Should links to tech data sheet be no follow?

[agirlandamac]

I'm an SEO beginner,  and on a new ecommerce (shopify) store I have a collection of paint.

Each of the 52 products will link to the technical data sheet PDF.  Should these links be no follow? or noreferrer?

If all the links to this PDF signal that it is important - it is not more important than the home or product collection pages.

Thanks!

[Syed1]

I would simply leave all PDFs as dofollow - unless they are not unique or if any of PDFs have content that has already been published on the site (html/ page).

Are all 52 PDFs have same content? If so I would let get 1 of them indexed and use NOFOLLOW/NOINDEX  on rest  (use robots.txt) and may be even use 'canonical' to prevent the others from being indexed and cause any potential duplicate content issue.

Some good reference for you:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-pdf-be-seen-as-duplicate-content-if-so-how-to-prevent-it

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021584.html

[agirlandamac]

Hi Syed,

Thank you so much for answering my question!

Just to clarify, do you mean that

• If I link to the PDF on product 1
• Then I no follow the links to the other 51 of the 52 products

so that there is only 1 followed link to the PDF?

I am not using the PDF content on the pages - I am using product descriptions.

The PDF link is to provide answers to customer frequently asked questions. Mainly to prevent repeated phone calls to answer material covered in the PDF -  too lengthy and technical for a product description for typical home decorators.

Or should I put the PDF content on an actual web page, and link to it from the products?

Then link to a download?

The products are more important than the technical info, I'd rather not have a lot to distract from someone adding to the cart. Just provide helpful info for someone who wants more.

[Syed1]

Doesn't matter much since if you use NoFollow you still lose a certain rank "juice". If i were you I'd leave them as it is - but If you are using same content from PDF on other web pages, I will nofollow/noindex them