I’m looking for ideas to get traffic back to our web site

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Ian Macleod: Hi Everyone and thanks for providing this community.
  I’m considering leveraging some free content on our website in the form of downloadable  ;MS word and PDF documents in exchange for some other thing of value to us. Value to us would be
  • social recommendations, on Google + Linkedin  ;or Facebook.
  • following our Google + pages and sharing content with others
  • backlinks to our site.
  • Joining our regular newsletter and updates
  • Providing contact information to go into an email marketing campaign.
  We will also include links in the free material as a reminder to people of what we do and how we might assist them at some other stage.
  I’m looking for ideas to get the most bang for our buck in terms of SEO Value and traffic back to our web site.
• 
  Tim Capper: Always a good Idea to offer something useable... However
  
  I would not have anything mentioning Links on site - if you had something mentioning a link for download - this would be a paid link and a serious no no.
  
  Asking people to share the page socially may look a little unprofessional .. however before the download, you could have a pop up, with something like Be Social and offer + 1, FB and Twit buttons.
  
  Combining the email signup with this pop up would be good.
  
  You could also take it a step further - You could create an infographic that would accompany the PDF  ;( I would not offer in MS word )
  
  Provide an embed code with the infographic, so that people can embed the code onto their site and display the infographic ..... please note : provide your url as the link and dont try and have an Optimised Anchor Text.
  
  To draw attention to the site and available downloads and infographic - set up a slideshare account - then create a slidedeck giving a glimpse into what is available on site.
• 
  Ian Macleod: Thanks +Tim Capper ;, No I wouldn't ask for links in return, I was simply pointing out that they would be of value to us.
  
  I noticed a blog post today where the author had finished of with "don't be greedy share" which I felt obliged to do. ;
  
  I appreciate the idea of the pop up but I would have to get used to the it, because personally I hate pop ups.  ;Given that we will be giving something away that has value and it won't necessarily be on our main websites, This is a good idea.
  
  People will need to amend the documents to suit their own situations, so MS word is the preferred format.
  
  Thanks also for the slide share idea . I've not used it before but this looks like a good tool to get our material circulating.
  
  Cheers.
• 
  Tim Capper: Pleasure +Ian Macleod ;
• 
  John Pitcher: I also would be wary of anything that looks like you are asking for G+ followers/shares in return for info - I suspect that might be against G's guidelines.
  
  On our site, I have a little (muted) red arrow pointing to the share buttons with a message "Please share if helpful" at the top and bottom of each post - people are prompted to share but are not forced to do so.
  
  That said, the person I've shared most from recently was the writer of a post on Moz who took the trouble to answer my questions at the bottom of the post - I've g+'d and tweeted that post and another one of hers without asking as a thank you for helping.