New Article - Make Your PDFs SEO-Friendly

[thejenn]

Authored by: Matt McGee

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/mcgee/010167.html

A Snippet:

A couple years ago, a client was launching a new product -- but they weren't the only company doing so. One of their main competitors was launching the same product, sourced from the same manufacturer. The product didn't have much search history. It also didn't have much competition for the relevant keywords.

[krtup]

Good article...and it hits on a topic that is often overlooked. Also it gives me something tangible to show my graphic designers as to why they shouldn't create their PDFs in photoshop.

[Denise]

Thanks Matt! I've heard various opinions on PDFs and SEO, and it's nice to finally see a positive, real life example.

[St0n3y]

OK, Matt. I'm interested in your theory on why the PDF worked but the HTML pages didn't.

[amichalski]

Holy mackerel, Matt!

I didn't think that PDFs were "readable" by spiders at all, text-based or not. But, I just did a little checking up on my site, and sure enough, one of my PDFs comes up ahead of all my HTML files, and it ranks for terms that I never anticipated, too, apparently because of words in the background of my ezine's masthead.

THANK YOU for this article. This info is so timely for me. I'll keep it in mind as I continue publishing my ezine. I was having second thoughts about archiving old issues in PDF form rather than HTML, but with this new info in mind, I am absolutely NOT changing the plan now.

[SeattleCPA]

Sort of related to this... I've got pdf versions of a bunch of my old computer books. I give them away for free from my cpa web site.

I haven't paid much attention to these items. (A few years ago I publicized them to computer clubs and MBA program business schools... but then I forgot about them.)

Recently, by accident, I've noticed that for some of these freebie downloadables, there's pretty predictable and darn respectable traffic. Of course, for much of this stuff I've long since lost the source documents and therefore the ability to edit within the original creating app... (Pagemaker, probably)

This post makes me think, heck, I got to look at this again. I wonder if it is practical to have someone (an offshore designer or whatever) go into the roughly 1500pp of this stuff and add page footers (or something like that) with links to my sites.

Sorry for thinking out loud. I guess my point is, good info...thanks!

[Logan]

1500pp of this stuff and add page footers (or something like that) with links to my sites.

I would, but I wouldn't hide it only at the bottom. Maybe add to top and bottom as how many really get to the end. I think one of the issues with pdf's is you need to convert the visitor and that doesn't usually get considered when a pdf is created.

I'd think it fully thru, and maybe even do some sample testing before having someone go thru all of them.

Additionally, you might want to check with a programmer to see if there is a way to automatically add something to every pdf dynamically - versus having someone do it one by one.

Another hurdle I see frequently is tracking/stats. Since many use client side tracking versus server side ... the pdf doesn't get reflected. Kind of lurking in the shadows unknown to many

[SeattleCPA]

Good thoughts. thanks. btw, I think this is post where I inadvertently broke rules about links. Sorry.