PDF ranking higher than HTML pages, solution?
-
Hello Moz community
I know this question has been asked before but it seems there is no real answer other than putting a summary of the PDF on the HTML page. My problem is other websites are using my PDFs, I have some PDFs with very high authority links and I would like to either pass the link juice on to my product/category page or do rel=canonical somehow. I'm using bigcommerce as my platform. My website is cwwltd.com. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
-
Thank you, I will try to add links in the PDFs and see if that helps at all.
-
Hello John
The problem with modifying headers is I don't have access to .htaccess because I use bigcommerce platform. So I'm not sure how I would add rel canonical for the PDFs? Can I somehow do it with the link to the PDF?
Thank you
-
-
Hi there! Great question and one that has perplexed SEOs for years.
You are indeed right that one of the best ways to rank the page over the PDF is to put some of the PDF content on your page and do other best SEO practices (eg build links to the page, have a better optimized title/etc than the PDF itself). It is also possible to put the rel-canonical in the header of the PDF - https://moz.com/blog/how-to-advanced-relcanonical-http-headers
Finally, if you don't want your actual PDF showing up in the search results, consider a) blocking it in the robots.txt and then b) requesting the URL be removed from the search index via Search Console.
Good luck!
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
-
Im scoring 100% in the page optimization, wht else I need to do, because I rank 7-12 in search results
Hi All, Pls check the below url http://www.powerwale.com/inverter-battery for inverter battery keyword in google.co.in im scoring 100% in the page optimization, wht else I need to do, and also I still rank in between 7 to 12 in search results.. How can be in Top 3 search results.. Pls suggest.. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1191 -
Outside Top 10 Even though - Higher Domain/Page Authority/Higher On Page Grade
Hi, Note: this is for Australian search results - for people in Perth.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HeadStud
The website is: http://thedj.com.au I am trying to optimise for the keyword 'perth wedding dj', but also 'wedding dj perth' and for some reason my website isn't even in the top 10 results. Here is what's weird though: My on-page grade with the On-Page Grader for the keyword 'wedding DJ perth' is an 'A' for http://thedj.com.au (http://awesomescreenshot.com/0135135hca) When checking the Keyword Difficulty in the Google Australia search enginge for 'wedding DJ perth' - there are 4 results which have a lower domain authority than 15 (in fact one result has a domain authority of 1) - http://awesomescreenshot.com/03f5134zd1 http://thedj.com.au has a Domain Authority of 23/100 and a Page Authority of 34/100. (http://awesomescreenshot.com/0bb5134tb8) So seeing as the page has gotten an A for on-page optimisation for the keyword 'wedding DJ Perth' and has a higher domain authority then many results in the top 10... why isn't it in the Top 10?! Bonus Question:
Why is DJ Avi showing up at the top of search results (Local listing) depsite the fact that:
a) He has no website to link to
b) No reviews for his listing
c) No keywords that I can see (other than the fact that he's a DJ)
Screenshot: http://awesomescreenshot.com/05151349cb Meanwhile our Local Places - Thanks,
Kosta
http://www.headstudios.com.au0 -
Optimized Page Not Ranking for Head Term
We have a primary donation page that we've tried to position well for the term 'Donate' and some of its longer-tailed derivatives. The page has plenty of high-quality backlinks and internal links, and hasn't had any manual actions taken against it. The backlink profile is fairly good from what I can tell, definitely not mainly spam. The issue is that it doesn't rank for 'Donate', at all really. For 'Donate Online' and 'Donate Canada', it ranks roughly #3-4 across major Canadian cities, but we're not even in the top 100 for 'Donate'. There are pages and domains that are way less optimized, with much weaker backlink profiles, that are ranking well ahead of us. It's not a noindex or robots problem, as the page ranks fine for many other terms. We also have a strong domain with around 660k backlinks according to MajesticSEO. Here's the URL in question: http://www.redcross.ca/donate I'm hoping someone can help us diagnose what could be going wrong with this term specifically and how we can get this page into the SERPs where it belongs. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalcrc0 -
Can internal links from a blog harm the ranking of a page?
Here is the situation: A site was moved from its original domain to its new domain, and at the same time, the external wordpress.com blog was moved to a subdirectory, making it an onsite blog. The two pages that rank the highest on the site have virtually no links from the blog and no external links, while all the other pages are linked extensively from the blog and have backlinks. Their targeted keywords are not so much easier to rank than the other pages for that to be the sole cause. To confuse the matter even more, there was a manual penalty affecting incoming links which was removed last month. The old site, which has many backlinks to the new site, is still in Google's index. The old blog however, has been redirected page by page and is not in Google's index. Most of the blog posts are short 1-paragraph company updates and potentially considered low quality content because of that (?) The common denominator among the two highest ranked pages (I'm talking top 3 in SERP v. page 3 or 4) seems to be either the lack of external backlinks or the lack of internal links from the blog. Could there be an issue with the blog such that internal links from it are detrimental rather than helpful?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn0 -
My home page is not found by the "Grade a Page" tool
My home page as well as several important pages are not found by the Grade a Page tool. With our full https address I got this http://screencast.com/t/s1gESMlGwpa With just the www address I got this http://screencast.com/t/BMRHy36Ih https://www.joomlashack.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | etabush
https://www.joomlashack.com/joomla-templates We recently lost a lot of positions for our most important keyword: Joomla Templates Please help us figure this out. Whats screwy with our site?0 -
Product Page rankings - How to boost?
Hi folks I am responsible for an e-commerce website. Our website is doing very well but I believe that our product pages should be ranking more highly than they currently are. When taking over my current role, it became clear that a number of changes would need to be made to try and boost the under performing product pages. Amongst other things I therefore implemented the following: New Product content - we have placed a massive focus on reworking all product content so that it is unique and offers value to the reader. The new content includes videos, images and text that is all keyword rich but (I hope) not seen as overly spammy. Duplicate content - the CMS was creating multiple versions of the same page - I addressed this by implementing 301 redirects and adding canonical links. This ensures there is now only 1 version of the page Parameters - I instructed Google to not index certain URLs containing specific parameters Internal links - I have tried to improve the number of links to the products from relevant key category pages My question is, although some of the changes have only been in place for a month, what else can I do to ensure that the product pages rank as highly as possible. As an e-commerce website with so many products it is very difficult to link to these product pages directly, so any tips or suggestions would be welcome! Here's an example of a product page link : http://www.directheatingsupplies.co.uk/pid_37440/100180/Worcester-Greenstar-29CDi-Classic-Gas-Combi-Boiler-7738100216-29-Cdi.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
HTML NAP Matching Place Page NAP
In David Mihm's article on Local Search Ranking Factors, he lists "HTML NAP Matching Place Page NAP". What is this exactly?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DougHoltOnline1 -
Pages On Subfolder Not Ranking
A subdirectory/folder on our website doesn't seem to rank for any keywords where the same type of pages on the same competition level keywords rank perfectly fine. For awhile the pages weren't getting indexed but were crawled regularly. Can't seem to figure the problem out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bprimeelitellc0