For instance, images can be optimized for search through tags and other options in HTML, but images cannot be optimized as well in a PDF. So, relying on PDFs as page content isn’t ideal simply from a page organization and control perspective.Ĭertainly one of the benefits of HTML pages is the flexibility that HTML authors have to edit the website code. PDFs, however, don’t often work within the organizational structures of CMS as pages but rather as downloads.
#PDF SEARCH ENGINE PDF#
This means that one PDF document, which will equate to one URL, may contain a lot of content that normally might be broken up into multiple website pages in HTML.Ĭertainly one of the greatest benefits of using a content management system for a website is page organization and control. This isn’t really ideal for SEO in some cases because longer documents contain more text and often multiple topics. For example, in the case of a whitepaper or report, the PDF could range from a few pages to hundreds of pages. So if the PDF happens to rank well in organic search and a searcher finds the link and arrives at the PDF, how can that visitor easily access other content on your site?īecause it’s so easy to save a document as a PDF file, it’s not common to break up a PDF into multiple, smaller documents. This means that when a site visitor arrives at the website, they have no simple way to reach other pages on the site. One of my greatest concerns about relying too heavily on PDFs for website content is that PDFs often lack site navigation.
#PDF SEARCH ENGINE CODE#
There are a number of drawbacks to using PDFs when it comes to navigation and lack of control regarding document length, page content, document organization, code editing, structured markup and tracking. Also, the PDF must be an identified “contributor” site in Google+ for that author. However, as with HTML pages, authorship will only show for the first author listed, so it’s important to be sure that the preferred author is listed first. To ensure that the text is readable, it should be created as text, not as an image, making it ideal to create the PDF from the originating program, like Word or Illustrator.Īlso like HTML pages, authorship can be identified and inferred by Google for PDFs. However, not all PDFs have readable content.
#PDF SEARCH ENGINE PRO#
Perhaps the most attractive pro of using PDFs is that the content within the PDF is generally readable and indexable by search engines. These links can contain anchor text, as well. Like web pages, PDFs can also contain links, and those links can be followed by search engine bots. While meta data doesn’t have a high impact on SEO anymore, I like to think of the meta description as your opportunity to craft just the right description that will compel a searcher to choose your website in the SERPs, and I’d rather write my own description than have a search engine choose it for me. You can find and edit the meta information under Properties in the File menu in Adobe Acrobat. PDFs also contain meta data, such as meta keywords and descriptions. For those without any HTML programming knowledge, PDFs for certain document types can be a fast way to publish web-based content. Press releases, case studies, product data sheets and more can quickly be converted to an essentially web-ready format.
They’re easy to create - just save your document from Word, Illustrator, etc., as a PDF. PDFs can be very helpful for marketers, especially those with smaller teams or limited resources. Besides ease of use, they can help with indexing because these documents contain meta data, links, indexable content and authorship attributes. Today, I’d like to explore the pros and cons of PDFs from an SEO perspective.
But, just because a file format can be indexed doesn’t always mean that it’s the ideal approach. PDFs can also appear with an authorship-rich snippet in Google SERPs. I expect that most everyone working in SEO knows that PDFs are indexable by search engines.
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