Can PDFs on your website be picked up in search engines?
-
Can PDFs on your website be picked up in search engines? There's a ton of info online that says it can and can't be picked up.
-
Agreed! I had an issue with many PDFs ranking. I've done what I can to clean things up so better pages rank instead (my goal is to sell; I'd rather someone end up on my page that has an "add to cart" button AND a link to the catalog/PDF info).
Anyone who says it can't happen - well, it did to me.
-
Short answer, yes. Search engines are still not as good at crawling and indexing them as well as they are with HTML pages, but they have definitely made strides in recent years. Do a Google search for "filetype:pdf" and you will see all of the PDFs that are indexed in Google.
That being said, they are still not ideal for SEO so I recommend not using them whenever possible. I wrote a couple of blog posts about this issue - http://streamlinemetrics.com/blog/seo-for-pdfs-optimizing-pdf-files-for-search-engines.php and http://streamlinemetrics.com/blog/how-to-redirect-pdf-files-with-php-asp-or-htaccess-for-seo-seo-for-pdfs-part-2.php.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How does the suggested website functionality work in Safari?
I don't seem to be able to find out much information on this one. Safari often shows a suggested website as you start typing a query into the browser. I've uploaded a screenshot to help show what I mean. safari-suggested-site.png
On-Page Optimization | | edwardlewis0 -
H1 tags are ok for my website?
Please review the H1 tags for my website and let me know if they are ok or I need to change them? Website - brandstenmedia.com.au
On-Page Optimization | | Green.landon0 -
How can I maximize my On Page for these two common usages
I have a page that is tuned for this query: 1886 ten dollar bill and I am happy with my placement. The same page performs poorly if someone types: 1886 $10 dollar bill Is there anything I can do short of having another page tuned for the $ rather than 10?
On-Page Optimization | | Banknotes0 -
My website ranking recently dropping - why?
Hi all, I am a photographer and do my own website and links etc. Website is: http://www.mckayphotography.com.au I have enjoyed good google rankings for my main keyword 'wedding photography sydney' for many years, and even recovered after taking a hit from the penguin (may 2012) update. But the last month has seen a steady drop from around 2nd - 4th down to now 10th. I have analyzed my site using all the moz tools and on most counts eg moz rank and moz trust I am ahead of my competitor sites....but still rank under them on google. So I would greatly appreciate on advice people could give on getting my ranking back up again! Thanks in advance Darryn
On-Page Optimization | | dmck0 -
Are internal and external footers on all pages of a large website detrimental to seo?
Hi, I am doing an seo clean up of our site - we have about 12 footers on the bottom of each page plus an internal site map including core keywords. Most footers go to internal sites and some go to external sites which are replicated on those external sites linking back to ours. (these sites are part of the same large company but are not related in any way) Are these bad from an seo ranking perspective? Do the look like spam? We get considerable traffic from one of the external footers that is replicated on their site so need to weigh up what the best option is whether to keep the traffic or to loose it as part of the seo clean up. thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Pday0 -
Why Is this Website Not Ranking?
HI There - I have been working on this site: http://limohireauckland.co.nz - primarily for our keyword phrase 'limo hire Auckland' - I am running a campaign for this site from the Pro tools and using the pon-page report card this url achieves an A grade for that particular phrase. The client is working on links in the local community etc but we are not appearing in the SERPS at all for most of the phrases we are optimising for. There has recently been a huge redesign on the site (approx 6 weeks ago) and the old content was not great. Am I missing something really glaringly obvious? Or am I being too impatient?
On-Page Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
Missing new pages in Search
Hi, We are on wordpress platform with category permalink structure site.com/category/categoryname. To pull in more SEO traffic, we created pages with structure site.com/categorynameand pulled in all the content from category pages to these new pages followed by applying no-follow on category pages within robots.txt. While it has been a week we applied these changes, we still see old category pages on google search with weird description ( A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt... ) How could we make search results to replace old categories links with the new pages? thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Website redesign: site going from .php to .html
A site I'm working on is being redesigned because the current platform does not allow for content to be changed easily. In the process, they are going from .php to .html. I am concerned about their losing link juice. Can a site work with the old content remaining .php and the new content being .html or should all pages stay .php?
On-Page Optimization | | cakelady0