Optimizing PDFs - How To Boost SEO Chances?	Visited: 240 5.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Kabir Bedi February 09, 2010

Often business websites have PDF documents on their website sell sheets, brochures, white papers, technical briefs, etc., which incidentally are also very popular among users to take home the information with them. And that is precisely why it would be a good idea to optimize the PDFs for search engine visibility.

However, search engines are not very kind to PDFs and they don't rank prominently because they are considered a poorer user experience than raw HTML. This is because PDFs are unable to attract backlinks.

Here are some tips to optimize your PDFs for search engines and give them maximum visibility:

Make the PDFs Text Based

If you want search engines to index you PDFs, the first step is to load rich text based content into it so that search engines can crawl and index the same. If you use image-based programs, then the search engines will have no text to index.

Improve PDF Titles

The title field of the PDF document should be well-optimized i.e. you need to include your relevant keywords and phrases in the title. This is a key ranking factor with the search engines. The words in the title tag is what is displayed as the heading of the search result. It’s just like the HTML title tag. If you don't specify a title tag for your PDF document yourself, then the search engine will generate a title from the PDF’s content that may not be what you would choose. Also, consider adding other document properties like Author, Subject and Keywords to the PDF.

Optimize the Transcripts Page

The transcripts page or summary page of the PDF is where you explain the contents of the document. Therefore, make sure you include keyword rich content that describes the information contained within the PDF document.

Build links into PDFs.

Include links in your PDFs and provide keyword-rich anchor texts for all of them. This will enhance the search quotient of the document and also serve other business purposes. Often, PDFs are passed along to others via email. And if you include links in your PDF document, you will give readers an easy way to click back into your website where you can provide them with further information.

Provide Exceptional Content

PDFs are usually treated as static print documents and people don't prefer to link to them, which is also the reason why they don't attract backlinks like HTML documents. However, you can change all that by providing exceptional content in your PDF document. Users are always in search of relevant and valuable information would come to acquire it immediately irrespective of the medium. So, if your PDF document has rich and exceptional information, chances are people will refer to it and give it some effective backlink support.

Optimize the PDF File Size

Don’t post a huge PDF for download. This is not only annoying for your readers but also pose an obstacle for search engines. Search engines tend to abandon large PDFs before even accessing its contents.