1. Choose the File Name Carefully
This is
usually the first step toward converting a text document to the universally
transportable PDF format. It is therefore all too easy to save the file as
whatever is automatically suggested, rather than considering the SEO impact
this can have on essential factors like the page URL.
As an
SEO, if the document is passed to you when it is already in PDF form, conduct
some keyword and competitor analysis before renaming the file using a phrase
that is in line with user demand. Be sure to capitalize the first letter of
each word and separate words with hyphens.
2. Link
to the Document Internally
It can
be difficult to include PDFs within the internal linking structure of a
website.
Although
these documents are typically high-value assets (e.g., surveys or reports),
they serve such a specific use that they aren’t called upon as often as a
product page, for example.
As a
result, all too often they end up as orphaned pages within the site hierarchy.
That
has a direct impact on their SEO potential. If we take a quote from an interview with
Google’s John Mueller in 2016, the significance of linking to a PDF hits home:
“If
we are not able to index those pages[…] it might just be that we are
saying we have enough content indexed from your website already. We are not
ready yet to add a significant batch of more content.”
Sending
contextual internal links to your PDFs will give Google the signs it needs to
recognize that these are pieces of content you want to have indexed and ranked.
Although
decreasing in significance as a ranking factor, optimizing the anchor text that
points to the document internally should help, too.
3. Link
Out to Relevant Content
This
applies primarily to content that resides within your website (although it’s
fine to link to authoritative third party sites whenever it’s in the user’s
best interests).
By
linking back to your own web properties from a PDF, you can increase the likelihood
that a search engine will view the content as an important part of your site.
Another
great benefit that comes with using PDFs is that external sites are more likely
to link back to them, due to their value as a permanent resource. If you
include links within the document to important pages on your site, you can end
up gaining authority (and rankings) for more than just the PDF.
4. Add
a Unique, Optimized Title
This is
an SEO basic, but it is so often forgotten when it comes to PDFs.
The
title for a PDF can be set in the ‘Document Properties’ section. A search
engine will use this in the same way that it uses an HTML title tag. Therefore,
this will be the clickable text a user sees in search results.
Think
carefully about the terms you would like to rank for, however.
The
reality is that PDFs are typically best suited to ranking for specific,
long-tail queries. By their nature, the documents hone in on one area of
investigation – the title and description should reflect that.
Optimizing
a PDF for a broad, conversion-focused term is unlikely to be successful.
5.
Tailor Content for the Mobile PDF Experience
This
advice applies to just about every area of digital marketing these days, so
it’s no surprise that it also applies to SEO for PDFs.
The
lengthy nature of a lot of PDFs means that they don’t lend themselves to the
bite-sized format that so much mobile content takes.
There
are simple, actionable changes you can make to counteract this.
By
aligning content to the left side of the page, you will make it much easier to
scroll through the content on a mobile device without having to scroll
horizontally first.
You can
also make use of bullet points and bold text to make the content more
digestible for itinerant, time-sensitive readers.
Images
are great too, but be wary of file size.
6.
Compress Images, Where Possible
Load
speed is an important ranking factor for any page, but it becomes more
challenging to accelerate this with heavy PDF files.
After
putting so much work into creating an excellent piece of work, you don’t want
to have to remove images or charts just to compress the document.
Tools
(such as JPEGmini or Soda PDF) can help compress the more labor-intensive
elements like images without losing any noticeable aesthetic quality.
7.
Break Content Up With Subheadings
PDFs
can contain lots of in-depth information. But people have dwindling attention
spans.
By
using subheadings, you make your content more legible for readers that may be
scanning through the document. This is useful advice across all devices,
although it’s vital on mobile.
As a
rule of thumb, try not to have more than 3-4 sentences per paragraph.
Between
blocks of text, signpost the narrative by interjecting with a subheading that
describes the upcoming section and, if relevant, uses one of your target search
queries.
8. Use
Plain Text
One of
the reasons that those myths persisted for so long about Google and its PDF
problem was that so many PDFs are image-based.
To our
eyes, they contain text. But to a search engine, they see images with words on
them.
That
still isn’t sufficient to suggest that Google can’t index the documents, but we
should give them some help where we can.
Search
engines are getting much better at reading the contents of images, but text is
still preferable.
Many
common tools, including Adobe’s own Creative Suite, will allow you to make this
conversion easily.
There
is a really rudimentary way to test this, too. If you can copy and paste the
text from the PDF, it is in text rather than image format.
9. Take
Advantage of Alternative Text
This is
bedrock of the SEO basics category. However, it is not universally known that
you can set the alternative text element on your images within a PDF.
The
exact way of doing this will differ depending on the software you use to create
and then host the PDF, but you can find a full guide here.
Think
of this as another opportunity to provide Google with vital signals about the
contents of the document, and also a means of ranking via image search.
PDFs
are not always the most suitable result for a search query, but images are much
more likely to satisfy the user’s request.
10.
Track Performance
The
objectives, from an SEO perspective, of adding a PDF to a website will be
rather different to the addition of a product page, for example. That means
that the measurement of its success will require a different mindset, too.
You can
consider the download of a PDF from an organic search visitor to be a
micro-conversion. This can be added to your analytics package as a goal, so you
can see how many people entered the site via organic search and downloaded the
document.
You can
get much more granular with this, to assess the path the user took within the
site to land on the PDF, or which other marketing channels they interacted with
before making this micro-conversion.
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