Like you optimize normal webpages for search engines for higher ranking and traffic, PDF documents can be optimize for search engines. Here are the tips to optimize Adobe PDF files for search engine, these tip are useful for gaining traffic and increasing visibility of your PDF files.
1. Create text-based PDF file – There are two type of PDF documents, Image-based PDF and Text-based PDF. Image-based PDF are created by scanning physical papers and books and other is Text –based PDF document, created by using software such as Microsoft Office 2010 (using free plugin in 2007) and PDF995. There is a simple way to distinguish between these two formats – in case of scanned PDF, if you try to select text with your mouse in order to copy in a PDF reader, you will find the text was not selected. The search engines can’t really understand images/scanned documents content. It is recommended to create Text-based PDF because text are recognizable by Search engine bots.
2. Optimize Content of PDF – Optimizing content is very much similar to optimizing a web page. Your PDF should contain high quality and more original content. The search engines return search results that relevant to the search phrase requested. The more relevant your PDF content appears to the search requested, higher would be the PDF’s search listing. Below, few on-page SEO tips are given that will optimize your PDF content for better listing in search engines :
a) Text Formatting – Highlight the most relevant keywords or phrases by making them Bold, Italics or use underline, this is called Keyword emphasis. You can also change font size of headings and subheadings in your PDF.
b) Discard duplicate content – Duplicate content is frowned by search engines because more than one piece of identical content on the internet makes difficult for search engines to choose the more relevant result for a search query. So you should eliminate duplicate content from PDF and write more original content.
d) Keyword Density – More keyword density in PDF increase your site’s visibility in the search engine results pages. Make sure to mention subject relevant keywords and phrases many times throughout the PDF but don’t use keywords in plenty, otherwise it will cause an adverse effect on search result ranking- the search bot may consider you search engine spam.
e) Optimize First Paragraph – Make sure that first paragraph should have target keywords because search engine pay much attention to the first paragraph and they may get extracted and use by search engines to be used in search engine listings ( see the below image).
f) Images in PDF : Don’t replace important piece of text with image and use more and more text in your PDF. You can also use text captions under photographs or images to describe, what’s there in the photo.
And the last tip about PDF content optimization is to make sure backlinks (links to your website) are inserted with anchor text so that you can drive traffic towards your website.
3. PDF Document Properties or Metadata : You can increase visibility of PDF for search engines by editing PDF Document Properties. Actually, these properties give you more control over how your PDF file will appear on search engines. There are various tools that allow users to include metadata ( such as title, subject, author, keywords) in your PDF file. You can edit PDF Document Properties using Adobe Acrobat reader (paid or premium version) . There are free alternative PDF tools such as PDF- Xchange Viewer and PDF Properties Changer that allow you to edit and change the Title, Author, Subject and Keywords property fields of PDFs. Below, an image, showing the PDF Document properties :
Title ( *important ): Choose the short and relevant Title for your PDF. Remember, If a Title filed is empty, the file name is used by default as Title for PDF in search results. Author : This property can be an individual name, website or a company name. Subject (*important) : Subject serve as meta description for a PDF document and is useful to provide a PDF document summary in the search result pages(SERP). If subject is empty for a PDF document then search engines such as Google will automatically generate its own description for that PDF document which may not be nicely optimized . Keywords : Fill up this property with subject relevant keywords.
Make Sure The PDF Link is Easily visible – Place links to your PDFs on website such that they should be clearly visible to people and search engines. PDF files should not be buried deep within the website.
Page Rank and Link building effect on PDF : You will notice that top PDF files results on search engines such as Google do have PageRank – you can check using Page Rank Checker tools and even analyze backlinks using Yahoo Site Explorer. And, you should use Off-Page SEO strategies to optimize PDF files for better rankings in search engines.
Small Size PDF : Don’t upload Large size PDF. There are two reasons : Large PDF files are slow to download – a lot of visitors are likely to leave or cancel downloading of the PDF file. Second reason is that Large size PDF files consume too much bandwidth. Create small size PDF by minimizing the use of images in PDF files. You can also reduce size of a PDF file using tools such as Free PDF Compressor.
Related Topics : Optimize Images for search Engines