PDF's - Dupe Content
-
Hi
I have some pdfs linked to from a page with little content. Hence thinking best to extract the copy from the pdf and have on-page as body text, and the pdf will still be linked too. Will this count as dupe content ?
Or is it best to use a pdf plugin so page opens pdf automatically and hence gives page content that way ?
Cheers
Dan
-
Should be different, but you would have to look at them to make sure.
-
ps - is a pdf to html coverter different from a plugin that loads the pdf as an open page when you click it ? or same thing ?
-
That is what I was going to suggest - setting up a canonical in the http header of the PDF back to the article
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en
As another option, you can just block access to the PDFs to keep them out of the index as well.
-
thanks Chris
yes you can canonicalise the pdf to the html (according to the comments of that article i just linked to anyway)
-
Hi Dan,
Yes PDFs are crawlable (sorry for confusion!) if you were to put it into say a .zip or .rar (or similar) it wouldn't be crawled or you could no index the link i guess. You would need to stick the PDF (download) behind some thing that couldn't be crawled. You could try rel= canonical but I've never tried it with a PDF so i'm not sure how that would go.
Hope that enlightens you a bit.
-
Thanks Chris although i thought PDFS were crawlable??: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2013/01/10/seo-pdfs/
Hence why im worried about dupe content if use content of pdf as body text too OR are you saying should no-follow the link to the pdf if use its content as body text because it is considered dupe content in that scenario ?
Ideally i want both - the copy on it used as body text copy on page and the pdf a linkable download, or page as embed of open pdf via a plugin.
-
What would give the user the best experience is the really question,I would;d say put it on page then if the user is lacking a plugin they can still read it, if you have it as a downloadable PDF is shouldn't be able to get crawled and thus avoiding the problem.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Does the content in Joomla modules get indexed
Hello Moz, we are using Joomla to build websites. In Joomla you can put content in modules. What we would like to know if would search engines index content in modules, as it does with content attached to menu links? Thanks Ian
On-Page Optimization | | Substance-create0 -
Should I remove 'local' landing pages? Could these be the cause of traffic drop (duplicate content)?
I have a site that has most of it's traffic from reasonably competitive keywords each with their own landing page. In order to gain more traffic I also created landing pages for counties in the UK and then towns within each county. Each county has around 12 towns landing pages within the county. This has meant I've added around 200 extra pages to my site in order to try and generate more traffic from long tail keywords. I think this may have caused an issue in that it's impossible for me to create unique content for each town/country and therefore I took a 'shortcut' buy creating unique content for each county and used the same content for the towns within it meaning I have lots of pages with the same content just slightly different page titles with a variation on town name. I've duplicated this over about 15 counties meaning I have around 200 pages with only about 15 actual unique pages within them. I think this may actually be harming my site. These pages have been indexed for about a year an I noticed about 6 months ago a drop in traffic by about 50%. Having looked at my analytics this town and county pages actually only account for about 10% of traffic. My question is should I remove these pages and by doing so should I expect an increase in traffic again?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Would a free PDF download diminish SEO benefits of HTML content?
Dear readers, This post is a duplicate of one I just put up. Sorry about that. If you are interested in commenting or seeing other responses, please go to http://moz.com/community/q/would-a-free-pdf-download-diminish-seo-benefits-of-html-content. Thanks. Hello, I am doing SEO for a company that, as a sideline business, sells four books written by the principals; the content is directly relevant to the company's primary business focus. Book sales are a tiny fraction of our overall revenue, and we don't expect that to change, although we will continue to sell the books. In addition to selling them, we have decided to convert the books to HTML and post them for free on our website (laid out by chapter and section). The hope is that this will result in goodwill, links, traffic, and ultimately improved search rankings. My question: Would offering free PDF downloads of the books (in addition to posting the HTML content) diminish the SEO benefits of the HTML content? If we don't offer the PDF option, people would have to visit our site to read the content (unless they bought a hard copy). If visitors were able to download a free PDF, they wouldn't need to return to our site to read it. If our corporate clients (nearly all of our clients are corporations) could download a PDF, they could then post it on an intranet instead of posting a link to our site. In general, do you think a visitor would be less likely to link to our site if he or she were able to download the PDF? Or would the appeal of the PDF option make it more likely that people would visit and link to the site? Also, if we offer the PDF option, are there any SEO issues related to duplicate content? Finally, if we did offer the free PDF download, would you recommend that we ask for an email address before giving the PDF? Thank you very much!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
How to Structure URL's for Multiple Locations
We are currently undergoing a site redesign and are trying to figure out the best way to structure the URL's and breadcrumbs for our many locations. We currently have 60 locations nationwide and our URL structure is as follows: www.mydomain.com/locations/{location} Where {location} is the specific street the location is on or the neighborhood the location is in. (i.e. www.mydomain.com/locations/waterford-lakes) The issue is, {location} is usually too specific and is not a broad enough keyword. The location "Waterford-Lakes" is in Orlando and "Orlando" is the important keyword, not " Waterford Lakes". To address this, we want to introduce state and city pages. Each state and city page would link to each location within that state or city (i.e. an Orlando page with links to "Waterford Lakes", "Lake Nona", "South Orlando", etc.). The question is how to structure this. Option 1 Use the our existing URL and breadcrumb structure (www.mydomain.com/locations/{location}) and add state and city pages outside the URL path: www.mydomain.com/{area} www.mydomain.com/{state} Option 2 Build the city and state pages into the URL and breadcrumb path: www.mydomain.com/locations/{state}/{area}/{location} (i.e www.mydomain.com/locations/fl/orlando/waterford-lakes) Any insight is much appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | uBreakiFix0 -
Duplicate Content from WordPress Category Base?
I recently changed my category base in WordPress and instead of redirecting or deleting the old base, WordPress kept the content up. So I now have duplicate content on two different urls - one on the old category base, one on the new category base. How should I handle this situation? The site is only a couple weeks old, if that makes any difference.
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
Should I buy an established domain that has lost it's high PR due to being offline for several months?
I'm considering purchasing a domain that has sat idle for several months. It was a company's domain that they have owned since the mid1990's but they went out of business. Previously, it had a PR 5 but has since lost it's PR as it has sat 'inactive' with a 'server not found' warning for the past several months. That being said, is there any point in buying the domain (for SEO purposes)? Is there any recourse with Google to try and re-establish the site's credibility or would I be starting over from scratch?
On-Page Optimization | | martybuch230 -
Duplicate content in the title
Good morning, I am developing an application that searches offers in the press. The problem I have is the follow one:
On-Page Optimization | | ofuente
When I find an offer that I have already post, I cant use the same URL because it generates duplicate content , as the URL is generated from the title. If I find two offers in different stores (for example Thomson TV) I am studying two options. The first would be to add a number at the end of the URL
http://www.offertazo.com/televisor-thomson
http://www.offertazo.com/televisor-thomson1
http://www.offertazo.com/televisor-thomson2 Another option I propose would be to add semantic data to provide value (such as the date). For example:
http://www.offertazo.com/01-12-12/televisor-thomson I appreciate your help.0 -
Duplicate Content Warning
Hi Mozers, I have a question about the duplicate content warnings I am recieving for some of my pages. I noticed that the below pattern of URLs are being flagged as duplicate content. I understand that these are seen as two different pages but I would like to know if this has an negative impact on my SEO? Why is this happening? How do I stop it from happening? http://www.XXXX.com/product1234.html?sef_rewrite=1 http://www.XXXX.com/product1234.html Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | mozmonkey0