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4 Ways to Make PDFs Search Engine Friendly

By Michael Stelzner

If you write white papers, you most likely are creating PDF files as the final product.

As you may already know, search engines like Google will treat the content within your PDF file as if it were a web page.

This means that a properly formatted PDF file can actually come up very high on search engine results.

That translates into more exposure for your white paper.

What follows are some tips on how to improve your PDF file’s placement on search engines.

These tips come from MarketingSherpa’s article, How to Optimize Your PDFs to Increase Search Traffic: 10 Steps.

1. Optimize the text: Simply apply the same rich keywords that you would for an HTML file. This means your white paper should contain many of the phrases that folks search on when looking for a solution to their problems.

2. Add metadata: This means you should manually insert keywords and descriptions of the document using Adobe Acrobat. This can be done by accessing document properties. MarketingSherpa adds, “You can also enter other keywords here, but don’t put in misleading phrases. That ‘black hat’ SEO tactic can get you penalized by most search engines.”

3. Add links: Links inside PDF files are crawled by search engines. MarketingSherpa adds:

Be creative with adding links. Acrobat allows you to insert links in PDFs, so customers can click to view more information about a product or click to add it to a shopping cart. This step turns the PDF into a landing page and you can define its intended conversion however you want. You can also add links to your homepage or other parts of your site to gain the SEO benefits of internal linking.

4. Create a document footer: Include your business contact information and website. This helps folks easily find you when your great paper goes viral.

What other tips do you have? I would love to hear from you.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 6:55 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • As you may already know, search engines like Google will treat the content within your PDF file as if it were a web page.batu permata
  • There are really lots to learn about SEO..
    Thanks for sharing this... Great post..
  • forgive me for my ignorance, but... why not just copy & paste the text into a web page? i suppose if the files really long it might be a p.i.t.a., but i think the advantage of having that copy on your site directly would outweigh most benefits of having it stuck in a pdf... unless someone writes an article in photoshop and saves it as a pdf. then your f'ed. lol.

    <abbr>lauren's last blog post..1,4-Dioxane</abbr>
  • Lots to learn!

    Thank you Michael!
  • Michael, I have always wondered why PDF's have performed so well within the SERPs. I have always recommended to our clients that they only make use of html. As I believe in testing, testing and testing, I will add PDF's to some of my better performing websites and see what happens.
  • Very nice :) btw very good tips i will use them. Some of them i did not knew.
  • Thanks for the link ejucator, very nice piece of software.
  • Ejudicator, thank you for your tip!
    Michael, thank you for hosting such a lively exchange! I'm planning to link to this blog post in my next e-newsletter.
  • Hey Michael,

    Hope you don't mind me responding to Susan, there is a way to edit that information. I came across a free program when I was reformatting a PDF document and making it SEO friendly. It is created by Bureausoft.com and it's called PDF Info.

    DC
  • Remember when putting links into PDFs (or any document for that matter) to put the whole link as a hard link, not masked. For example, people should be able to see the link as: http://www.emotionalintelligenceaus.com
    not as:
    click this link
    because you never know where your work will end up - it may be as a printed copy and then your link needs to be seen for the reader to type into their browser or it is useless to them.
  • Thanks for these tips. Before reading this article, I looked at pdf's as just a simple file. I didn't know you can almost treat it like a page on the web. I mean i've seen pdf files show up on your search on google but never actually understood how it ended up there.

    Paul
  • The omission of some of key things (noted above) in the MarketingSherpa article spurred me to revisit the article I wrote for Search Engine Land. I recently wrote a blog posting on how to optimize pdf files. The new posting is much more in-depth and more illustrative of some of the issues. I've also added a number of new tips not previously mentioned. You can see the post at http://www.francis-marketing.com/b2b-marketing-blog/index.php/optimizing-pdfs/
  • Galen, google detect easily text behind images in pdf documents, try google book search, when you search for a book; their algo search text inside Image books, (Scanned books not manually typed ebooks), then they higlight your keywords with yellow inside the image, it's kinda impressive, but it's not anything new, there are some softwares who can translates images to text since 1998..
  • Hi, Graham

    I'm actually not sure about whether Google can detect text behind images in a pdf, but it's quite clear they have sophisticated enough filters to detect hidden and inappropriately small text on web pages. I imagine it wouldn't be that hard to detect in pdfs as well. It's simply not worth trying, unless your domain is of little value to you. This is one of those actions which, if found, Google will almost certainly drop your domain from its index.

    Galen
  • Hi Galen,

    What a wealth of information -- thanks!

    Yes, I was especially curious about the "hiding" of text behind an image, sort of like an additional ALT tag. I wasn't sure if Google (or other spiders) could detect this sort of thing. (I'm not looking for Black Hat techniques here -- everything I've read says it is no good for long-term SEO -- but if there are untapped, legal ways of improving SEO, I'm all for it!)

    And I guess what you are saying too is that for serious PDF optimization, we should be using Acrobat to finalize the document. I love your tip about touching up the reader order!

    ~Graham
  • Mike,
    Thanks for answering my question. I was afraid that would be your answer. I've only got the reader.

    Susan
  • Thanks, Graham

    I've often found that creating PDFs through programs like Word doesn't offer the user the depth of options necessary to optimize a pdf for either the web of for search. Programs like Word allow options for right-sizing of the components of the PDF (e.g., text and image resolution), create PDFs that are download optimized (i.e., fast web view), and don't offer a lot of other factors that would make the PDF more web and search friendly. I think creating a PDF in Word is okay, but you'll definitely have to go back in using Acrobat (not Reader) and change several things.

