PDF best practices: to get them indexed or not? Do they pass SEO value to the site?
-
All PDFs have landing pages, and the pages are already indexed. If we allow the PDFs to get indexed, then they'd be downloadable directly from google's results page and we would not get GA events.
The PDFs info would somewhat overlap with the landing pages info. Also, if we ever need to move content, we'd now have to redirects the links to the PDFs.
What are best practices in this area? To index or not?
What do you / your clients do and why?
Would a PDF indexed by google and downloaded directly via a link in the SER page pass SEO juice to the domain? What if it's on a subdomain, like when hosted by Pardot? (www1.example.com)
-
repeatedly noticed that google index PDF files. But only their headers, without the contents of the file itself.
If you format the file description correctly, you can do it through the PDF Architect (http://pdf-architect.ideaprog.download/) program, or any other convenient for you.
-
PDFs can be canonicalized using .htaccess. Google is usually very slow to discover and obey this but it can be done. However, if your PDF is not close to being an exact copy of the target page, Google will probably not honor the canonicalization and they will index the PDF and the html page separately.
PDFs can be optimized (given a title tag) by editing the properties of the document. Most PDF - making software has the ability to do this.
You can insert "buy buttons" and advertising in PDFs. Just make an image, paste it into the document and link it to your shopping cart or to your target document.
PDFs accumulate linkjuice and pass it to other documents.
Use the same strategies with PDFs as you would with an html page for directing visitors where you want them to go and getting them to do what you want them to do.
Some people will link to your PDF, others will grab your PDF and place it on their website (in that situation, you lose the canonical but still get juice from any embeded links), and benefit from ads and buttons that might be included. Lock the PFD with your PDF-creating software to prevent people from editing your PDF (but they can always copy/paste to get around it).
Other types of documents such as Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint documents, Google images, etc can have embedded text, embedded links and other features that are close to equivalent to an html document.
-
PDF documents aren't written in HTML so you can't put canonical tags into PDFs. So that won't help or work. In-fact, if you are considering any types of tags of any kind for your PDFs, stop - because PDF files cannot have HTML tags embedded within them
If your PDF files have landing pages, just let those rank and let people download the actual PDF files from there if they chose to do so. In reality, it's best to convert all your PDFs to HTML and then give a download link to the PDF file in case people need it (in this day and age though, PDF is a backwards format. It's not even responsive, for people's pones - it sucks!)
The only canonical tags you could apply, would be on the landing pages (which do support HTML) pointing to the PDF files. Don't do that though, it's silly. Just convert the PDFs to HTML, then leave a download button for the old PDFs in-case anyone absolutely needs them. If the PDF and the HTML page contain similar info, it won't affect you very much.
What will affect you, is putting canonical tags on the landing pages thus making them non-canonical (and stopping the landing pages from ranking properly). You're in a situation where a perfect outcome isn't possible, but that's no reason to pick the worst outcome by 'over-adhering' to Google's guidelines. Sometimes people use Google's guidelines in ways Google didn't anticipate that they would
PDF documents don't usually pass PageRank at all, as far as I know
If you want to optimise the PDF documents themselves, the document title which you save them with is used in place of a <title>tag (which, since PDFs aren't in HTML, they can't use <title>). You can kind of optimise PDF documents by editing their document titles, but it's not super effective and in the end HTML conversions usually perform much better. As stated, for the old fossils who still like / need PDF, you can give them a download link</p> <p>In the case of downloadable PDF files with similar content to their connected landing pages, Google honestly don't care too much at all. Don't go nutty with canonical tags, don't stop your landing pages from ranking by making them non-canonical</p></title>
-
Yes, the PDFs would help increase your domain rank as they are practically considered as pages by Google, as explained in their QnA here.
Regarding hosting the PDFs on a subdomain, Google has stated that it's almost the same as having them on a subfolder, but that is highly contested by everyone since it's much harder to rank a subdomain than a subfolder.
Regarding the canonical tags, they are created for "Similar or Duplicate Pages", so the content doesn't have to be identical, and you'll be good so long as most of the content is the same. Otherwise, you can safely have them both be and have backlinks linking from the pdf to the main content to transfer "link juice", as they are considered as valid links.
I hope my response was beneficial to you and that the included proof was substantial.
Daniel Rika
-
Thank you.
Could you address my question about what's best practice? What do most companies do?
I am not sure what the best choice would be for us -- to expose PDFs which compete with their own landing pages or not.
Also, do you know if PDFs pass SEO "juice" to the main domain? Even if they are hosted at www2.maindomain.com?
Where can I see some proof that this is the case?
