing sites. Thank you.
I am actually using WP Sharely, but it’s pretty much the same thing.
I am loving it so far – no complaints and good social sharing results.
Ana, Thanks for sharing those awesome, easy-to-follow, tips! Too many online videos take up time without delivering value and seem to be there because everyone says, “you have to do video.” This is a great example of a perfect use of the medium because it removes any intimidation we might have about taking action. Watching over your shoulder as you do the steps live is the perfect proof of how easy it is to turn a blog post into a PDF. Thanks so much for sharing.
Also love how you locked the content to force a social share, very clever! How did you do that?
I know what you mean, Debra – converting our posts to PDFs is definitely a very “friction-free” method of presenting our content in a different way.
I am testing a new plugin “WP Sharely” to lock content, https://trafficgenerationcafe.com/loves/wp-sharely/; so far loving it.
This was a great post as always with quality information especially on the SliderShare..
I have been using Scribd and it is getting me quite a traffic..
Thanks and keep up the good work
Thanks for sharing this plugin Ana. Just now converted my first blog post using Print friendly and uploaded to scribd. Was looking for a similar solution
Glad to help, Hamza.
hey Ana,
i have read your article about Blog post in PDF.I have already read your many articles like 15 backlinks from twitter.But I want to Know that if you have some knowledge about Coupons that how we can increase our traffic for Coupons Site
A coupon site is no different from any other site, Ana, generally speaking. Most of the traffic generation strategies I talk about here will work.
Thanks for this video.I have never thought about promoting my posts turning them into pdfs and putting on Doc sharing sites.I think this idea will give huge traffic to our blogs .Thanks alot.
You are welcome, Vikram.
Very nice spin on the idea of re purposing content. I’ve only made PDFs from my original Word doc but using PrintFriendly gives you live links and pics too.
Which is way better.
Great hack!
Alex
Definitely, simple and quick, Alex; almost leaves us with no excuse not to do it. lol
Ana:
I totally love your site. Came across it today looking for an alternative to Alismet and found your GASP article. Then started reading all your other stuff.
Than you for all your work. Your info and site are awesome!
Ron
Much appreciated, Ron!
Hi Ana,
Yet another great post! I really like the idea of taking content that you’ve already created and repurposing it. That’s a most effective way of significantly increasing the leverage from work you’ve already done.
I know that was one of your goals for this year and you look like you’re making excellent progress. I hope it continues to work out well for you.
Also, I wanted to say that based on some of your other posts and chats we’ve had, I’ve noticed the slight change in the tone of your emails. I like it! I think you’re definitely moving in the right direction and I hope that, too, works out for you. You certainly deserve it!
I hope you have a truly outstanding end to the week and I hope to chat with you again soon!
~Barry
Much appreciated, Barry, and yes, I’ve been doing pretty well with content leveraging. Probably could do a lot better if I hired someone to help me with it. 🙂
Hi Ana- Hope you are having a wonderful day.
I think it’s a good idea, however there is bit of risk in this strategy as Google might eventually consider it as duplicate content (same doc on several docsharing sites). I am not sure how much link juice will flow back to our sites by doing this. I know Googlebot can read pdf files now, so I am a bit hesitant to go with your strategy.
Regards,
Chetan
Don’t be hesitant, Chetan; just take a look at the duplicate content post I mentioned in the post.
Slideshare looks interesting but also seems like a little more work than I have time for. It’s on my to do list.
I know what you mean, Tom, and you can imagine my schedule.
However, I’ve been using it for about a month now and found that it’s definitely worth my time; from because of traffic and links.
Hi, Ana!
This is a wonderful idea, thank you so much for it!
I was just thinking, what about putting together several blog posts that have a central theme into one PDF? Can PrintFriendly.com do something like that, as well?
It’s been a while, Delena; welcome back.
PrintFriendly can’t bundle several posts. I’ve been trying to find a free and effective way to do it.
There’s a plugin called Anthologize, but it was too buggy for me.
Another alternative is Zinepal.com, but the free option is not acceptable; otherwise, it’s $5 per post.
This is good timing, I’ve just started doing this but only been submitting the pdfs to Scribd. Will submit them to the others now too including Slideshare.
Thanks!
I try to switch around different doc sharing sites, Claire; better for SEO.
That sounds a great idea, Ana. Converting a blog post into PDF and submitting it to other document sharing sites does help, surely. What about short posts? I mean It won’t be enough to impress people If the converted post is less 1500 words, isn’t it?
Thanks for sharing the information,
Ehsan U.
I don’t think it’s a problem, Ehsan; there’s a reader for content of any length.