    Programs like Quark allow you to specify the quality/resolution of differing elements in the document (images, text, etc.), and this allows the creator to finely tune the file size. Word won't let you do that, and Acrobat doesn't give you many options for right-sizing the file afterward.

    Regarding links, until you have familiarity with the source program creating the PDF, I would always go back in using Acrobat to make sure these always actually do get converted from the hyperlink in the source document to a hyperlink in the PDF. Sometimes it may look like a link, but not function as one. Best to double check.

    I certainly wouldn't hide any text behind and image. Any hiding of text would be a violation of many search engines' guidelines and generally carry strong penalties with it. Don't do anything in a PDF that you wouldn't do on a web page. I would, however, make sure you include keyword-rich ALT text for each image. You can do this using Acrobat, regardless of what program created the PDF.

    Regarding header tags, often the tagging used in the program used to create the PDF does not transfer to the actual PDF. Go into the resulting PDF and add tags using Acrobat. You can do this when touching up the reading order of the PDF.
  • Hey Galen,

    Thanks for filling in the holes!

    Few questions for you:

    (1) Is there a "best" method of creating a PDF, i.e. creating directly from Word or printing through Adobe's Distiller? For links, is there any difference between generating them from the original text or "hard-coding" them in Adobe Acrobat?

    (2) Is there any benefit or penalty to "hiding" keywords behind images when generating a PDF from, say, Quark?

    (3) Does Google treat Word header tags in the same way as HTML header tags? If not, is there a special method of designating header equivalents in Word (or through Acrobat)?

    Thanks!

    ~Graham
  • This MarketingSherpa article is a good one, but it misses a couple of very important steps. If you really want to ensure your pdfs not only get indexed and ranked highly by the search engines, but also actually clicked on, you need to influence the meta description and specify the reading order of the pdf. Without these two steps, it is very unlikely that Google or any other search engine will display a meaningful description that causes searchers to click through to your pdf. Also, your article doesn't mention tagging of content, which helps search engines distinguish between the types of content. Finally, those wanting their pdfs to be found should also tag images in pdfs with appropriate keyword-rich ALT text. For an details on these other very important factors, including the importance of reading order and meta descriptions, see an article of mine, Eleven Tips for Optimizing PDFs for Search Engines, at http://searchengineland.com/070912-095906.php
  • Hey Susan - Are you using the full edition of Adobe Acrobat? The reader alone will not let you edit Acrobat documents. - Mike
  • This may be a question for an Adobe expert, not you.

    Do I need a specific level of Adobe software to input keywords in document properties?

    I've accessed document properties and found the box for keywords, but it won't let me enter text.
  • Sarah
    I like the article. I have always toyed with the idea of writing ebooks in pdf format and I have stayed away from it. I am now considering creating some SEO friendly pdfs for my blog! One of the things that new site owners can do in addition to strengthening their pdf docs is to select their domain name using Nemeas. It can help new bloggers with an seo boost, combined with your tips on pdfs I am sure will work great!
  • Good question Mont. I didn't think you could add ALT tags to images within Word, etc., but then I found this page:

    http://www.engr.wisc.edu/server/help/accessibility/pdf.html

    Seems that you can add ALT tags after all. I haven't tested this though -- let us know if you do! This article also seems to imply that the search engine spiders will pick up on them.

    I still wouldn't count on the ALT tag within a PDF being weighted the same way as an actual web page (I don't know, but I wouldn't personally count on it...). And from everything I've learned, ALT tags are not that heavily weighted on web pages in the first place. But it certainly wouldn't hurt to add these to your document.

    ~Graham
  • Hi Mont;

    I am not sure... But I would think it would be wise to label the images with text descriptions at the very least...

    Mike
  • Mike, I like this post very much. I have a question. If there are many pdf documents on a website, and most of the pdf documents contain large amounts of pictures and photos. Can we do anything to make the photos together with pdf documents more search engine friendly? I know for a jpg file on a website, we can add some keywords in the meta tag of that photo.So is there any means similar for pictures in pdf documents?
  • I don't know how Acrobat tags it's document, IMHO you should use word processor's style formatting because search engine reads tags. Instead of upsizing font for a title, you could use MS Word's Heading 1 style, for example. But I think it's safer to make a "search engine friendly" HTML document and then convert it into pdf, anyway.
  • Toddie - You are correct - Mike
  • Clarification question re document footers for white paper writers: The footer contains the name and contact info of the client business, not the writer him-or-herself, correct?
  • Bhumika - Good question! I do not know the answer to that one. - Mike
  • Puting our business contact in the document footer is as important as the job itself...Very nice that you put it as one of the points so everyone could kindly note it.
  • Since I never placed PDFs online, I am not sure,... if you protect PDF from printing & copy/paste do the content come up unsecured in the cache copy?
  • Hi Mike,

    To expand on Point #1 - optimizing your text also means using choosing an SEO-friendly title, just as you would a regular web page. Also, I would recommend (selectively) bolding keywords where appropriate, and putting keywords in your headers and sub-headers. I'm not sure what the stats are on how the search engines weight emphasized keywords in a PDF vs. a web page (is there anyone out there who does?) but it doesn't hurt. And the funny thing about SEO is that keeping your keywords in mind also helps keep you focused on your topics and themes. In short, those SEO tips and tricks help make you a more efficient writer.

    IMHO,

    ~Graham
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