If the PDFs have a canonical tag pointing to the parent page, wouldn't this be confusing for the search engines as these are two separate files with differing content? Canonical tags are usually used to eliminate duplicates for differing URLs with identical content.
-
Whether you want to index the pdf directly or not will mostly depend on the content of the pdf:
- If you are using the pdf as a way to gather e-mails for your newsletter, or if you are offering the pdf as a way to get users to your site, then it would be best not to have them indexed directly, but instead have the users go to your site first.
- If the pdf in itself is a way for you to promote your website or content then you can index it so that it can be accessed directly and may help you to get a bit more rank or clicks.
If you are looking to track pdf views, there are options to connect GA and track your pdf views, such as this plugin.
If the content is similar to the web page, then you can put a canonical tag to transfer the ranking. You can add it to the http header using the .htaccess file as explained here.
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
-
SEO Effect of inserting No indexed Contents in normal Pages (Nextgen Gallery)
Hello Dear Community, I'm running a photography website and have a question about the indexability of "No indexed Content" inserted on indexable pages. Background : I read everywhere that best practice is to "no index" all useless pages with few content, what I did with Yoast plugin : I no indexed all my nextgen galleries and "ngg_tags" since they create single pages for every photo, tags or slideshow. I did the same for all my porfolio-posts, price lists, testimonials and so on... Nevertheless, I inserted these galleries and portfolios on SEO optimized page for my target keywords. + Nextgen plugin automatically adds these images in the page sitemap. My idea is to have only my Seo optimized page showing in Google and not the others. Problem: I've been checking the results in Google Search Console, filtering by images : I discovered that most of the images featured in these Masonry galleries are not showing in google, and actually almost all the images indexed are the Wordpress from media gallery. I double checked with Screaming Frog, and the software doesn"t see images on these pages. My question is: Is the low indexablilty of these contents are related to the No indexation of the original contents ??? Does somebody has experienced the same issue that these contents doesn't show on Google ? in advance many thanks for your help
Reporting & Analytics | | TristanAventure0 -
Will noindex pages still get link equity?
We think we get link equity from some large travel domains to white label versions of our main website. These pages are noindex because they're the same URLs and content as our main B2C website and have canonicals to the pages we want indexed. Question is, is there REALLY link equity to pages on our domain which have "noindex,nofollow" on them? Secondly we're looking to put all these white label pages on a separate structure, to better protect our main indexed pages from duplicate content risks. The best bet would be to put them on a sub folder rather than a subdomain, yes? That way, even though the pages are still noindex, we'd get link equity from these big domains to www.ourdomain.com/subfolder where we wouldn't to subdomain.ourdomain.com? Thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | HTXSEO0 -
Is it possible to set up one of the Goal Conversions on Google Analytics for a different site?
We are in the process of a website migration and need to set up the conversions for the new site. What is the most effective way of doing this?
Reporting & Analytics | | Sable_Group0 -
Automated XML Sitemap for a BIG site
Hi, I would like to do an automated sitemap for my site but it has more than a million pages. It would need to be a sitemap index with a separation on different parts of the site (i.e. news, video) and I'll want a news sitemap and video sitemap as well (of course). Does anyone have any recommended way of making this and how much would you recommend it getting updated? For news and , I would like it to be pretty immediate if possible but the static pages don't need to be updated as much. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
If Links not in GWT does that mean they havent been Indexed yet?
Hi we have had some success recently with increased rank positions, so I am trying to find our what's caused it? Am I correct in thinking that if google hasnt listed any new links in my GWT account that it hasnt indexed them yet and therefore not impacting my rankings? Thanks Ash
Reporting & Analytics | | AshShep10 -
How to get crawled pages indexed?
Hi, I've got over 1k pages crawled but approx 100 pages indexed. Although, i submit them on Google Fetch and the links are indexable,they are not indexed. What shall i do the get max pages indexed? Any input highly appreciated. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Rubix0 -
Multi-Site Analytics Dashboards?
Anyone have recommendations on a good multi-site analytics dashboard? I am managing roughly 20 sites right now, and am looking for a dashboard that provides basic info like # of visitors, search traffic, etc. for a couple dozen sites at a glance.
Reporting & Analytics | | TakeshiYoung0 -
Getting traffic for another site
Hi Everyone, Our website url/brand is very close to another website url/brand. We are non-competing entities. It appears as though this other company has begun a marketing program which has resulted in our traffic skyrocketing. However, it seems to have also resulted in our Pages/Visit and Visit Duration to decrease and our Bounce Rate to increase. Can anyone suggest how to deal with this type of scenario? Thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | AC_Pro
Robert0