3 Sure-Fire Ways to Make Your PAD File More Effective

Here are 3 easy to do PAD file improvements you should make because they will increase your download site traffic, bump up your sales, and give you a nice little SEO boost.

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#1 -Add Keywords to Your Product Name

This is so simple and obvious that if keywords aren’t already in your Product_Name field, you should walk over to a mirror, slap yourself in the forehead, and shout a few expletives. Then shout a few more at the Lhasa Apso that just peed on the floor [or is that just in my house?].

Browsing through download sites you see a lot of undescriptive product listings like:

BlaBlaBla 2.3

Visitors need to read through the BIG BLOCK OF TEXT below to see what the product is. Es no bueño muchacho.

But … changing the Program_Name field to:

BlaBlaBla ShortDescription 2.3

will let people see what the product does immediately. Here’s the key: I changed mine from FlowBreeze to FlowBreeze Flow Chart Software, and viola!, my average download rates went way up from the same sites (yes, as a matter of fact, 2 x 0 = 0 does count as doubling my download rate).

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#2 - Make Your Descriptions More Readable with Ellipses

Most people don’t like to read on the internet, and when they do, they prefer bulletized text. The problem with PAD file description fields are that they are just BIG BLOCKS OF TEXT. Internet readers like to scan, so the solution is to break your descriptions up with an ellipsis between each fragment. Here’s a before and after of the 450 character description field for FlowBreeze Flow Chart Software.

Before:

“FlowBreeze Flowchart Software is a 100% MS Office integrated tool for making flow charts the fast, easy, and affordable way. FlowBreeze Flowchart Software lets you Just Type the Text. FlowBreeze Flow Chart Software converts the text into flowchart shapes, adds flow lines, and formats the drawing automatically. It lets you generate flowcharts in Excel, then easily copy and paste them into Word, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft applications.”

After:

“FlowBreeze Flowchart Software … a 100% MS Office integrated tool … lets you make flow charts fast and easy because … it lets you just type the text … converts your text into flowchart symbols … adds flow lines … formats the flow chart symbols automatically … lets you generate flowcharts in Excel, then easily copy and paste them into Word, PowerPoint or other Microsoft applications … affordable Business Process Improvement software”

You can see 2 differences between the Before and After. First, each feature (sentence fragment) stands out a bit more. That’s the goal. Second, the copy has changed. When you go through and add the ellipses, odds are you’ll push that upper limit for the field length, so you’ll need to shorten the text in other places. But the other thing that happens is, you’re forced to make your copy more bullet-like. And for the purposes of scanability, that’s perfect.

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#3 - Use It For Its SEO Power

When you’re just starting out as a software company, you’re site isn’t going to be ranked well and your product will linger on the back of the search engine result pages - that no one ever goes to. But, BigTrustedDownloadSite.com and OldDownloadSite.com have good page rankings. So if you make sure your product’s keywords are featured prominently in your PAD file, odds are that one or more of the top download sites will be featured on the first page of the results.

Also, is the link back to your product page something like www.mysite.com/product.htm? A quick thing you can do is add keywords to your directory structure, so the URLs linked to become www.mysite.com/keyword/product.htm and www.mysite.com/keyword/product_setup.exe. Most download sites generate links dynamically, but there are still some that list plain text links to sites - some with the url as the link text.

SEO is a brutal game that most of us don’t like to play. There are a lot of sleazy SEO players on the internet, and most likely you’d rather be programming. But if you want your product to be noticed by potential customers, it’s a game you have to play.